EDITORIAL
Snipers and money
The headlines and airwaves are filled with reports that the
person or persons connected with the sniper killings has
demanded millions of dollars, threatening to shoot children if
the money isn't received. Of course this news strikes terror in
the hearts of parents and other loved ones who have been
looking over their shoulders in fear since the serial killings
began.
The "Beltway Sniper" is the topic of anxious discussion in
airports, barber shops, restaurants and video stores. Who would
treat precious human lives with such chilling disdain?
Experts on criminology and psychology fill news programs
posing the same question that's on many peoples' minds: What
produces these serial killers? Video games? Aberrant individual
mindsets? Violence on television and in the movies?
How could such a thing happen in this society, touted as the
most democratic and free in the world?
But they leave out the most important questions. Shouldn't
these pundits be exploring the role of militarization and the
dog-eat-dog, get-rich-or-be-a-chump culture that dominates and
imbues life under capitalism?
If the killer, or killers, is demanding money in return for
the lives of children, isn't that a microcosm of the demand
being made by powerful U.S. capital to Iraq: "Hand over your
oil or we will continue to starve your children to death"?
That's how it must look to the parents of more than half a
million Iraqi children who have died as a result of the
U.S.-led embargo that is strangling Iraq economically.
Bush boasts from the bully pulpit that no one will get in
the way of U.S. interests--read the banks' and oil companies'
drive for profits--without paying the price in the blood of
their parents and children, neighbors and co-workers.
Is there any way that this imperialist policy, bristling
with weaponry, would not seep down into the society as a
whole?
Of course those who live in the D.C. region are concerned,
first and foremost, about an end to the threat of the Beltway
sniper. And people around the county and around the world
support them.
But when the question is raised, "What kind of person or
persons would kill for money," we think many people around the
world know the answer. And they are looking to the anti-war
movement in the United States to disarm the most powerful
killers of all.
Reprinted from the Oct. 31, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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