The Boston Marathon Bombings, Selective Empathy, And State Worship

[1lluminated1]

The Boston Marathon Bombings, Selective Empathy, and State Worship

 

John Glaser, April 16, 2013

 

Selective Empathy

 

As many people have already pointed out, the collective empathy that Americans feel for victims of similar attacks when they are carried out by our own government is virtually zero compared to what is being felt now for Bostonians. It was just indubitably confirmed through hard investigative journalism last week that large portions of the 3,000-4,000 people killed in the drone war have been unidentified individuals without any connection to any terrorist or insurgent groups in conflict with the US.

 

For years, there have been indisputable reports of massive civilian casualties in drone bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, and beyond.

“How different are the images produced by such attacks—shattered bodies, dismembered limbs, severed arteries, frantic aid givers and terrified survivors—how different from the moving images of the tragedy in Boston now being broadcast and rebroadcast on TV stations around the globe?”  Barry Lando asks.

 

Within hours of the Marathon bombings, more than 75 people were killed in a bombing in Iraq. The perpetrators were part of a group called Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), a group that only exists as a result of the illegal US war and invasion, which itself got hundreds of thousands of people killed. This is a regular occurrence in and around Baghdad, and has been since the start of the Bush administration’s elective war there. But most Americans have been unconcerned.

 

The most important thing to glean from this discrepancy in empathy for senseless acts of violence inflicted on our own countrymen as compared with the senseless acts of violence carried out by our own countrymen on equally innocent people abroad was articulated brilliantly by Glenn Greenwald today:

Regardless of your views of justification and intent: whatever rage you’re feeling toward the perpetrator of this Boston attack, that’s the rage in sustained form that people across the world feel toward the US for killing innocent people in their countries. Whatever sadness you feel for yesterday’s victims, the same level of sadness is warranted for the innocent people whose lives are ended by American bombs. However profound a loss you recognize the parents and family members of these victims to have suffered, that’s the same loss experienced by victims of US violence. It’s natural that it won’t be felt as intensely when the victims are far away and mostly invisible, but applying these reactions to those acts of US aggression would go a long way toward better understanding what they are and the outcomes they generate.

I’ve reviewed on this blog over and over again the abundance of commentary from locals in Yemen and Pakistan who give testimony to the fact that the US drone war breeds deep resentment that can be immensely consequential.

“People are afraid to go to weddings because, whenever large groups of men gather, they are afraid a drone will hit them,” a sheikh from Bayhan district in Shabwa told The Economist last year.

 

Continue Reading: http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/04/16/the-boston-marathon-bombings-selective-empathy-and-state-worship/

[phaquetoo]

Oh man your back with your B.S?

 

The reason so many innocents get killed while the u.s it trying to knock out the enemy is becuase they hide their weapons and shoot missles from inocent peoples homes, and masks and churches,,,and I say better them than us!

 

If you dont like the u.s so much phaqing move!

 no one is making you stay here!

 

Where would you like to go to? I will contribute to your moving expenses, especialy if you go to Iraq, Iran, afahanastan,or that lil sliver of land they call palastine!

Edited April 17, 2013 by phaquetoo

[phaquetoo]

it seems i cant edit my posts any more I wonder why, so how is every one doing? plants going good? pt's getting enough meds? spring is here but not realy, I guess its late because of the global warming, oh wait, I mean globle freezing! lmao

 

 

are we ever gonna set a date for the camping weekend?

 

Please keep me updated, this thread will work fine for that, Im mean the o.p is moving he hates the u.s so we may as well make use of this waisted space he started!

 

some one said we should do something on the longest day of the year, lets start our camp trip than also!  I will bring what I have to medicate with, and a big ole bag of burgers and hot dogs, and im sure my lady will make big bowls of potatoe salad and the noodle salad also, I mite make some cookies, bring your lounge chairs, I have a few you put right in the water, oh it is so nice to sit on a good spot on the ausable river and watch all of the tubers and canoers go by, and just to be out there in some of the finest nature around!

 

Peace

Jim

[ozzrokk]

Ohhhh boy.......... Anyone who really thinks our own government did this (Boston) or 911 is wacked out of their fuking mind.......

 

Does our government try to take our freedoms?   Yes

 

 

Does our government blow up our own people in our own country to do it?   Hell no.   

 

 

You need better meds.

 

Edited to add (Boston) to be more clear on my post

Edited April 17, 2013 by ozzrokk

[ozzrokk]

And I agree with you Jim. The reality is they also allow these people to run their neighborhoods and therefor are caught in the crossfire. If they really dont want to be continually bombed and innocents killed then they should take control of the terrorists that continue to kill many and any innocents. These people need to bring themselves into the modern day and quit trying to live in this fantasy land that they live in.

