American Value

I was working out the other morning and watching the news headlines scroll by on the screen at the front of the gym.  I say “working out” because I was on a treadmill and the treadmill was moving.  A large headline flashed up on the screen saying that 40 people had been killed in a suicide bombing in a crowded public area.  My heart skipped a beat as I imagined the victims and their families, all the pain and suffering they were going through.

 

Where did this atrocity happen?  Certainly a terrorist attack of this magnitude would receive nonstop media coverage for the next several days and I would learn all the sickening details.

Then came the second headline.  The bombing had happened in Iraq.

“Oh.  Iraq.  Again.”

And I kept going with my workout.  No one seemed much ruffled by the news.  We were all burning a few calories and waiting for Matt Lauer to interview some interesting celebrity.

Thinking about the incident later, my mind drifted back to the shootings at Virginia Tech a few months ago.  We were a nation united in outrage, terror and mourning.  Those innocent students and professors’ lives had been ended in a tragic and violent manner and we were touched deeply.

How then could I casually wipe the sweat from my face, turn up my MP3 player and walk on when the victims were not killed on American soil?

A suicide bombing at a mall in North Dakota or a public market in Seattle would bring this country to a standstill, if only for a short time.  Do we value the life of an American civilian that much more than the life of an Iraqi?  How many Iraqi college students would need to be killed to merit an equal reaction in the American public to what happened after Virginia Tech?

Is it because it’s a warzone?  Is it because it’s so far away?  Have we simply given up on the Middle East?

I think I’ve shut off an emotional connection to the violence in Iraq to save myself from living in a constant state of anxiety and fear.  If I give that Iraqi mother lying dead in the street a name and a face, then I have to do something about it.  And I don’t have the first idea what to do.

“My name is Kathryn and I’m sorry your country is torn apart by war with my country.  We really wanted to make things better for you.  Would you like some blueberry muffins?”

It’s not enough.