Can the Boston Bombings Increase our Sympathy for Iraq and Syria, for All Such Victims? by Juan Cole

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/16-1


A woman comforts another, who appears to have suffered an injury to her hand, after explosions interrupted the 117th Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts April 15, 2013. Three people were killed and more than 140 others injured after two explosions struck the Boston Marathon as runners crossed the finish line on Monday, Boston police said. (REUTERS/Dominick Reuter)

The horrific bombings of the Boston Marathon produced inspiring images of a spirited, brave Boston refusing to be cowed. Some spectators surged forward toward the danger to apply tourniquets, offer first aid, share blankets, and later to give blood, for the victims.

President Obama followed the crisis from its first moments and came out promptly to caution against fruitless speculation as to the perpetrators as well as solemnly to vow that they will be held accountable. (He has a certain track record in that regard.)

The idea of three dead, several more critically wounded, and over a 100 injured, merely for running in a marathon (often running for charities or victims of other tragedies) is terrible to contemplate. Our hearts are broken for the victims and their family and friends, for the runners who will not run again.

There is negative energy implicit in such a violent event, and there is potential positive energy to be had from the way that we respond to it. To fight our contemporary pathologies, the tragedy has to be turned to empathy and universal compassion rather than to anger and racial profiling. Whatever sick mind dreamed up this act did not manifest the essence of any large group of people. Terrorists and supremacists represent only themselves, and always harm their own ethnic or religious group along with everyone else.

The negative energies were palpable. Fox News contributor Erik Rush tweeted, “Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let’s bring more Saudis in without screening them! C’mon!” When asked if he was already scapegoating Muslims, he replied, ““Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.” Challenged on that, he replied, “Sarcasm, idiot!” What would happen, I wonder, if someone sarcastically asked on Twitter why, whenever there is a bombing in the US, one of the suspects everyone has to consider is white people? I did, mischievously and with Mr. Rush in mind, and was told repeatedly that it wasn’t right to tar all members of a group with the brush of a few. They were so unselfconscious that they didn’t seem to realize that this was what was being done to Muslims!

[sinkingfeeling]

1. IMO, the answer is 'no'. Too much nationalism for that.

[Robb]

2. Sort of a silly question.

On balance, people do not think profoundly about things that have not happened to them in their own experience. Nations do not address problems felt elsewhere until it affects them directly.

Certainly how we choose to respond is an interesting discussion, but to suggest it's evidence of some lack of moral fiber that we haven't adequately empathized with other nations who have suffered such attacks is kind of silly. Of course we haven't, no more than residents of Mali sympathize with deaths associated with a Northeastern ice storm.

Again, what we do going forward will say a great deal about us.

[geek tragedy]

3. To put it bluntly, how does our sympathy help people in Iraq

or Syria?

[Zoeisright]

6. Some people can only identify with a problem

when it happens to them. That's how.

[geek tragedy]

7. But, how does that help people in Syria?

There's literally nothing we can do for them.

[FedUpWithIt All]

8. Couldn't the same be said for the people in Boston?

That any sympathy offered doesn't really help them? Yet a world without sympathy for those who are hurting or grieving is not a world most of us would like to live in.

But sympathy does have the power to help prevent further violence. If people feel strongly enough about something, heightened by their own experience, they will sometimes stand in opposition to it.

I am left wondering what exactly is the point you're trying to make?

[geek tragedy]

9. My point is that we can send donations to the people

in Boston. We do have loved ones in Boston, and the people in Boston will take some cheer in knowing their fellow citizens are there for them.

People in Syria who hear sympathy but see no action are not likely going to have their outlook brightened by platitudes.

People in Egypt certainly weren't impressed when we expressed concern about Mubarak's abuses but didn't do enough.

[G_j]

20. fostering empathy towards others

benefits us. It makes us better human beings. ..pretty basic

[sabrina 1]

10. How does our sympathy help the people of Boston, or NYC?

Sympathy, empathy, compassion are all human emotions that normal people feel and express when they see others hurt.

Regarding Iraq, or Pakistan or Afghanistan, had this country not been lied to, had we seen the results of the bombings, the dead children, occurring daily it might have saved lives, it might have been strong enough to remove Bush from office in 2004 and strong enough to force OUR leaders to stop killing people overseas.

But we are encouraged to NOT have empathy of 'brown people' over seas. Fear of the 'other' is part of our current foreign policy. As Goebbels said, get the people afraid and they will support war. As a nation we have lost the ability to experience those natural human emotions for the suffering of others. But if we had not, it could have made a huge difference to the Iraqis.

Just as our sympathy for the victims of any tragedy, help them cope with something that horrendous.

[geek tragedy]

11. To put a finer head on it, sympathy for overseas victims

of civil wars leads to the question of what we are prepared to do about it. And that leads down the interventionist path.

[sabrina 1]

13. Iraq wasn't a civil war. The hundreds of thousands of dead innocents were killed by us and our

allies. We invaded that country illegally and the press was controlled by the Bush administration forbidden from reporting honestly on what we were doing there. I saw photos regardless, taken by independent reporters like Dahr Jamail eg and Robert Fisk. But never on our media.

