Bombers

Scores of completely innocent people have been killed in the last few months in by bombers who did not know them. The victims were almost all just regular knuckleheads like me trying to get through the day without embarrassing their children or parents or employers too, terribly much. In London the bombs may have been carried in suitcases, in Afghanistan and Iraq they were mostly dropped from US airplanes.

Watching and listening to news reports of the various carnages the biggest difference between the victims seems to be that the English speaking victims get their stories told. By next week we will have seen list of names of London’s dead. We will have heard from their families, friends and witnesses. Skilled news performers will try to make us feel what it must have been like to have a routine day transformed into a scene from a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. We will be shown images from many of their funerals.

On the other hand, Iraq and Afghanistan’s innocent dead will be forever invisible to me. They almost never have names. Seventeen killed on the way home here, twenty two wiped out in the middle of a wedding party there – “oops sorry about that we were trying to kill somebody else.”

I’m not a bleeding heart, really. I don’t sit around wonder what some five year old Afghan girl was dreaming about when the 500 pound bomb demolished the block that included her bedroom. I almost never wonder what the old Sunni grandfather imagined was happening when saw the flash and felt that last bit of heat before he incinerated.

When I do think about stuff like that it angers me that it is being done in my name; much as I like to believe most Muslims are angry at what is done in their names. When I think about Iraqi and Afghan victims I feel sad and helpless.

When I think about the London’s victims I feel angry and righteous.

Angry and righteous are way more empowering. I try to focus on that.