By Antonio C. Abaya

Even before he and his family left their native South Korea to migrate to the United States in 1992, Cho Seung-hui, at the age of eight, was already a problem child. According to his grand-aunt who was interviewed on CNN, “that idiot” did not talk to anyone, not to his parents, not to his siblings. He never developed any ties with anyone.

Cho was almost certainly autistic, his brains scarred by a chemical imbalance for which, as far as I know, there is no known antidote. Unable to communicate with anyone, deliberately withdrawn from meaningful human contact, Cho spent what must have been an excruciatingly painful and awkward adolescence in an American high school where he was, not surprisingly, bullied, humiliated and made fun of.

It is not surprising that resentment against the whole world welled up in his sick mind. It is amazing that the American school system was not sensitive enough to detect the walking time-bomb that Cho was, not during his four years in high school, not during his I-don’t-recall how many years in college at Virginia Tech.

If anyone can be blamed for what he eventually did, it must be the guidance counselor in high school, and the guidance counselor at Virginia Tech. There seems to have been enough red flags in his trajectory through college to warn school authorities that they had a problem student in their hands mutely crying out for help. But hardly anyone paid any attention to Cho.

His English professor, Lucinda Roy, noticed the unusual violence and aggressive behavior manifest in his literary output, and even went to the extent of voluntarily tutoring him one-on-one. She said that she recommended to her academic superiors that professional help for Cho was necessary, but nothing came of it.

It also turned out that two female students, on separate occasions, had complained to the college police that Cho was stalking them. In response to the second complaint, the police actually brought him to the college counseling service, but again nothing came of it.

So to the cocktail of mental illnesses that was brewing in his convoluted mind must be added sexual frustration. Unable or unwilling to strike normal relationships even with his own suite mates in the dorm, Cho was also crippled by his inability to establish ties with the opposite sex. Cho was not only a loner. He was also a loser.

As the whole world has learned in gruesome detail over the past week, the walking time-bomb that Cho was blew up on April 16. At 7:15 am, he first shot and killed two persons in a dorm. Two hours later, he shot and killed 30 students and instructors, and shot and wounded 14 others, in four classrooms at the engineering building, before he shot himself. The seething anger with which he shot his victims was evident in their wounds. Each victim, whether killed or merely wounded, was shot at least three times. It was the worst civilian massacre in US history.

Forensic investigators have zeroed in on a package that Cho mailed to the Manhattan offices of the National Broadcasting Corp. (NBC) at 9:01 that morning, midway between the shooting spree at the dorm and the rampage at the engineering building. The package’s contents—a 1,800-word manifesto, video clips of Cho, armed with two pistols, in various macho poses, and audio/video recordings of Cho accusing his unnamed tormentor that “you made me do it.”—were an eerie window into Cho’s sick mind.

Cho was not only paranoid, he was also schizoid. In the still shots that he took of himself, gone was the pathetic loner and loser that he was in real life. In its place was a macho Cho, armed with two pistols, who struck defiant and belligerent poses, as if to warn the world, “Don’t mess with me! Or you’ll be sorry!” A warning that he could not articulate in real life because of his emotional and psychological infirmities.

Cho would make for an apt anti-hero for a modern-day Dostoevski, only this time there would be no guilt-ridden Raskolnikov driven to suicide by remorse over his crime. Only a defiant and unrepentant mass murderer whose only regret was probably that he was not able to kill more than he actually did.

Even though Cho was only a resident alien, this was an American tragedy, and not only because the deed was done on American soil and most of his victims were Americans. If Cho had remained in South Korea, he would not have been able to commit his horrendous crime, no matter how sick and dysfunctional he had become.

South Korea has strict gun control laws, Only the police and the military are allowed to possess and carry guns. Cho would not have had a chance to buy a gun, let alone two, from a gun store in Seoul, of which there are none. It was the liberal gun laws in the US and the easy availability of guns, especially in the state of Virginia, that allowed Cho to live out his fantasies about exacting revenge on the cruel world that had oppressed and humiliated him.

I understand that in Virginia, anyone with the requisite IDs—which Cho had—can buy an unlimited number of guns. The only caveat is the buyer must wait 30 days after each single purchase before he/she is allowed to buy the next gun. So, theoretically, 12 guns a year, if you fancy that many. Will someone in Virginia please confirm this?.

While I sympathize with the families of Cho’s victims and even with Cho’s own family for this colossal tragedy that has visited them, I cannot overlook the bigger tragedy that daily engulfs the people of Iraq. And it, too, is an American tragedy even if most of its victims are not Americans.

Two days after the Virginia Tech massacre, a series of six explosions in and around Baghdad killed 198 people and wounded more than 200 others, in one of the biggest one-day massacres since the Americans invaded Iraq in March 2003.

The daily carnage in that unfortunate land would tend to desensitize the jaded news junkie to the endless suffering of the Iraqi people. But the endless barrage of details scooped up by CNN regarding the Virginia Tech massacre has served to remind me that the pain and suffering endured by the Iraqis are no less intense and devastating and senseless than the pain and suffering endured by the Americans over Virginia Tech., on a scale unimaginable in Blackburg.

And George W. Bush is no less a madman than Cho for inflicting such undeserved punishment on so many people for perceived affronts and threats no less illusory or delusional than Cho’s.

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