timeimmortal

I haven’t indulged in the temptation to ask “how could/why did this happen” about the Virginia Tech shootings, because I kind of suspected there was more to be told about the shooter that would reveal the answer in due time. And so, now two days after 33 people lost their lives in his rampage — which, by the way, is NOT the worst school massacre in American history (45 students were killed in 1927 when Andrew Kehoe blew up his school with a bomb) — we are beginning to see that Cho Seung-Hui almost perfectly fit the typical profile of a modern school killer: the English major was a detached loner who ate alone and shunned friendliness. His writings, often laced with anti-Catholic bigotry, were considered disturbing by many who read them and knew him. One teacher even had him removed from class, and was taken to a mental health facility two years ago over fears he was suicidal.

He had apparently shown signs of problematic, violent behaviour — setting fire to a dorm room and stalking women. He may also have written bomb threats. Predictably, though, his roommates dismissed him as a shy, foreign exchange student who “didn’t seem like a guy who could even hold up a gun.” They felt his behaviour was “not unusual”…as though everyone receives a few complaints about attempted pyrotechnics and stalking in their days as a student.

His last message — described as “a long and rambling note”, placed blame for his actions on the usual host of people: “rich kids”, “debauchery”, and “deceitful charlatans”, and warning: “You caused me to do this.”

Cho Seung-Hui, as described above, fit almost perfectly what has become the typical profile of a school killer in this day and age: a disgruntled, disturbed loner whom women found creepy and whose private thoughts turned to the violent and the disgusting on a routine basis. One wonders how many more times people more or less exactly fitting that profile will be seen to shoot up their schools before students and administrators learn that people who fit this observable and not unobvious profile are a problem that needs to be addressed with haste, so as to remove not only themselves, but their fellow students as well, from harm’s way. Cho Seung-Hui probably needed to be sent to a mental institution for more than a short while; because he was not, he and many others are dead.

One cannot help but wonder, as well, if his status as a foreign student also made people uncomfortable about reporting any suspicions they may have had about him, for fear of seeming racist.

And I think Kathy is also on to something when she again asks “where were the men?” Now, as with the Montreal Massacre so many years ago, men — who, one would hope, should have an instinctual desire to protect others, especially women — acted with meekness and passivity when the shooting started. It’s such a curious inversion of priorities that in our modern society, we will be so fiercely personal when it comes to whom we can sleep with, when we can sleep with them, and in what context we sleep with them…but when the shooting starts, we wait for someone to tell us what to do, if anything.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but self-defense is not only a virtue but an obligation save in cases where martyrdom is what one is called to. Only one man — a Holocaust survivor — had the courage to put his body between the bullets and other students so that, even though he was killed, several other people, his students, survived. More people should have been willing to take similar risks, in the hope that they too might save lives.

The killer was armed with a 9 mm pistol and a 22 mm pistol. Neither of these weapons can drop a healthy, athletic man with one shot in most cases…so why didn’t someone rush the guy? He was (pardon my frankness) a scrawny little fellow, after all.

Update: Hmmn…concerning. I’ve been seeing the term “Ismail Ax” being mentioned in a few news reports now. Apparently, Cho Seung-Hui had those words scrawled on his arm.

They would seem to invoke the Islamic re-working of the story of Abraham and Issac, in which it is Ishmael — Abraham’s first, and illegitimate, son — whom God asks Abraham to sacrifice, and whom is then spared. Ishmael is believed by both Judeo-Christian and Islamic histographic legends to have gone on to give rise to the Arab people.

In the Judeo-Christian (the original — and correct — version, predating Muhammed’s re-write of it by several hundred years), Abraham (then called Abram) uses a knife when he begins his attempt to kill Issac. In the Muslim re-imagining of the event, Abraham is sometimes described as reaching for an ax instead. He also is said to have used an ax to smash the idols in his father’s workshop.

There’s a lot of speculation flying around, but the choice of the name Ismail (the alternative spelling of Ishmael that Islam tends to prefer) is…interesting.

Upper-date: Yursil, in the comments section, provides a link to an article that looks at the “Ismail Ax” issue. An excerpt from the article reads thusly:

The smoking gun has obtained a one act play by Cho called “Richard McBeef” which was so disturbing that he was recommended for counseling. The play told of a pedophilic stepfather and the murder of a 13 year old boy. Someone may want to look into Cho’s own family history. If you get to page four, you will see that it contains an explicit reference to Hamlet. “You murdered my father so you could get into my mom’s pants.” There is also a lot of phallocentric behavior i.e. a cereal bar shoved down the step father’s throat in an attempt to de-masculinize him.

Anyhow, all that is relevant because Cho was an English major and that is where he got the reference Ismail Ax. It is not from Islam. If it was from Islam it probably would have said Ibrahim’s Ax.

A commentator at Hot Air explains this further:

You probably already know this, but in James Fennimore Cooper’s story “The Prairie,” the settler Ishmael Bush, who is attempting to escape from civilization, sets out across the prairie with two key tools, a gun and an axe. Each has a symbolic meaning. The axe — which can either kill or provide shelter — stands for both creation and destruction. Given that the VT killer was an English major, might this be the likely meaning of the words on his arm? Just my two cents.

There is no connection to Islam here.

Interesting, to say the least. Cho Seung-Hui was indeed an English major, and probably had experience with literature of this variety. And certainly there was nothing in his writings to suggest a formal affiliation with Islam (indeed, his writings seem to have a strong antipathy toward religion). Until such time as more evidence emerges, this seems to be a reasonable explanation for an otherwise cryptic phrase scrawled on the arm of a murderer.

It does seem highly unlikely that this was an outbreak of Islamist violence, which wittier pundits than I have sometimes termed “sudden jihad syndrome”. Ultimately we will likely never know the motives of the killer — he takes those to his grave. The above explanation does seem plausible within the context of Cho Seung-Hui’s educational background, however. I’m not 100% convinced though — the Ishmael/Ismail difference still bugs me.

Still, as I say…interesting.

~ by Kenneth on April 18, 2007.