Obsessions

While the media and policy makers continue to obsess over the Boston Marathon bombing suspects it is worthwhile to consider some other events which have and will affect more Americans than the event in Boston.  Since the bombing, more than a dozen people and counting have been killed by firearms in this country.  Robberies, murder, suicide and random shootings.  If we  as a people are really concerned about the safety of the average citizen, gun control should be our number one priority.  Meanwhile, a young Yemeni testified before Congress about how the US drone killings in the Middle East are creating a generation of anti-American activists which will dwarf the cohort we created during the Afghan war against the Russians.  As teenagers and children grow up in fear of invisible and indiscriminate killers hovering above them, they will grow up to be an army of potential terrorists.  At the very least, some of them will  become policy makers in their own countries and will have views antithetical to our interests.  And yet, the blowhards on the committes listening to the young man in question were more interested in cheap political points than examining the implications of his testimony.  And so it goes...