Thursday, July 14, 2005

People who misplace blame

People are upset about the situation in L.A. where a baby was killed in a shootout with a wacko father. But let's not blame the police. The L.A. police have handled more than 4000 hostage situations and this is the first time a hostage has been killed by a policeman's bullet. Statistically (and I know this is no comfort to the mother and the family), it was bound to happen eventually.

I've also heard other people complain that the U.S. presence in Iraq has brought about a dangerous situation resulting in the deaths of many innocent Iraqis. Think about the alternatives, though. On the one hand, they could still be living under the boot heels of Saddam Hussein, whose government regularly made people disappear and whose solution to opposition in the hinterlands was genocide. Or, after kicking Saddam's regime out, we might have simply abandoned Iraq to the sort of people who are currently using truck bombs that kill Iraqis more frequently than U.S. soldiers.

Shit happens and we'd like to think it could all be prevented, but it can't

2 Comments:

At 11:58 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm a life long resident of Los Angeles who is about to relocate to Oregon in less than two months. I've spent some time this morning searching through Oregon blogs and found yours. The situation with the child who was killed is very sad but you're right, the Los Angeles police department has had to deal with -many- hostage situations, we have the -best- SWAT team in the country and an incident like this one is so rare it doesn't justify the backlash the department is experiencing. -Sasha

 
At 11:48 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

nice post, it's really interesting for me today, thx

 

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