No borders to our sympathy

MONDAY'S BOMBINGS at the Boston Marathon were another gut-wrenching reminder of how precious and fragile human life can be, how suddenly and cruelly it can be taken away.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, we are offered a glimpse of some of the worst aspects of humanity--the actions of the as-yet-unknown perpetrators of the attacks, as well as the call for racist, genocidal attacks against Muslims in response.

But we also can see some of the best aspects of humanity.

In the wake of the bombings, a quote from Fred Rogers--the now deceased host of a public television children's show--made the rounds on social media. His gentle words are a reminder of the decency of ordinary people can display in a time of crisis:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers--so many caring people in this world.

Beyond those many heroic first responders in Boston, millions more people across the country and the world reacted with a deep sense of empathy, a visceral understanding that those injured and killed in Boston could just as easily have been a member of our own family or a loved one, and a justifiable outrage that such a thing could happen. This, I think, is a profoundly human response--one that has a way of cutting through divisions as people come together to mourn.

Following the Boston bombings, I remembered a conversation I had with a friend in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001. I couldn't get a statistic out of my head that I'd read earlier that week--that thousands of people in Laos died every year from land mines left over from the Vietnam War.

This was a 9/11-scale tragedy happening every year, yet there was no public outcry. It's so "normal" at this point that it doesn't even make the news. I asked: Why is this loss of human life was any less tragic?

My point was not to dismiss the very natural response to tragedy when it hits close to home, but to suggest that moments like this afford us an opportunity to expand the scope of our empathy.

"ANY TIME bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it's an act of terrorism," said Barack Obama in response to the attacks in Boston. Yet Obama made no mention of the 11 children and nine adults killed in an air strike in eastern Afghanistan a month before the Boston Marathon explosions. No mention either of the 42 killed and 257 injured in a series of bombings in Iraq on the same day as the Marathon.

On Wednesday, a reporter at a White House press briefing directed a question at White House spokesperson Jay Carney: "President Obama said that what happened in Boston was an act of terrorism. I would like to ask: Do you consider the U.S. bombing on civilians in Afghanistan earlier this month that left 11 children and a woman killed a form of terrorism? Why or why not?"

Carney could not provide a real answer to the question of whether civilians killed by U.S. bombs and drones in Afghanistan qualify as "terrorism." Instead, he referred to the 9/11 attacks: "We have more than 60,000 U.S. troops involved in a war in Afghanistan, a war that began when the United States was attacked, in an attack that was organized on the soil of Afghanistan by al-Qaeda, by Osama bin Laden and others."

This begs the question: What did the 11 children killed in the bombing referred to by the reporter have to do with planning the 9/11 attacks, which happened before they were born? In truth, the vast majority people killed and injured in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion have had nothing whatsoever to do with al-Qaeda, nor even the former Taliban regime that the U.S. accused, on flimsy evidence, of protecting bin Laden.

The silence of the mainstream media makes it very easy to ignore the deaths of people halfway around the world. But when a bombing like Boston happens close by, we are forced to imagine what it would be like to live in Afghanistan or Iraq--to live in constant fear of attack and to see the people you care most about taken away from you.

It also forces us to face the unsettling fact that these acts of terror halfway around the world are all too often committed in our names. Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald noted the irony of a comment about the Boston bombings from Washington Examiner columnist David Freddoso: "Idea of secondary bombs designed to kill the first responders is just sick. How does anyone become that evil?" As Greenwald wrote:

I don't disagree with that sentiment. But I'd bet a good amount of money that the person saying it--and the vast majority of other Americans--have no clue that targeting rescuers with "double-tap" attacks is precisely what the U.S. now does with its drone program and other forms of militarism.

TO DATE, U.S. drone attacks have killed at least 175 children in Pakistan and Yemen alone. Ironically, these senseless deaths have their origins in the drive to war that followed after the 9/11 attacks.

Exacting revenge in another part of the world was the U.S. government's response to tragedy a decade ago. But it isn't the only possible response. We could instead use the opportunity to try to ensure that no one, no matter where they live, ever goes through the pain of these nightmares ever again.

A different response is possible, and it was evident in the many moving displays of humanity we've seen in the past few days since the Boston bombings. In particular, I was struck by three pictures I came across. Two are of children--in Afghanistan and in Iraq--expressing their solidarity with the people of Boston.

The third is a picture of Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy who was killed in Boston on Monday. The picture shows him holding a sign he made for Trayvon Martin, another young man taken from us far too soon. The sign says: "No more hurting people. Peace."

If we truly wish to honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, we should take these words to heart. Putting an end to violence and suffering in the world is no small task, but it seems to me that a good place to start would be to demand an end to the acts of terror that are carried out by the U.S. government around the globe, in our name.

As Guardian columnist Gary Younge put it, "I'm up for us 'All Being Bostonians Today.' But then can we all be Yemenis tomorrow and Pakistanis the day after? That's how empathy works."