I don't know if this article has been posted or not, but it's a good read--I always appreciate it when someone can put into words my outrage over the hypocrisy in all of this. It often just leaves me helplessly sputtering. Before I post the excerpt, though, I wanted to mention that I linked to it from veiled4allah
http://www.muhajabah.com/islamicblog/veiled4allah.php
For anyone not familiar with that blog, it is also worth checking out. I know that when I read blogs, I often see more written about Islam in the third person than in the first person. And I do feel it is important to understand the first person perspective a little better. Al-Muhajabah's most recent entry is about Islamic views on removing live support.
Anyway, the following is from the Seattle Post Intelligencer:
Schiavo case puts nation's sanity on life support
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/217784_robert28.html?source=rss
The truth is what happens to Schiavo is nobody's business but her family's.
It's not the business of political forces playing political football as they exploit the issue.
It's not the business of revved-up Americans who have become inspired to threaten the lives of judges and lawyers in the case, harass the Schiavo family or get arrested, as one 10-year-old kid did, for the cause.
My biggest beef with such a scattered expenditure of national energy is this: Where is the outrage, the collective cri de coeur, for other issues Americans need to be riled up about?
There are families out there with loved ones facing just as severe medical crises. Because of health insurance hurdles or money woes, they are suffering, too. But they are doing so in the shadows, ignored by the lawmakers and public.
There were no huge protests the other day when the Republican Congress pushed to slash Medicaid, which helps the poor, by $20 billion over the next few years. Sheer craziness.
No one screams about people on death row -- some of them wrongly convicted -- who will be executed. Shouldn't there be some clamor about the Bush contradiction? The president now believes in the sanctity of life for Schiavo, but as the governor of Texas he allowed numerous people to be executed, with GOP supporters cheering him on.
Hypocrisy alert: People who now want to put the plug back in Schiavo have been too willing to pull the plug on many others.
And where is the public hand-wringing over the more than two dozen Iraq and Afghanistan war detainees who have died in U.S. custody, the victims of homicide or suspected homicide?
Military officials say they have evidence to support charges against U.S. soldiers in a number of incidents, but the military has decided not to prosecute several of the cases.
You hardly hear a public peep about that.
The same deafening shrug is heard when it comes to the estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians who have been slaughtered in the U.S. war in Iraq, which was supposed to bring democracy, peace and happiness.
So much national attention is heaped on Schiavo, a passion play of knee-jerk emotions, political opportunism and Bible thumping for a tragically ill woman who will soon die.
So little attention goes to other stories -- such as the thousands of Americans who will succumb this year because they lack basic health insurance.
Something is really wrong with this picture.
Indeed. My view may be the exception around here, but I really believe that many of these people who gather near the hospice really do have their hearts in the right place. I just wish I knew how we could get them to think a little bigger. So many other people are in need of their energy and passion to save innocent life.