The Depressing Feat

The Depressing Feat

Every day is a new adventure full of surprises. Some are good and some are bad. It seems as though in recent American news, those daily surprises have mainly been on the unpleasant side. Only a few years ago, one would be puzzled when told that a mother of a soldier in Iraq and a mother of a college student had a great deal in common. Today that person would not be so astonished. Now joining the concerned families of the brave individuals overseas are those families of students merely heading off to college. The Virginia Tech massacre that occurred on April 16, 2007, hit the nation hard chiefly affecting those who had a relationship with young men and women just starting or returning to school. The incident could have occurred anywhere in the nation which leaves open candidates in the minds of mothers sending their children off for the incident to arise again. Of course, one of these includes the school where their son or daughter will be attending. It has ingrained horrible fear in their hearts and heads as they replay the pictures they witnessed flashing on their television screens on that terrifying day. In comparison, the ears of mothers who are waiting home for their children to return from Iraq perk up every time a casualty is reported in the media, praying it not be of their own. The families of the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre were torn apart upon hearing of the death of a loved one as were the families of soldiers in Iraq once hearing of a lost one in combat. The mothers of those thirty-two martyrs at Virginia Tech fit in closely with the mothers of those hundreds of brave souls lost in the foreign country of Iraq. Why has our nation let this become so?

On March 20, 2003, when the war with Iraq began, thousands of families' lives were turned upside down. President George W. Bush had been contemplating the Iraq War since December, 2001, barely three months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 when two American Airlines planes were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, one into a field in Pennsylvania, and one into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. (Williams, 2007, para. 1) Bush had intensively been planning the war with Army General Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet throughout 2002. (Williams, 2007, para. 2) Bush made up his mind about his military action in January 2003 which called for thousands of young men and women to leave their homes and families to fight in the Persian Gulf. (Hamilton, 2007, para. 5) When a daughter or son is sent into combat, a mother's biggest fear is to never see them again. This is especially chilling when the hatred between two countries is at a soaring level.

Mothers are showing their support for their loved ones in every way possible to them. One mother even "organized a 400-mile walk [next week] to show support for U.S. troops" (Mass. mother, 2007, para. 1) and illustrate her belief. Yet behind the scenes of such acts are tears, broken hearts, anger, lost hope, and remarkable fear. Each time a casualty from Iraq is reported, the mothers' ears perk up to listen and pray it not be one of their own. Tears flow and hearts are shattered when they lose someone they raised. They express their anger for the war to the government and cause more casualties and more rage to occur. Also, many mothers, as well as people of the country, feel that the war needs to come to a halt and that their children have been over there for too long. They're losing hope for the cause and declaring that the war is dragging on. Four years later, the war is still going strong. Nearly 170,000 troops were sent overseas in mid-March to go over and put their lives on the line for the United States. ("Iraq", 2007, para. 5) For every one of those men and women dispatched over to that foreign land, there is a mother at home with fear in her heart that her child may never come home.

Surprisingly, since April 16, 2007 those mothers of the brave-hearted overseas are not alone in their anxiety. They have been joined by the mothers merely sending their sons and daughters to college to pursue a higher education. The Virginia Tech massacre rocked America once more when Cho Seung-Hui murder thirty-two students and faculty as well as himself setting the record for the highest number of victims in a school shooting. Cho was a quiet student who was mocked for his Korean accent by his peers and did not seem dangerous in any way. (Parry, 2007, para. 20) Yet, there were signs of the truth. Cho wrote about death in his English class and shocked his peers when they found out he had been sneaking pictures of them in class. (Thomas, 2007, para. 12) He barely ever spoke and when he did, it made others uncomfortable. Also, Cho had been taken to a community mental health system once he had been called on to the police after stalking two girls at Virginia Tech and threatening to kill himself. (Thomas, 2007, para. 12)

Finally, Cho's anger was released and Virginia Tech felt his overwhelming wrath.