Attitudes and Cowardice

I initiate this blog on a day of particularly unsettling news. On this day, scores of innocent people were killed, and the humanity was violently stripped of two women with Down syndrome who were strapped with remotely activated bombs to carry out the attack. This was a cowardly act of murder in its most base form. While I am certainly devastated by the deaths of all involved, I am also deeply troubled by the attitudes reflected about people with disabilities, particularly those with Down syndrome.

First, it appears to be fairly uncommon for unwilling participants to be used to carry out suicide attacks (thought the very connotation of an "unwilling" participate defies the definition of a "suicide" attack, doesn't it?) Typical unwilling participants, such as children, older people, and, until more recently, women, were not used to carry out these acts. So, why did the terrorists justify the use of women with Down syndrome to express their venom?

I contend that while the terrorists stripped their humanity in the most barbaric way, their humanity had been stripped long before. One quote from the London Daily Mail cites proof that the women had Down syndrome with the quote, "Bolstering that claim, local police said the woman in the first attack sold cream in the morning at the market and was known to locals as 'the crazy lady'." Long before this attack, this woman was labeled as 'the crazy lady,' the 'other,' someone so different that she had no name.

So, it was not a great leap for the terrorists to use these women to carry out their attack. It was probably no different to them than murdering a sheep or a goat, something less than human.

Among others, I stand and mourn for these two women and the lives they should have had.