Virginia Tech Tragedy - Ready for Profiling Yet?

The first thing to do is to acknowledge the tragedy at Virginia Tech and to extend my best wishes and condolences to the families of the Virginia Tech students whose lives were senselessly cut short as they approached their prime and to those who, although they survive, may be physically scarred for life.

To those who survived, you often hear that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. This is where it really applies, and this didn’t kill you. Indications from the convocation on Tuesday are that it won’t kill Virginia Tech either. You have, unfortunately and through no fault of your own, been burdened with a glimpse of the experience of many in our military – the violent and sudden loss of friends, colleagues, and family. You didn’t deserve that burden, but from what I have seen, I am confident you will survive it and draw strength from it in the future.

Fully realizing that I might (unjustifiably in my mind) be accused of advancing a political agenda, I offer the following logic in the interest of lowering the odds of this type of tragedy, not only on an American campus, but anywhere else. I think that all reasonable people recognize that the killing of 33 innocents is a tragedy no matter where it happens.

The 24/7 news coverage at the time of this writing is concentrating on this very task, specifically a detailed profiling of the killer after the fact. The logical question to ask would be, “Wouldn’t it have been better to profile the killer-to-be prior to the mass murder?” This must not be merely an academic exercise, but, unfortunately, it is likely to be just that, ultimately.

The questions of why more couldn’t be done to prevent this will inevitably lead to calls for action. This will, in turn lead to procedures that will infringe on someone’s “rights.” The question will be whose, and by how much. The ACLU will, predictably, attempt to block any action just because of this. The net result, in the absence of elected officials standing up for a change, is likely to be a lot of air time wasted on a lesson not learned and, sadly, a further expansion of the trend of escalating violence we have seen over the decades.

It isn’t as though we have to look very hard to find these people. The flags were all up, just like the flags were up on the 9/11 hijackers. We just need to interpret the flags and act on them – like we didn’t with the 9/11 hijackers and like we didn’t with Cho.

Isn’t the profile of the sad loser, who closes his/her eyes to society’s benefits, blames society for it, and embraces hopelessness, the same profile that would constitute the ideal recruit for a terrorist suicide attack, and wouldn’t the result be the same. If you profile one, you are, by default, profiling the other.

Are we ready yet in America to deal with the practicalities of life and death in 2007? If not, how many more dead innocents will it take until we are ready? I’m ready now.

Profiling is the right thing to do. The first people on the list should be the copycat bomb scare idiots appearing in the wake of Virginia Tech right after they spend 10 years in a high-security federal prison. If they are capable of the threat, they are capable of the deed. Track and treat the disturbed personalities of potential mass killing just as we should be doing with the convicted sex offender.

The buzz among military strategists today is that Cho has done the research for al-Qaida. It doesn’t help to blame the crazy guy and let it go at that. We need to stop the crazy guys from killing us and from helping the enemy, however unwittingly they are doing it.