H 23°, L 4° | Tomorrow: 
H 22°, L 6°This country was shocked and greatly affected by the horrendous tragedy that took place at Virginia Tech, and we, as college students on a college campus, have undoubtedly been forced into moments of reflection and have asked the most morbid of questions about our own safety. Yet the fear for our own physical well-being is trumped by the effect that this tragedy has had in forcing us to assess the fragility of life. Thirty-three bright, young, innocent men and women lost their lives, causing a ballooning effect of hundreds upon hundreds of others who must go on without those they love.
It is this realization brought forth by tragedy that forces people to understand not only how precious life is, but how quickly it can be taken away. The massacre that took place in Blacksburg, Va., had many more victims than just those whose lives were lost. All of us were hurt by the events that unfolded on that morbid morning.
But in our reaction to what happened, emotionally and tangibly, we must search for those lessons that cannot be found outside a travesty of this magnitude. As Americans, April 16, 2007, will be remembered, as has been repeatedly broadcast, as the most deadly single shooting massacre that our country has ever experienced. While the number of lives lost is incomprehensible to the people who comprise this nation, it is fair to say that we are blessed to live in a land in which the levels of that day's fatalities are of the absolute highest magnitude and are, in fact, incomprehensible.
It is not like this in certain areas of the world; in fact, there are places where a maniacal homicide of 33 innocent civilians would fail to make the front page of the newspaper, if it made it at all. The obvious locale that demonstrates this the most is an area where 183 innocent people were instantly killed by four large bombs in Baghdad recently, and all over Iraq, where hundreds of people are dying every day.
Consider that on April 16 we experienced something that permanently and profoundly shocked us, and on April 18, when those four bombs went off, the Iraqi people had to go through those same feelings, having done it before and knowing they will have to do it again.
This is what we must take from the Virginia Tech massacre: a deeper understanding of how it must feel to be an Iraqi citizen who lives in a place where events like these are commonplace. While establishing a sense of empathy is a complete impossibility, perhaps the lessons we have learned can help us sympathize.
According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a non-partisan group that does extensive research to count all the deaths that have been caused by warfare in Iraq, there were 1,558 Iraqis killed just in the month of April — a total that amounts to more than 50 people losing their lives every single day. Whether these figures surprise you or not, they should shock you into a sense that these aren't simply numbers, they represent human beings whose families — just like those of the Virginia Tech massacre —are destroyed by the death of loved ones.
It is my hope that, as our country is known to do, we can understand the positives that can come from disaster. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a sense of patriotism was restored in the United States, and although the events of that day were of monumental importance compared to what took place at Virginia Tech, the opportunity to get through this tragedy in the best way possible still exists. This massacre needs to instill upon us a deeper sense of humanity for anyone who must face the evils of the kind that Iraqis face every day and that we faced for two hours on the morning of April 16. Those two hours were a time where the people of Virginia Tech experienced something so unique to our way of life that it affected everyone in our country, monopolized the headlines and created a hailstorm of unanswerable questions. Maybe the new experience we encountered during those two hours will allow us to understand that when we read "50 Dead in Iraq," 50 isn't just a number.
Ben White ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and sociology.
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The Iraqis are going kill each other whether the USA is there or not.
So I say just give up and leave. I suppose no one in that part of the world will trust the USA any time soon, but then what was the chance of that in any case.
9-11 was directly caused by saving Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia) from Saddam and what did that do for the USA? It didn’t even get Bush 41 a second term. I hope everybody remembers that.
Isolationism - it’s the best ism there is.
The USA can get along just fine without the rest of the world - as long as we start the build pebble bed nuclear power plants as soon as possible.
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“This is what we must take from the Virginia Tech massacre: a deeper understanding of how it must feel to be an Iraqi citizen who lives in a place where events like these are commonplace.”
Really? I think if we wanted to understand, we’d just start making this a weekly occurance. If this was a weekly occurance, these incidents would stay out of the opeds and reside on the front pages.
You’re a fool.
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Anonymous (April 29, 2007 @ 9:36pm:
“The Iraqis are going kill each other whether the USA is there or not.”
Go ahead a say the rest, they’ll kill us here in the US if we don’t provide a battlefield for them. Keep the war in the middle-east.
Connor
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Nice, use any excuse possible to push “pebble bed nuclear power plants.” And then push the 9/11-Saddam B.S.
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this is a great article; i thought the exact same thing a few days after. it seems wrong, though, for someone to call you a “fool” when you wrote something with the best of intentions. true, we don’t know what it’s like to experience the tragic world the iraqis live in, but it’s unkind for someone to label you with such a moniker when all you were trying to do was give people a glimpse into the world of the iraqis’. it’s that kind of misunderstanding and hatred that breeds conflict around the world. i say, kudos to you.
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Many have asked: “How could the English Department not recognize the horrific implications of Cho’s works?”
No one who wonders that, however, is familiar with the poetic oeuvre of one of Cho’s own teachers, Virginia Tech’s Distinguished Professor of English and Black Studies, Nikki Giovanni.
