Bug splats

I suppose it was inevitable that we'd get this kind of tawdry effort to "contextualise" the Connecticut shootings with reference to drone attacks in Pakistan or some such supposed American atrocity, and I suppose it was inevitable that it'd be in the Guardian. George Monbiot is the man making the cheap political points.

Under the heading - "In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats: Barack Obama's tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones" - we get this:

"Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change." Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world's concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world's newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

And so on. 

Vile stuff...dog whistling for the Guardian faithful.

Update: and here's the Press TV version.

Comments

[sackcloth and ashes]

Wow, there's a surprise.

Still, I suppose we've got to be grateful that the 'Graun' hasn't taken a leaf out of Press TV's book, and blamed the killings on an Israeli death squad.

[Rafael]

Interesting; but when Arabs or Muslims mourned Palestinian victims of Israeli violence, or Iraqi deaths at the hands of Western troops, it wasn't rare to read on Western outlets that this was but selective indignation, that Middle Easterners don't lament equally the deaths of innocents when it isn't a Western who kills them, or those of Western victims of Islamic terrorism, as if incidents of violence in the Middle East not involving a Westerner author excused away those that did have such a perpetrator.

So what's the column's problem exactly? You don't like when it is a Western country that gets similarly scrutinized? What's so tawdry in remarking the fact that Obama doesn't shed dry tears for another class of small kids?

And I won't even say much of the comparison you made between The Guardian's thoughtful article (which you can even venture to discuss at any length) with PressTV's joke.

[Mick H]

Monbiot is exploiting a tragedy for cheap political posturing. Simple as that.

[Bob-B]

Monbiot is like these people:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/9753327/Connecticut-school-shooting-Polish-Catholic-group-compares-abortion-to-massacre.html

But no doubt he would think he is quite different.

[Bob-B]

It is notable that Monbiot does not propose any alternative strategy for dealing with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Probably he believes that the only real bad guys are in the West and that if non-Western actors do bad things it is a response to Western crimes. So the solution is to do nothing for next fifty or a hundred years and eventually all will be well. Meanwhile of course Islamist terrorists will be able to kill as many civilians as they like unlamented by the likes of George Monbiot.

[Bob-B]

Here are some more people that Monbiot resembles:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/westboro-baptist-church-picket-connecticut-school-shooting_n_2312186.html

[sackcloth and ashes]

'So what's the column's problem exactly? You don't like when it is a Western country that gets similarly scrutinized?'

Scrutiny is not the same as misrepresentation. Moonbat is saying that ordering a drone strike against a Taliban or AQ terrorist in Pakistan is morally akin to walking into a classroom with a semi-automatic weapon and wiping out the pupils. That is not only offensive, it is a travesty of the truth.

As for the morality of the drone strikes themselves, Farhat Taj (a Pakistani researcher) points out that (1) we do not have verifiable figures of civilian as opposed to terrorist/militant deaths, as opposed to TTP propaganda, and (2) that within the FATA itself drone strikes are welcomed by locals as the only means of getting rid of the Taliban fanatics who terrorise them. But then what does she know about them, compared to some Guardianista cunt bloviating from behind his laptop in NW London?

http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2010/01/09/pakistan-in-defence-of-drones/

'What's so tawdry in remarking the fact that Obama doesn't shed dry tears for another class of small kids?'

It's about as tawdry as claiming that you and other apologists for the Taliban support the attempted murder of a 14 year-old girl who campaigned for the right of her and her peers to secondary education, not to mention the recent murder of health workers involved in polio vaccinations.

That's how tawdry it is.

[Dom]

I'm late to the party, but (via Tim Blair) apparently some nobody named Hugo Schwyzer thinks the Newtown murders is due to the white male patriarchy found only in the US.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/defending-masculinity-with-guns-20121219-2bml3.html

More on this nobody: He once preyed on a student and tried to kill his girlfriend.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2011/12/people-can-be-so-ineffable/

So everyone runs around using this carnage to advance their agenda -- the drone attacks on the taliban, whatever the WBC is complaining about, the patriarchy ...

Never let a catastrophe go to waste.

[Mick H]

Indeed. That Hugo Schwyzer one is new to me.

[Brian Smith]

Yes, far better that we turn a blind eye to civilian death if it's in a good cause.