Recently, as most of you know, four Marines were killed and two military personnel and a police officer wounded when a young man went on a shooting spree in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This was, without a doubt, a cowardly, dastardly, criminal act, and I have nothing but sympathy for all the victims and extend my most heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of those wounded, but, particularly, who died that day.
Nevertheless, I must take issue with all those who in the meantime have decided to exploit this tragedy for their own petty political and ideological gain, and in particular with all those who have shown, through their reaction, that they are really part of the problem and evidence that the underlying problem in this, and so many other similar events, is not going to be resolved.
Not a month ago, a Dylann Roof gunned down nine innocent people in a Charleston church. Oh, yes, there was outrage, but it was a misguided and most likely sick individual who was responsible. The primary reaction was a hot and heartless debate over the Stars and Bars, and other than a number of cases of arson at other black churches, the reaction to the deaths themselves was, and I hate to say it, fairly normal.
The perpetrator this time, no less misguided, no doubt no more mentally balanced than young Master Roof, but with an Arabic name, has taken the lives of heroes. Although there is no hard evidence that the shooting was terrorist-induced or motivated (though that's the direction the investigation is taking ... his name is enough), those four poor Marines who lost their lives are being abused to serve petty, deep-seated, misguided feelings that make it next-to-impossible to make progress toward a more just and peaceful world.
All our military is voluntary. When you sign up, you are aware that one day you may sent to the front lines (unless you manage to secure an occupational speciality that makes you one of the five people supporting those who are taking the fire). It's part of the risk you take in taking the job. These four young men, however, were not killed in the line of duty, they were killed while on duty, just like any security guard who is killed by a bank robber, or someone who is working in a warehouse gets killed because the safety regulations were not observed. Just because you wear a uniform, doesn't make you a hero ... heroes are heroes because they do something "above and beyond" like a young teacher who saves her class from a gunman gone amok by hiding them and taking the shot herself.
But this subtle, but important, distinction is lost when we another, more insidious, factor is at work: it's the simple fact that too many -- and this means most of the people I know -- believe that some lives are simply more important than others. A soldier's life, be s/he merely at work or in the line of fire in an unjust war, is not any more important that a young Ethiopian who starves to death because the National Fruit Company decided they could make more profit from bananas there. An American's life is not worth any more than a French or Russian or Chinese or Ecuadorian life. We are all human beings and we all should have the right to live.
But, at that moment, when you buy into the fact that any life is more important than any other life, you have crossed the problematic boundary. Some deserve to live and others may -- or may even deserve -- to die, but who is it who decides? At that moment, you set yourself above the rest of humanity, as if you had the right to decide. I, for one, do not want, nor do I desire to ever have that responsibility, yet, many -- too many -- people take it without ever really knowing what they do.
