THE Western world recoiled in horror at the killing of 32 people at Virginia Tech by deranged gunman Cho Seung-Hui.
But there was little reaction to the deaths of more than 240 Iraqis at the hands of car bombers two days later.
A shopkeeper at the Sadriya market, where 127 people died and 148 were wounded, remarked that "the street was a swimming pool of blood".
The inclination to feel for the the victims at Virginia Tech because they were "people like us" and to treat dead Iraqis differently might be understandable, but it is wrong.
We cannot allow the seemingly hopeless situation in Iraq to numb us to the daily blood-letting on the streets of Baghdad.
US and British forces carry the overwhelming burden of trying to bring peace to Iraq but this is Australia's war as well.
We cannot isolate ourselves from the horror being inflicted on ordinary Iraqis by the unremitting internecine violence.
Our humanity should not become just another casualty of the Iraq quagmire.
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