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The first anniversary of April 16 brings to mind many thoughts and feelings.
I'm not quite sure how I'm going to feel tomorrow, but as the anniversary has approached, I've thought a great deal about that day just one short year ago.
If there's one thing we should learn from the tragedy we experienced, it is compassion -- compassion for those who live through these kinds of events every single day, compassion for those in the parts of the world who are ignored by the media (and by us), and compassion for those we are killing with our money and weapons.
Tomorrow, we will again hear the stories of how our slain friends once lived. We will hear how they were innocent victims, gunned down by a crazed killer with a desperately lost soul. We will hear about Virginia Tech and the resiliency of the Hokie Nation.
We won't hear the stories of hundreds of thousands of others that need to be heard. At the April 17 convocation, I sat watching as our fearless leader, George W. Bush, offered his condolences, as if it meant anything.
Here, the great war criminal of our time, who needlessly and illegally invaded another country, killing upward of 1 million people, telling us that people across the nation were praying for us!
Who is praying for Iraqis? We have devastated a culture far older than our own, turned their country into a wasteland, and have initiated untold grief upon millions of families. Iraqis seem to understand this; they want us to leave them alone after three decades of torture.
Who is praying for Palestinians? Our government provides material and diplomatic support to an outlaw state in the region that has illegally occupied Palestinian territory, depriving human beings of basic rights such as access to water.
Women die in childbirth at Israeli checkpoints because they aren't let through to hospitals. The West Bank has been hacked up with Jewish-only settlements and Gaza has become the world's biggest prison.
Who is praying for Colombians? Money flows to the Colombian government, which uses its paramilitary forces to assassinate courageous union leaders and farmers trying to end the rape of their land by multinational corporations. Colombia has the worst human rights record in Latin America (in addition to the most U.S. aid).
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Thank you, a very quiet thank you, for it is not only about "our boys" dying in Iraq, it is about "our boys" killing Iraqis who did not ask for this in any manner. Blessings to you for speaking from your heart.
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I think its pretty low-class to take a tragedy like (4/16) and try to connect it to your own personal agenda.
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Reading the beginning of this column I was in agreement with you until I read on. What a disgusting and judgmental piece of crap. Is it written somewhere that you can only pray for one group at a time? A GOOD PERSON prays not only for themselves, but for the less fortunate, the lost, the dead, the dying, the hurt, the ones serving the country, etc.
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I feel like I'm running out of things to say about Mr. Morris' columns, because he writes the same one every week and just minces his words differently. I always find it interesting to note that his columns normally run high on rhetoric and glaringly low on factual information, relying on unqualified assessments (such as calling Israel an 'outlaw state' and George Bush the 'great war criminal of our time') as evidence of his points. Now, Mr. Morris is certainly entitled to his opinion, and far be it from me to tell the CT not to pay the man for writing this piece - but it's important to note that these articles don't really lend themselves to rational discussion because Mr. Morris approaches the topic as though there were nothing left to discuss - ie, people are dying, the US is at fault, and anyone who disagrees is either brainwashed or hates the children dying around the globe. That, I believe, constitutes an intellectually weak argument - and the fact that he uses last year's tragedy as a vessel in which to vent his frustration only makes the opinion seem even more trite and irrelevant.
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Brett Morris sometimes you just need to shut the **** up. I can not believe you would suggest that we shouldn't care about the victims of the 16th just because you feel Iraqi's are more important. What a horrible person you are. Flip your arguement around. How many people around the world do you think know the names of the victims here? How many people even know it happened? Seriously I don't care normally when you write unfactual articles but this is one time you should have kept your ******* mouth shut.
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Ah, where have I heard this before? Oh yeah, I studied in Europe for a year. I want to emphasize most Europeans are too polite to even broach the subject with someone struggling to learn German. But being from Northern Virginia ...it once led to "aah, the suffering your president is causing the Iraqi people..blah..blah" I am no Bush supporter ...he's clearly an idiot and Cheney is his Sith lord. But seeing "black and white" cuts both ways. If you constantly see "Third World" people(s) as victims then you also reveal a low opinion of them. It didn't help that the Paris (immigrant) riots were occuring at the same time. They are very broad minded but its the United States that seems to do better with immigrants. Yes, we do a lot of things wrong...but if you truly want to screw up call the UN. Rwanda, Bosnia, Afghanistan and now Darfur. True, Nato nations are serving in Afghanistan but its like pulling teeth to get troops. In Darfur, aid agencies are waiting for Nato or the US to get involved...but alas, we're too busy. We're all looking forward to China's role as the next "world's policeman"...no one will be whining then....
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Remember the victims of the world? What an idiot, look at the backgrounds of the victims!
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From your previous columns, I am aware that you dislike the current government and democratically elected leaders therein. That being said, I cannot understand why you would use April 16th as a platform for attacks against those leaders. It is well within your right as a journalist to have an opinion but as a fellow Hokie, I would expect something in far better taste. Your column is nothing more then you peddling a (liberal) personal agenda about how President Bush is evil and the government is responsible for all the problems in the world. Will your next column be about how the Blacksburg PD or Virginia Tech or Governor Kaine could have prevented April 16th?
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express your ideas three months ago, not the day before the biggest school shooting in us history...you've got some nerve man.
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From: scpace@vt.edu To: morrisb@vt.edu BCC: Subject: Name of a single Iraqi who has been killed because of our invasion is... Saddam Hussein. There, now you can name one. You, Mr. Morris, being a member of the American media, as well as a history major at Virginia Tech, surprised me when you could not do this in your article in the CT today (April 15, 2008). Or, perhaps you're right, and I shouldn't be surprised, as "the propaganda system known as the media typically doesn't allow putting a human face on the wars we wage, unless it somehow suits [y]our interests." -Stephen Pace Hokie senior,
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Drug rehab
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Xenical
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