what he said

The why of Pedro's question is easy to understand. Sandy Hook Elementary looks like our kids' schools. Those kids look like ours. It could be us looking like our guts had been yanked out. The why isn't enough though--the message is important.

Sharing a status from  Pedro Francisco (actually I'm sharing his wife's status, but she quoted him.) 

"This is an honest question. There is something I want to understand more deeply. I think the answer unlocks a key to humanity but I don't have the answer. Consider these two events:
1. Adam Lanza walks into a school in Connecticut and kills 26 innocent people, most of them children.
2. Staff Sargent Robert Bales walks into a home in Afghanistan and kills 16 innocent people, most of them children.

The Connecticut killings rightly cause shock, empathy and sympathy for all of the innocent people, living and dead, who are victims of the event. Media provides 24/7 coverage of every aspect of the crime, including heart wrenching details of the children's talents, dreams and beautiful moments from their short lives. We weep for them and their families. We want justice. We want this to never happen again. Speaking for myself, I want to help create a world where these things are almost impossible to occur. It affects me deeply.

The Afghanistan killings get no similar media coverage. We never learn of the dreams of little Akhtar or of sweet faced Fareeda or any of the other boys and girls. We never hear the details of who heard the gunshots and who tried to hide. Yet this event bothers me even more than Connecticut and here's why - as a person who pays taxes in the USA I helped pay for the gun and bullets Sgt. Bales used to kill these innocent children. And I paid for whatever he used to set them all on fire in the center of one room. I feel as though I literally have their blood on my hands. I helped make it happen.

I didn't pay for Mrs. Lanza's guns or Adam's ammo. I had nothing to do with any of that. But I'm financially complicit in Sgt. Bales killings and that bothers me.

But here is my honest question: Why do people care so much about the Connecticut murders yet so little about the Afghanistan murders? What is it about humans that we can be so dismissive of an event that is basically identical to another event that profoundly moves us?"