Today 10 girls in Afghanistan were killed by an old Soviet mine. It in no way involves America or Americans... but we grieve for them as well. Because it is, likewise, a great tragedy, death due to senselessness. That is a horror that transcends borders, creeds, and lineage.
Nationality should in no way ever enter into this. The loss of a human life is a waste, the loss of an innocent crushing, the loss of an innocent child, devastating. Nothing changes those facts, only fanaticism in all its ugly stripes says otherwise. They died, sir, at the hands of our own, no tropical storm, no horrible earthquake, no unexpected fire, our people in Connecticut and Afghanistan died senselessly, that is what you do not grasp. They are a part of the human race you are a member of, yet you do not understand how we are diminished by their absence. There might have been statesmen and scientists, explorers and entrepreneurs, visionary writers who moved us with their pen or visionary leaders who moved us with their words, or even as simple as someday being someone's father, mother, wife, husband, soul mate, they could have been extraordinary or ordinary but they each had the potential to make life better, whether to one person or one world. And now they never will. That is what you do not grasp, and so long as you allow these hateful thoughts you are no better then those of us who would put a mine where a child might one day play or carry a loaded weapon into a school; you have a gift that was taken from them: a future. Stop squandering it. Use it to try to offset the loss our species has suffered these past days. Make life better.