Are we shooting ourselves in the foot?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I laughed when I read the article, titled: ‘Russia’s air force accidentally bombs own city of Belgorod’ in the April 21 edition of The Gleaner. I did not laugh because I found it funny and I would not rejoice at the injuries suffered, but I laughed at the irony of the situation. We cannot allow ourselves to be bullied, neither should we bully others. How many times have we done that, personally, as well as a nation? There is a lesson to be learnt and Mikhail Graham’s letter, ‘Spare a thought for Sudan’, also published on April 21, ended with ‘all lives matter’.

Too many times we do not empathise or sympathise unless the things directly affect us. Like the Russians, we play blame game. Luckily, the Russian Defence Ministry accepted responsibility and acknowledged that a weapon was accidentally dropped by their Su-34 bombers.

If many of us accepted responsibility, systemic prejudices would be destroyed and maybe, just maybe, people would be better united.

In Jamaica, parliamentarians speak about a war on crime, yet guns are readily available to criminals. How do they get them? Where are they coming from? How do they pass without being detected at our ports? And when people are shot, we cry about ‘high levels of gun crime’. Didn’t we set ourselves up to be shot in our own foot? If strong actions were taken to control white collar crime and hold those accountable for stealing millions, then maybe there would not be so many cases of theft or suspected misappropriation of funds.

Aren’t we, like Russia, shooting ourselves in our own foot?

NATESHA LINDSAY