Death Warmed Over

I note this week an unending winter of icy rain. I'm reminded of Ronnie, a man I knew who froze to death. In his life, he'd withstood worse than a sleeping demise in the dark woods.

Attacks on the homeless are so high, the NY Times reports legislation incorporating them as a class protected by hate-crime law has been introduced in several states and Congress. What does it connotate when abject poverty is classified the same as race or gender?

The fella in Florida, the focus of that article, incarcertated for jumping off a log onto a homeless man's ribs while he and his 15-year old friends casually beat him to death, says, "I'm not a killer, I know that. A lot of people, they see this story and call us killers. I'm not a killer. I regret what I did. I wish I could take it back." When a killer fails to recognize he's killed someone, relegating hypothermia a preferable way to die, hate-crimes protection is warranted.

Death is rarely death, in itself, by itself. Scale, for one, matters, but only sometimes. According to our local rag, this week the State Department "advised American diplomats to refer to Nuremberg if asked about the legality of capital punishment in 9/11 cases. The cable makes no link between the scale of the crimes, perpetrated by the Nazi's, which included the Holocaust that killed some 6 million European Jews, and those allegedly committed by the Guantanamo detainees, who are accused of murder and war crimes in connection with 9/11, in which nearly 3,000 died."

Elie Wiesel rejects branding all Holocaustian murder by one label, insisting otherwise, on a unique crime of Jewish genocide, not only by scale, but upon the inherent terribleness of the crime itself.

What about this? The AP reports, "when twin blasts ravaged crowded pet markets earlier this month, Iraqi authorities offered a chilling account: Mentally disabled women carried the hidden explosives perhaps as unwitting bombers for al-Qaida." Here, the perpetators murdered both unwitting bomb-carriers and victims. What charge, scale, or classification best captures the outrage?

There are ways to distance one's self from questions of this nature. 60 Minutes broadcast a piece last week where no one, execept one lonely anti-corporate crusader, pronounced it murder, after a drug company continued to manufacture pharmeceuticals which even their own suppressed studies disclosed killed thousands. The chairman of the Government commission responsible for licensing the drug recused his conscience by identifying himself as just a scientist.

Bureaucrats, like supply clerks who worked in concentration camps, are able to routinely compartmentalize responsbility. Here's a study released last week which provides five neat exculpatory reasons why no one was at fault for not purchasing bomb-proof vehicles for soldiers in Iraq, an inaction costing thousands of lives: 1) "budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage; 2) an urgent request got lost in the bureaucracy; 3) acquisitions staff didn't give top leaders correct information; 4) the purchase was treated as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans; 5) some managers are retired Marines who lack adequate technical credentials."

Churches, whose primary business it is to theologize on death, aren't immune to confusion. The AP reports "The beatification cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the outspoken Salvadoran church leader who was killed in 1980 as he celebrated Mass, remains at a standstill while officials study whether his death made him a martyr for the faith, a senior Vatican official said Monday. To be a martyr, the Catholic Church must first determine if the Archbishop of San Salvador was killed for religious reasons or other motives."

The Archbishop of San Salvador was murdered in his cathedral as he preached upon the responsibility of the Church to act upon a preferential option for the poor. If that option is not considered religious, then, indeed, the Archbishop was not killed for religious reasons.

Naming eight martyrs, every Sunday during the Prayers of the People, commemorating the souls of Kevin and Mike who were murdered, Bobby and Ronnie who froze, Terry who overdosed, and Lescek, Agnes and Randy who were run over by cars, absolves no one of collective responsibility.