Let's muscle this shooting into a debate on Iraq and Iran.

A blogger put this whole shooting into a -eh- perspective by comparing it to one day in Iraq. Posted under the title, "Now Do You Understand?" Larry Johnson compares Monday's body count to a pile of articles of Iraqi body counts.

He says:

The next time you hear Dick Cheney or George Bush blame the public attitude regarding Iraq on the media's failure to report "good news", examine carefully our reaction to the shooting at Virginia Tech. Look at our collective shock. Our horrified reaction. The public sorrow. Yet, in truth, this is an exceptional, unusual day in America. It is not our common experience. But we cannot say the same about Iraq.

First of all, I wanted to post this because - in addition to videogames, gun laws, campus security, and authority failure - we have now co-opted the shooting into a debate about Iraq and U.S. Foreign policy. I'm split on how I feel about his article. While this has certainly shocked the nation, I can't help but feel that every other college student in the country is reasonably certain they'll come home from class at the end of the day. That and the worst of it is already over. He did blow his brains out already and there isn't a few hundred Seung-Hui's willing to do the same like there is in Iraq.

The suicide bombers in Iraq and their American foes also work with some ideology behind them. And with every new story that's published about Cho, it's more and more certain that "F--king Crazy" is not an ideology.

President Bush is more subtle.

At his speech at the U.S. Holocaust museum today, he honored Yitzhak Benhorin, the Holocaust-surviving professor that threw himself in front of Cho's gun to stop him from entering the classroom.

Serial killers and mass murderers traditionally are more famous than their victims. But Benhorin's actions showed a level of utter manliness that you can't even describe with a vulgar turn of phrase or a Chuck Norris joke.

Bush followed up his comments on Benhorin with this observation about Iran. I read a post on a forum that someone lamented that this shooting was the worst thing that could have happened to America at this point. I think the poster is insane. This shooting is the best thing to happen to politicking since the temperance movement.

And you who have survived evil know that the only way to defeat it is to look it in the face and not back down.