Edited April 17, 2013 by ozzrokk

[cristinew]

I believe  the Government all the time they never lie , Anyone one thinks any different  doesn't have a brain 

 

 

Btw   CNN in saying that the suspect -- described as a "brown-skinned male"

Edited April 17, 2013 by cristinew

[1lluminated1]

The reality is they also allow these people to run their neighborhoods and therefor are caught in the crossfire. If they really dont want to be continually bombed and innocents killed then they should take control of the terrorists that continue to kill many and any innocents.

 

You my friend are a hypocrite!  You tell 3rd world arabs to take control of the terrorists?  Don't you know we create these terrorists!  We fund al quada in syria, we fund extremists in lybia.  Bin Laden was CIA!  Read a book and do some research.  Your government does not have your best interests in mind.  

 

Maybe YOU should stop these extremist.  After all they kill these people in our name.  Why dont you take back our government from the banksters and stop our imperialistic wars for oil.  Why not stop the police from prosecuting MMJ patients with terminal cancer?  Why not stop the masked terrorists that raid american homes daily looking for "illegal" plants? 

[1lluminated1]

Oh man your back with your B.S?

 

The reason so many innocents get killed while the u.s it trying to knock out the enemy is becuase they hide their weapons and shoot missles from inocent peoples homes, and masks and churches,,,and I say better them than us!

 

If you dont like the u.s so much phaqing move!

 no one is making you stay here!

 

Where would you like to go to? I will contribute to your moving expenses, especialy if you go to Iraq, Iran, afahanastan,or that lil sliver of land they call palastine!

 

I've already been all over the middle east thank you.  I was born in this country and will stay.  I love this country more than you, I voice my opinion and try and to bring change.

 

Phaque, why are you afraid of different views and ideas?  Why are you afraid of a discussion on our foriegn policy?  Do you love perpetual war and voilence?  Do you love hearing daily about children in yemen and pakistan losing their entire family to drone strikes?  Why do you think they grow up to hate? 

 

WE CREATE TERRORIST THROUGH OUR FORIEGN POLICY of PERPETUAL WAR! 

 

Apparently you are too dense to understand this and will continue to insult a combat vet who has witnessed the horrors of war first hand and only hopes for peace. 

[Celliach]

Really?  You're going to use this tragedy to further your anti-government agenda?

 

Shameful.

[cristinew]

Some have used this and other tragic events   to promote their big government totalitarian  agenda  goes both ways i guess,,

 

At least we are leading the world in the most imprisoned  citizens in the world ,

 

Nobody knows who did this yet,

Edited April 18, 2013 by cristinew

[ozzrokk]

You my friend are a hypocrite!  You tell 3rd world arabs to take control of the terrorists?  Don't you know we create these terrorists!  We fund al quada in syria, we fund extremists in lybia.  Bin Laden was CIA!  Read a book and do some research.  Your government does not have your best interests in mind.  

 

Maybe YOU should stop these extremist.  After all they kill these people in our name.  Why dont you take back our government from the banksters and stop our imperialistic wars for oil.  Why not stop the police from prosecuting MMJ patients with terminal cancer?  Why not stop the masked terrorists that raid american homes daily looking for "illegal" plants? 

 

 

Wow.... Really?????

 

Do you think Bin Laden was CIA when they pulled 911 and I suppose you think we were in on it too right? Some people are just too thick.

 

 

I am very comfortable in the part I take in protecting the sick and in stopping the extremist. I do not excuse what they do and I do not place the blame on America for what they do. I place the blame where it belongs.

 

Maybe meds wont help you. I hope you find something that does.

 

Edited to add..... If you ask me we are too soft over there..... Too worried about what people will say...... We could take em all out easy enough but we do not want to kill all the innocents that you claim we love killing.

We do not create them. I do not want to figure out why they hate us and do what they do because they do it for their own sick reasons and cannot be talked down.

Edited April 18, 2013 by ozzrokk

[ozzrokk]

Double post

Edited April 18, 2013 by ozzrokk

[michaelscott]

Really? You're going to use this tragedy to further your anti-government agenda?

 

Shameful.

Did you read your boys post in the other thread, shameful as well

[1lluminated1]

Hey Michael.  Why our my posts shameful?

[michaelscott]

I wouldn't "personally" call them shameful, maybe I shouldn't of said "as well". I do think it is human nature to care more about the brothers and sisters of your own country over those in a foreign land.

I imagine the public schools indoctrination of nationalism has an effect as well but this nature is exhibited in many cases and is nothing new...

 

Aids in africa

famine

Military operations

Human rights issues

 

All things that don't seem to hit home till they hit home,

 

bombs hit us and some use it as a soapbox for gun regs, some for foreign policy.... Both seem misplaced and bad timing to me...

Edited April 18, 2013 by michaelscott