Just in case you aren't feeling bad enough

Like everyone I was stunned and horrified by the shooting at Virginia Tech yesterday. My deepest sympathies go out to all the families. I do have some strong feelings on many of the issues involved, and I will try to post once we know more about what happened and I've had time to collect my thoughts. However, Juan Cole made an excellent point on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer last night that urgently needs repeating. We as a nation are rightly sickened by the shocking, brutal, and pointless deaths to a degree where most us probably can't even really get our head around the scope of the tragedy.

But as the professor rightly pointed out, horror on this scale happens everyday in Iraq. Every day. Sometimes more than once. See if that thought doesn't shut down your neural fibers. So the next time someone babbles on about the progress being made in Iraq, democracy being "messy", or the “good news" that is being ignored, think back on how you felt yesterday, think about how the whole country ground to a halt with grief and fear. Now imagine how you would feel if senseless, violent death of this magnitude happened in your city, every day, for years, with no end in sight, and feel free to punch that person in the face.