I finally watched Bowling for Columbine the other day, and let me say, I was quite disturbed. The topic wasn’t really anything new to me, it just brought up a lot of emotions.
The movie addressed the school shooting that occurred at Columbine High School where two teenage boys came to school with guns and shot a whole bunch of students. Many students were severely injured and some were even killed.
At one point in the movie it went through many different wars the United States was involved in and showed people that had died because of the United States’ involvement. This is the list that I copied down:
- 1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran. U.S. installs Shah as dictator.
- 1954: U.S. overthrows democratically-elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed.
- 1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vienamese President Diem.
- 1963-1975: American military kills 4 million people in Southeast Asia.
- September 11, 1973: U.S. stages coup in Chile, Democratically-elected President Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered.
- 1977: U.S. backs military rulers in El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed.
- 1980's: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion.
- 1981: Reagan administration trains and funds "contras." 30,000 Nicaraguans die.
- 1982: U.S. provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.
- 1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis.
- 1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties.
- 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.
- 1991: U.S. enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait.
- 1998: Clinton bombs "weapons factory" in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making aspirin.
- 1991 to present (?): American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.
- 2000-2001: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in "aid."
- Sept. 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people.
How much money would we have saved from the deficit if we hadn't been so gung-ho about war and funding other groups to be better at killing more people?
We teach Americans that it's okay to go to other countries and massacre everyone, because they are "bad," but then we turn around and think we can punish people here for murdering someone. We don’t understand when teenagers come to a school and kill people. How does that make sense? How can't people see that it's the same thing?
I go between being saddened to enraged that people could be so heartless and cruel with no remorse, just killing and somehow justifying it!
No matter where we come from we are all human beginnings with lives, and families, and hopes, and dreams, and fears. How can we justify killing another person, no matter where they came from or what they did?
It hurts me to think that we are capable of such horrific things, then rationalizing the killing, that is unless it’s someone here in the U.S. killings another U.S. citizen. Why are our lives somehow more important than those in other countries?
