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What happened in Virginia Tech is more horrifying to most people than what happens in Iraq, Rwanda, etc. not because we value young white southern lives more than young brown African lives but for the different--yet somewhat related--reason that Choi's act appears to be a horrible, arbitrary violation of the social contract.
In America, we live under the belief that we have tamed killing for the sheer pleasure of killing and we are confident that no one will run us over in the crosswalk because it amuses them to do so, and we fear what would happen if those internal checks disappeared on a mass scale. By contrast, we believe that the Iraqi and Rwandan factions have no social fabric to tear, that life is cheap over there and that the victims of these atrocities would happily be on the power end of the bomb or machete if given half a chance.
It's the same view that inspires the "fine, let them all kill each other" sentiment regarding American gang violence.
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