Mass Murderers

By Cindy Sheehan

“Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.”
~Chief Seattle~1855


Last night, at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, we did not get the usual “stellar” comedy performance from George Bush in deference to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Who can forget that “uproariously hilarious” bit he did looking for WMD under the couch in his office in 2004 shortly before my son was killed in Iraq by this joker in chief? How nice that George reined in his comedic impulses for the families and friends of the murdered VT students…because I can assure you, their families are finding nothing funny right now.

Troops dying unnecessarily every day in Iraq has not even slowed down this annual event with correspondents and George Bush has not found it in the slight bit crucial to temper his comedy routines in deference to the families that he has destroyed by his war for profit in Iraq .

By all accounts, the mass murderer of VT’s horrific events on Monday was a disturbed loner and there was plenty of warnings and hints that he may do something violent, but no one could predict the magnitude of the horror.

From accounts of George Bush’ early life (Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin Frank) from thinking it was funny to put firecrackers in the anus’ of frogs and blowing them up to burning pledges to his fraternity with cigarettes and his alcohol and cocaine abuse…we, as a nation, should have seen his mass murderous tendencies coming from leagues away. Instead we rolled over and played apathetic when he was unconstitutionally selected by the Supreme Court as President in 2000. He gleefully made fun of people he was about to execute as governor of Texas , and he and Al (“I don’t recall”) Gonzales never had an ounce of compassion for a single soul condemned to death.

In early August of 2005, 21 Marines from Ohio were murdered by their Commander in Chief’s homicidal tendencies and there was no national mourning for them. Not one elected official called for a nation-wide lowering of flags to half mast for these brave souls who were mortally abused by George’s war of terror. The cable news networks did not go on 24 hour reportage of the events, and person, who killed them. There were no profiles of their lives. No bereaved family member had the opportunity to tell America what a wonderful son, friend, lover, student, athlete, was lost in the desert of Iraq : too young, and just as random, violently, or senselessly as the ones killed in Blacksburg , Va. last week.

My friend, Vickie Castro’s son, Jonathan, was one of 14 soldiers killed in a mess tent incident shortly before Christmas in 2004. Jon was Vickie’s only child. He was a brilliant, handsome man with a bright future ahead of him. He made a horrible, but honorable, mistake by enlisting in the US Military to be sent off to war to die to enrich Dick and George and their buddies, and he and his family paid dearly for that honest mistake. The flags may have been lowered in his hometown, but no one, but Jonathan’s closest friends and family mourn him to this day in this country. Jonathan’s coffin wasn’t even allowed to be photographed and his body was returned to his grieving family with the utmost secrecy as if to cover the shame of this rogue state.

We, as a nation, were rightly shocked, saddened and repulsed by the murders of 33 students and faculty at Virginia Tech. My heart grieves with the friends and families of the fallen. I know what a ghastly path they have been forced to step off on by a maniac who unthinkably had easy access to weapons of limited (but infinite) destruction.

Another sociopathic killer with inexplicable and unconstrained access to the planet’s most deadly arsenal, George Bush, has condemned 100 times 33 of our nation’s bravest and brightest to death and most people walk around indifferent to the fact that our White House is inhabited by a serial killer of historic proportions. Bloody King George has even more tragically claimed the lives of more than 20,000 times 33 innocent victims in Iraq . Where is the public horror and outrage over these killings? Where was the 24 hour news coverage this past week when over 500 people were killed in Baghdad and 65 decomposing bodies were found?

I was in DC this past week when George’s bullet proof entourage (he always travels like he is outside the Green Zone in Iraq—how sad to have so many enemies you have to be put in a prison of your own making) hurried down to Blacksburg to participate in memorial services for the slain—yet, he has not attended one service for one of his murder victims in Iraq.

Many people will justify this reaction to the crimes at Virginia Tech and lack of reaction to our murdered soldiers and people of Iraq by saying that our troops volunteer and the people of Iraq are uncounted collateral damage. Consequently, because we have an all volunteer military our children are getting what they deserve and because BushCo took another tragedy of 9-11 and exploited those needless deaths to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, the people of Iraq deserve this constant violence? Thirty-three dead is sickeningly yet realistically a good day in Iraq . When do we Americans rise up and insist the carnage end for our brothers and sisters there?

Life is life and it is all precious—whether students in college, soldiers in the field, or inhabitants of an occupied, defenseless country. Until we as a nation wake up to the fact that our state’s directed violence to any human demeans and implicates each and every one of us in these crimes, the actions of April 16th and state sponsored horrors that have been perpetrated on a daily basis since Sept 11, 2001, will continue. True peace and true justice are not possible when our national compassion is limited to a certain demographic of victim.

Until we wake up and abhor and are appalled at violence even when it is not directed at unborn babies, or mostly white Americans, we are all condemned to living under regimes that condone, profit from, order and commit mass murder.

Please join Cindy, The Camp Casey Peace Institute, Gold Star Families for Peace, CODEPINK , Congress Reps John Conyers (D-Mi) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and others, as we march on the Nation’s Capital on May 14th demanding an end to the violence in the Middle East and for the impeachment of the Bush Regime.