Thursday, December 06, 2007

Teen-age Baghdad?

In the aftermath of Wednesday's mall massacre in Omaha, some things are starting to emerge from the haze of chaos and the numbness of shock.

FOR EXAMPLE, it's really starting to look like something is seriously not right in Robert Hawkins' "posse." The problem, however, in what seems to be a Bellevue, Neb., feedback loop of whack is not that there are kids out there who have issues.

The problem would appear to be that there are kids out there with issues immersed in an absolutely pathological culture -- one, as I said earlier, obsessed with all the wrong things. Not even a day after Hawkins massacred eight people, then himself, at the Von Maur at Westroads Mall, another one of his circle has been arrested on felony counts.

From
a story by Jason Kuiper in the Omaha World-Herald:

A 17-year-old Bellevue boy was arrested after being accused of threatening a girl whom he said made comments relating to Wednesday's fatal shootings at Von Maur.

David S. Horvath, of 3016 JoAnn Ave. in Bellevue, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon and brought to the Sarpy County Juvenile Justice Center.

Bellevue Police Chief John Stacey said officers went to Horvath's house Thursday to investigate a girl's report that Horvath threatened her for making disparaging remarks about his close friend, Robert Hawkins. Officials say Hawkins shot and killed eight people at Von Maur at the Westroads Mall on Wednesday afternoon before killing himself.

Stacey said officers arrested Horvath on suspicion of making felony terroristic threats. The officers also confiscated two shotguns and a rifle from the house, he said.
THERE IS SOMETHING of a striking comparison to be made in all this. If what Robbie Hawkins did Wednesday is fundamentally no different from what a jihadi terrorist does, then how is what his buddy is alleged to have done much different from what Iraqi sectarian militias do?

Just asking the uncomfortable questions, here.

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