White House silence raises questions
USA should respond to this incident. American President and people should come out openly to condemn such actions...and then take strongest action. VENKAIAH NAIDU, UNION MINISTER
As Srinivas Kuchibhotla’s family tries to deal with the young engineer’s coldblooded murder by a hate-driven shooter, questions are being raised about the lack of attention it has received from the White House specially in comparison to similar circumstances in the past.
Questions are also being raised why the shootings have not been a bigger news story, given the surcharged atmosphere of surging social tensions fuelled in part by the administration’s not stalled attempts to curtail visits by foreigners from parts of the world it deems a security risk to the United States.
Adam Purinton, the shooter, had mistaken Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, a colleague from Garmin, a GPS technology major, for people from the Muslim-majority Middle East, telling them to “get out of my country” before opening fire on them and another patron at a suburban bar in Olathe, Kansas, on Wednesday.
There was no comment or reaction from the White House until Friday, when the shootings were raised at the daily briefing, and only to dismiss suggestions, as had been made by many, the president’s rhetoric may have been responsible for it.
“Any loss of life is tragic,” said press secretary Sean Spicer, “but I’m not going to get into, like, that kind of – to suggest that there’s any correlation (to the president’ rhetoric) I think is a bit absurd.”
If it seemed more like a clarification than a condemnation, it was. “Once upon a time, presidents like Obama or Bush would’ve spoken out against this hate crime today,” Jon Favreau, President Barack Obama’s speechwriter for most of his first term, wrote on Twitter, adding, “Trump yelled about the media and FBI.”
Trump was indeed immersed then in a fierce fight with that part of news media he doesn’t like and with the FBI. “Michelle and I were deeply saddened to learn of the shooting that tragically took so many lives in Wisconsin,” Obama had said in a statement after the killing of six people at a Gurdwara in Wisconsin in 2013.
“As we mourn this loss which took place at a house of worship, we are reminded how much our country has been enriched by Sikhs, who are a part of our broader American family.”
The White House has generally been seen as silent on the Kansas shootings. “The President could say ‘Don’t shoot innocent brown people. It’s wrong’,” Kumail Nanjiani, a Pakistani-American comic who plays a techie in HBO TV series Silicon Valley, wrote on Twitter.