Among the most celebrated figures of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and recipient of 21 honorary degrees, Giovanni has published poems strikingly similar to Cho’s plays in both vileness and incompetence. For example:
The True Import of Present Dialog, Black vs. Negro, by Nikki Giovanni
Nier Can you kill Can you kill Can a nier kill Can a nier kill a honkie Can a nier kill the Man Can you kill nier Huh? Nier can you kill Do you know how to draw blood Can you poison Can you stab-a-Jew Can you kill huh? Nier Can you kill Can you run a protestant down with your ‘68 El Dorado (that’s all they’re good for anyway) Can you kill Can you piss on a blond head Can you cut it off Can you kill A nier can die We ain’t got to prove we can die We got to prove we can kill [More]
Ironically, the author of these lines was asked to deliver the closing remarks at Virginia Tech’s convocation memorializing the 32 slaughtered by Cho. For some reason, Giovanni didn’t read The True Import.
The above poem is not an isolated example. Cho’s old professor has had, for example, a Molotov cocktail obsession:
Also a company called Revolution has just issued A special kit for little boys Called Burn Baby I’m told it has full instructions on how to siphon gas And fill a bottle
And, then there’s this:
and it occurred to me maybe i shouldn’t write at all but clean my gun and check my kerosene supply
She switched themes from kill-the-honkies to confessional self-obsession as the market for up-against-the-wall poetry dried up at the end of the 1960s, and now laughs off questions about her Cho-like early work.
Still, in 1997 the poetess had “Thug Life” tattooed on her arm to honor slain gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur, who was gunned down in a long-running fatal feud with other rappers. Wikipedia explains, with deadpan irony:
“She has stated that she would ‘rather be with the thugs than the people who are complaining about them.’ She also tours nationwide and frequently speaks out against hate-motivated violence.”
Giovanni also writes prose:
RACISM 101; Giovanni, Nikki; $20.00; This book indicts higher education for the inequities it perpetuates, contemplates the legacy of the 60’s, provides a survival guide for black students on predominately white campuses, and denounces Spike Lee while offering her own ideas for a film about Malcolm X. [From a list of “Books On The African American LGB Experience”]
She also has composed bon mots, such as:
“A white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.”
And then there’s her insight, “The honkie’s whole sex thing is tied up to land.”
As an anonymous commenter rhetorically asked:
“I wonder how many times Cho heard the phrase ‘white privilege’ while he was in college?”
(Thought experiment: Google search to see how often the term “white privilege” appears in the Virginia Tech website.)
Giovanni is one of those sub-doggerel “poets” who has such Important Things to say that she can’t be bothered to take the time to say them well. As she herself admitted to Brian Lamb on C-SPAN’s Booknotes, “I’m not a very good rhymer.” When she tries, it comes out like Cole Porter gone gaga:
if it’s gum we can chew it I hope it’s love so we can do it
Perhaps her best-known poem is Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why), a slab of Afrocentrist drivel from 1973:
I was born in the Congo. I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the sphinx. I designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect light. I am bad.
Indeed.
Of course, Professor Giovanni, an elderly lady of 63, is not personally a danger to other people, no matter how bloodthirsty some of her poems are.
(What impact she has had over the years on earnest, impressionable young people might be a different question, however.)
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this column was written two weeks ago by john sprangers…check it out.
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If we want to win the war in Iraq, then let’s round up all the Cho’s and send them over to do the fighting. Them dudes be deadly!
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slow news day? i thought this guy said it better:
http://badgerherald.com/oped/2007/04/18/virginiatechshooti.php
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“And then push the 9/11-Saddam B.S.”
OBL attacked the USA because of the USA using Saudia Arabia to stage the attack on Saddam in Kuwait. Profaned the sacred soil we did! Before that he was mostly focused on reclaiming Al-Andalus from Spain.
There’s no doubt that Saddam would have been our ally against OBL if we’d let him have Kuwait and Saudia Arabia. But then OBL would have remained our buddy if we’d not profaned the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia.
I guess everybody would have made out, except Kuwait and Saudia Arabia, and maybe Spain.
Oh the “Submit or Die” folks would eventually get around to the USA, but my gas would be cheaper right now - and that’s what’s really important.
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10:05am—Hahaha, you’re right. Here’s the link to the Sprangers article: http://badgerherald.com/oped/2007/04/18/virginiatechshooti.php
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Cho be burnin in HELL
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Insurgency and guerrilla warfare seldom has any real effect unless there is a sanctuary area that is politically (not militarily) invulnerable, where recruiting and training can take place. The borders of Mesopotamia are porous. Worse, we don’t have real control over the areas we sort of occupy.
I make no doubt whatever that the US can prevail in Iraq if we are willing to pay the price. One of those prices is an immediate and credible declaration that we are there to stay; that we are not leaving, and we will not abandon those who collaborate with us. Another of those prices is the immediate creation of a constabulary occupation force, with US officers and non-coms, that will begin to replace the combat legions we are using for the wrong purpose. A good combat army can NEVER be a good occupation army. Soldiers are not constables.