Embedded reporters like Ashley Banfield were taken off the air for simply describing the horrors she was not allowed to put on the air at a private function. That is how frightened they were of what arousing sympathy for the victims might to do their ability to continue their invasion. It was seeing the reality of war on TV that contributed to the opposition to the Vietnam War. So you asked what good our sympathy can do for the victims of our wars. You DID mention Iraq. Look at history for the answer. Human compassion and ethics are powerful weapons against brutality.

[geek tragedy]

14. Most lives lost from Iraq were due to the civil war that broke out

after we destroyed the government there without replacing it.

The lives being lost today are due to civil war.

[sabrina 1]

15. I guess you missed the horrible footage of dead children and horrifically wounded babies and other

innoncents on the first night of the bombing in Iraq. You must have not read independent press reports of the thousands of dead bodies, and even reports from our own soldiers, strewn along the road to Baghdad. 'We just kept killing people, we couldn't kill them all but we shot at anything that moved'.

I remember a little boy named Ali taken to the hospital which was unprotected and under siege, a war crime btw, who had lost his arms and legs and was screaming in pain because the hospital had no more pain medication to help him. His entire family, siblings, pregnant mom and his dad were all blown to pieces by our bombs as they slept in their apartment that night. And that was just one hospital. The dead and wounded on that night alone were lined up outside the hospitals and morgues all over our 'targeted areas'.

The 'civil war' was started by us. We brought in the old Latin American war criminals to help install 'death squads' who murdered and rampaged their way through the country.

After people got a glimpse of that first night and that beautiful little boy on CNN, I won't ever forget it, all coverage was stopped.

If we had only been responsible for that one family, it was a crime. Which is why you never saw anything like that again on our media.

I followed up on the story of Ali. he was left with only one relative after that horrific, terrifying night, his aunt. Just those few minutes on TV attracted the attention of compassionate human beings around the world and he was rescued and taken out of Iraq to another country where he was treated. His life was saved thanks to the humanity of so many people but without arms and legs and without his entire family. I do not know where he is today, but I often think of him, and cry.

[geek tragedy]

16. I didn't miss those, and I didn't say no one died from

our initial attack. But the majority of lost lives were due to the carnage that dragged out through the occupation.

To be clear: we were responsible for those lives being lost too.

[sabrina 1]

18. We are responsible for every death that occurred in Iraq after we wrongfully invaded it.

This is like saying that if you murder two people in a house and let loose a marauding gang of criminals into their home and they torture, murder and rape the rest of the occupants, you had nothing to do with it.

The very least we can do now as we can never restore the innocent lives we took, the innocence of the women and children who were raped and tortured in the gulags we established there, such as Abu Ghraib (was that no us either?) is to take responsibility for what we did and apologize to the victims and their loved ones. But we won't do that as a nation.

Some of our soldiers have done so though, and their apologies were graciously accepted by the victims. THEY are the best of this country, people who can see the wrongs their government has inflicted on innocent human beings and have the courage to acknowledge their own role in it and ask for forgiveness, not knowing how it will be received, either here or there. Thankfully the Iraqis do not appear to be a vengeful people and their apologies were accepted. That could not restore the dead, but empathy, sympathy and compassion are powerful tools for healing. Too bad we as a nation believe only in violence to solve all of our problems.

[geek tragedy]

19. I don't disagree with any of that. nt

[sabrina 1]

21. Thank you, I appreciate that!

[FedUpWithIt All]

4. I have not been able to seperate the two since yesterday.

I don't understand how geographical borders are seen as some type of magical barriers that define familiarity. All men/women/children are like myself and my close loved ones. They all bleed, they all cry, they all stress, they all grieve...

When something like this strikes closer to home it only serves to bring into clearer focus the things endured by those not so close. There is no finer tuner of empathy than experience.

My heart goes out to ALL innocent victims of violence.

[Cal Carpenter]

5. I agree.

I was watching a news livestream last night (which I rarely do) and they repeatedly played video of the blasts, the screaming, interviewing witnesses describing the horror, etc.

And I thought - what if we had seen, in replay, over and over, every bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan 10 years ago? Would it have seemed more real to more people? Would everything have played out differently if we were inundated with the tragic reality of it?

I don't understand people who think that, by extrapolating this tragedy to the hundreds of tragedies that occur worldwide (at the hands of US weapons/support or not), we must hate America or we are using this as a political tool or something.

It's just compassion and humanity, and if we can't extend it beyond our borders, then wtf? We had a shocking, painful reality check. These things happen so rarely on 'our soil', to 'our people'. It's fucking horrible.

[sabrina 1]

12. That's why we didn't see any of those horrendous photos from Iraq or Afghanistan, or why we have

do not see video of the horrific aftermath of our drone attacks. People are naturally compassionate and no sane person can watch a mother trying to pick up the pieces of her child, as reported by Robert Fisk I believe, after a drone blows them to pieces, without feeling a sense of horror and sympathy for that mother. If that were to happen on a large scale, it would make it far more difficult to explain it all away. I guess this country learned that from Vietnam. So, we are 'protected' from it all. That might be the reason who support for these horrors are far less in countries who have freer access to real news.