A new 'super-weapon' being supplied to British soldiers in Afghanistan employs technology based on the "thermobaric" principle which uses heat and pressure to kill people targeted across a wide air by sucking the air out of lungs and rupturing internal organs.
Duly Consider: Is this really the kind of thing we of the "moral high-ground" want to pursue?
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After scouring the web and TV for an enduring lesson on this horrific event, I find one remaining question.
The question is, who determines whether or not someone is a hero or a martyr? Both are only perceptions. There is no question he will be understood for his rage against a society that has been cruel to him and people like him. As for martyrdom, he made himself a martyr whether we like it or not; the coverage alone accomplished that. His picture holding two guns will, to some appear to be an angry man on the cross. I'm sure he intended this.
The shame is, most people will discount him as simply a nutcase instead of actually addressing the social aspect of his manifesto. He was coherent considering what he was about to do. For a Korean kid, he was "Affected" despite how many of those who know nothing about the Asian face, will view him. Many like him will quietly plan their final "f!@k you" and no doubt they will consider Cho their inspiration, while the rest will simply feel sorry for 33 American strangers and continue to ignore those in Iraq and Darfur who die everyday!
Many will view this as part of a revolution as a form of activism, one statement of many that society must address or else similar events will ensue. Well, they will, and not just because of Cho but because of the impossiblilty of a national shift toward sensitivity and sharing. Meanwhile, America will ignore the cries and simply call for the warehousing of those who vent the frustration with outrage at strangers.
Cho claimed he was pissed off and that his killing others and himself was a final statement of his anger. The psycho-babblists said he was "potentially a budding paranoid schizophrenic which sometimes leads to psychosis"; he was possibly "bipolar-which used to be called 'manic-depressive' which sometimes leads to a lashing out at oneself or others." What is a shame is that he found it necessary to give up and throw in the hat by killing those who he felt ignored him. America says the great shame is simply the death of 32 innocents. The real shame is that anyone would feel he had to commit this singularly effective act as a cry for help.
That people died, including Cho, is a misfortune, but the greater misfortune is society's unwillingness to accept responsibility and to change in response. Usually, as in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" or Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis", these victims of society's sickness wilt and die in a pathetic, quiet downward spiral. That, in "Metamorphosis" the family didn't notice their loved one had become a huge bug as a result of their neglect, is not a unique occurrence, but a drama written to illustrate the normal cause of death.
Meanwhile, in an equally pathetic denial, society simply mourns over the loss of loved ones, and goes through the motions of weeping and carrying candles while failing to address the real killer, themselves.
Refusing to change, society eventually goes on as if nothing ever happened, considering it a freak accident of one person's mental disturbance. The parents of Cho, after a brief period of mourning, will go on with their lives despite the never ending reminder of their son's final cry. Meanwhile, we continue to send people like Cho into war instead of college and their cries go unnoticed as their anger becomes redirected at a false enemy. Politicians continue to create fake adversaries against whom soldiers can masturbate their torment, while the real enemy is a society that let's the rich profit from this misdirection.
Is it society's fault for letting those with power continue their abuse? Or is it the victim's fault, those 32 and Cho, for having patiently waited for a solution that would likely never come. It is a tolerable discontent says the common man. "Good things
come to those who wait," they will say to their children, having never received good things for waiting, knowing their children will never get good things either. Meanwhile, they will point at the exceptional rags-to-riches success story that has become the perverse mythology by which America lives. America alone, no; but the US has become the symbol for the age old illness that Doctors will only treat with aspirin and Prozac.
How many have quiet sons who have gone off to war to vent their frustration on the stranger foe? How many parents quietly know their sons just secretly want to kill, so they give them a faceless target and call that the enemy? How many others will blame the killing on misguided machismo or will express indignation at those who would dare identify with Jesus Christ before their suicides?
We will never know how many children live in the shadows of their successful siblings, or will writhe at the frustration of never satisfying the expectations of their parents, or will never get society to listen to their unique genius? We will never know how many great minds are wasted by a society that is threatened by potential greatness while overly rewarding inherited greatness?
It has happened before and it will happen again. Revolutions are made up of such people as Cho. If they win, people will call them heroes and possibly elect them President of a new nation. If they lose they will only bathe in their pathos at the existence of such failures, not knowing the greatest failures were those who did nothing to prevent the inevitable outrage of the few.
Many will outwardly proclaim outrage and discount Cho's final manifesto as the ravings of a lunatic, while many others will inwardly identify with his stated frustration. But they will simply swallow their anger and nod their heads in agreement with the judgment of Cho. White academes will describe him as "lacking affect" while those of Asian descent will quietly see themselves in his gentle eyes and quiet, unexpressed pain juxtaposed as a yin-yang against his final image of outward expression.
Cho is no hero and neither are his victims. But let us lament them both as victims of those of us who remain and fail to change that which caused such a tragedy. Let us honor them by finally facing the enemy within, the enemy of acceptance of mediocrity in ourselves and our leaders, and the denial of the subtle wishes of all children to be loved, honored and promoted for their ideas and work.
Editor's note: The apparent final death toll is 33. I wish not to dishonor those innocents who were killed, no more than innocents killed in a war. But, there are many to grieve for them and they will be remembered by all in loving way.
The most recent surge in finger-pointing at Iran reminds us of the four fingers pointing back at the US and Great Britain according to every source especially the bestselling book, Arming Iraq. Of all the weapons being used in Iraq by people on all sides it is fair to say a huge majority were made in America and provided en masse over many years.
Bush is yet again, a hypocrite as his dad armed and trained rebels in Nicaragua in the war that "didn't happen". Reagan and Bush exchanged weapons for hostages with Iran and now both directly and indirectly have done it again, Bush is crying that Iran is helping the people about whom they care; but worse, we are the ones that put the most weapons in their hands to kill American soldiers. But, hey, war makes money for gun makers.
We can also be sure much of the single $12-Billion stack of cash which is still unaccounted for, was inevitably used to pay for weapons that are being used against US soldiers. One of many smokescreens, this current propaganda campaign regarding Iran's arming insurgents, is just another distraction from looming questions about financial 
corruption and irreversible failed policy. I would like to say "Good money after bad" but it's all bad and an extraordinary waste of US taxpayer dollars, but worse the things that are sorely needed in the US: Education, health care and peace missions that re-establish the US as an exemplary, peaceful nation.
When America gets over its denial it will not only seek to end the war but will face its role in intentionally undermining itself in order to create a cycle of war profits for companies like Halliburton. So far, most agree the war before, during and after will go down in history as a Fiasco.
Eventually, we will have to stop blaming "them" and take the blame ourselves as voters and those responsible for failing speak out; for failing to demand accountability and for allowing the robber barons to steal us blind while killing people of all nationalities including ours. Of course, as history repeats itself, the US selling arms to its enemies was ignored before; it will be ignored again. If the war doesn't end and weapons we make and sell continue to kill us, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
This is the complete documentary film, Why We Fight.
What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.
Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life?
Is the US government in the business of encouraging war around the world, just to sell arms?
This goes back to once General, President Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex.
