Death in Madrid
At 7:40 this morning my commuter train had pulled into the main station in Hamburg, and I was on my way to the U-Bahn to go work. At the same time in Madrid, 190 commuters in Madrid were killed by at least 10 explosions at 3 commuter stations. I can only think of the words from the memorial service for the victims of 9/11. To paraphrase for todays events… this was not 190 people being killed, it was 1 person being killed, 1 person with home, family, friends, 1 person being killed…. 190 times.
While I realize that it is necessary to find those responsible, be they from the ETA or al Qaeda, but on the other hand I find the speculation on which group is responsible to be somewhat cynical. Does it really matter to the victims for which supposed cause they were killed? Doesn’t the attention given to the perpetrators and their motives give them a false legitimacy and encourage similar attacks in the future? At this moment, I would rather think of the father and husband who, unlike me, was not able to step off the train and onto the platform at 7:40 this morning, than about the twisted reasoning and motives of those who killed him.
Now the world has twice-annual reminders of the handiwork of terrorists. Scott’s words echo Mrs Thatcher’s resonant phrase “the oxygen of publicity”: the only thing of hers I can recall agreeing with.
(sorry for the redundant quoting, but I couldn’t find just one quote: one has to decide when to stop splitting a diamond.)
<update> the other eerie resonance is that the attacks were 911 912 days apart . . . . (so the resonance is lost, now that I have done the math correctly (it would have been right in a non-Leap Year))
[via Ton]