This article is in the process of being edited and should be published early next week, as always it will appear here first, your comments are always welcome.

Carnage on Campus

By Robert Amoroso

Once again terror has revisited us, this time in the beautiful picturesque countryside of Blacksburg, Virginia on the sprawling manicured campus of Virginia Tech, and once again we’ll wring our hands in disbelief and ask ourselves why? As if the answers will be forthcoming. In truth there are no answers, only unanswered questions that will never truly satisfy us, of course we’ll try to make sense out of a senseless act, and we’ll once again ask how we could have avoided the unavoidable. 

We’ll once again turn our attention to the experts, as if they know the answers, and we’ll again fool ourselves into thinking that there is an answer to this carnage, to this bloodshed. We’ll once again talk about gun control, about the judicial system, about the medical profession, and how and why this sick and disturbed individual could have committed such a heinous act.

There’s no doubt that Virginia has one of the most liberal gun laws in the United States, and almost anyone with a little ingenuity can buy a firearm, and there’s no doubt that the psychiatric community failed (for whatever reason) to alert the gun dealers of the potential danger lurking within their community, and I’m sure once the dust settles they’ll be changes in the law, and perhaps we’ll add additional safeguards in how we deal with emotionally disturbed individuals. However these are merely temporary remedies, to an underlined malignancy that affects our society.

Whether we acknowledge it or not there’s evil in the world, and what took place at Virginia Tech, was pure evil, and no different then what took place on 9/11. Certainly this was the act of a deranged mind; however it can be argued that all murderess acts committed are the acts of deranged minds. So why is this carnage any different? Why does it resonate so profoundly around the nation, indeed around the world?

Is it the sheer number of those massacred, or perhaps the unlikely setting of a collage campus? No doubt those are profound images. However my sense is that it’s much more then that, this act of aggression, this act of terror strikes at the very heart of who we are, as a free nation. Our ability to succeed, to strive, to learn, to dream, free of intimidation,  and as we’ve learned through his writings and photos, Cho Seung Hui, was motivated not by the “American Dream” but by a fundamental hatred for the community in which he lived in.

He railed against “rich kids, deceitful charlatans, and debauchery”. His hate filled message spoke about martyring himself for the oppressed and his ramblings took on an ominous tone. The wording, photos, and videos are eerily similar to that of a homicide bomber that we see on the nightly news coming out of the Middle East.

As much as we would like as a society to believe that this was an isolated act committed by one deranged loner, in truth there are many like minded individuals like Cho Seung Hui that simply hate our way of life. This was not a random act of carnage, but rather a well planned and thoughtful act of terror, similar to that of 9/11. Today the war on terror is fought on many fronts, and what binds these acts of carnage, is simply a hatred for our way of life. The terrorists that flew a plane into the World Trade Center were no different in manner and mindset then Cho Seung Hui, they wanted to create as much carnage and bloodshed as possible and they like he, succeeded. 

Again, all one needs to do is hear his words, look at his photos, and see his video, a once quite and somewhat dysfunctional young man with emotional issues, suddenly turns into a cold blooded killer, methodically executing his victims, most of whom he never knew.

There’ll always be random acts of violence, that’s simply part of the human condition, however this wasn’t merely a crime of passion, or a spur of the moment act of madness, it was a cold and calculated act of terror. What’s even more disturbing is that this murderess rampage doesn’t fit the profile of a simple deranged act, but rather of someone who had the presents of mind in between the two murderess events, (two hours apart), to go back to his dorm and prepare what is now termed a “manifesto”, outlining his insane deed, again similar to that of terrorists.

Of course the “experts” will point out that there’s no evidence that Cho belonged to any terrorist group and in fact was a loner, and indeed that’s true and by all accounts it seems that no one else was involved, however since September 11^th everything has changed. We no longer can assume that our universities, our schools, our houses of worship, or any symbolic institution that is unique to a free and open society, will not be a target for terrorist attacks. We once again need to remind ourselves that there are evil people in the world who hate America and have vowed to destroy our way of life…sadly that’s the way it is.

Copyright 2007 Robert Amoroso