A Fool's Errand

Utterly awesome photo courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope and our tax dollars in action.
To the Editorial page Eureka Times-Standard,
This is in response to “God's funeral in the heart of darkness,” a My Word by Paul Mann.
Some will call this a fool's errand, comparing tragedies, but I feel the need to put it out into the universe, foolish or not.
The idea of a classroom full of small corpses is horrible to contemplate. "The immutability of evil seen only by coroners and police officers..." as Mr. Mann so eloquently put it. Unfortunately many communities are forced to endure this evil on a regular basis around the world. We as a people in the form of American imperialism are the cause.
In a misguided attempt to feel safe we are on an almost daily basis forcing other mothers and fathers to live that horror. With the same astounding precision that the AR 15 mowed down the victims in Newtown, we blow apart families at weddings and in school yards with unmanned drones and smart weapons. Those grieving families will never see the perpetrator of such evil as the drone operator continues the carnage at some undisclosed remote location.
We live in a society that values certain lives differently. Children in far off lands are blown apart by land mines and we count the profits and dismiss that loss. We support the bombing and starving of children in Gaza, Iraq, Pakistan and Iran calling it economic sanctions needed to keep "US" safe, “fighting them over there so we don't have to over here.” The right says the only way to stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun. They do not realize that the man with the gun is never good. The descent into madness that took Adam into that room with a gun is the same path that we travel as a nation when our fear turns to impotent rage that we vent on the rest of the world.
We have a long history of massacres in the history of our nation. They don't begin in a McDonald's in San Yisidro or even out on the Island that sits in our Bay, but at their roots they have always come from the devaluation of the lives of “others”. To paraphrase the quote, I saw the inconceivable mystery of a nation who knew no restraint. The nation has been at the the murder scene, watching through the lens of the smart bomb nose camera, yet we do not "banish the idolatrous gun culture" of war.
“Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children -- all of them -- safe from harm?” The man that asked this question is the same man that has expanded the use of deadly drone attacks around the world. 176 Pakistani children since 2002 have been killed by drones alone. When we do not look upon All the Children of the
Submitted but as of yet not published by the Times Standard.
Thanks to Verbena Lea for her editing assistance.