As so many people have said in the last few days: Life is precious. No one ever qualifies that statement. Every life is a unique, invaluable, irreplaceable manifestation of human potential. Yet why is our awareness of this basic truth so fleeting? Why do we make grief hierarchical — some deaths matter more than others — and thereby diminish it immeasurably?
As Glenn Greenwald wrote shortly after the bombing: “But it was really hard not to find oneself wishing that just a fraction of that compassion and anger be devoted to attacks that the US perpetrates rather than suffers. These are exactly the kinds of horrific, civilian-slaughtering attacks that the US has been bringing to countries in the Muslim world over and over and over again for the last decade.”
On the same day as the Boston Marathon bombing, a string of car bombs exploded across Iraq, killing 55 people and injuring at least 200, according to CBS News. The next day nine people were killed and 27 wounded when two more car bombs detonated in Aziziyah, a city about 35 miles south of Baghdad. This is “our” Iraq, the country we invaded, occupied for eight years and ultimately abandoned, leaving the shattered nation to fend for itself.
Also on Monday, the same day as the Marathon bombing, seven were killed and four more wounded when a roadside bomb went off in Afghanistan, in the southern province of Zabul.
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