I don’t know what to feel anymore about this war. Other than horror, I mean. We know, we knew, that Saddam Hussein is evil. That he has and will continue to place innocents in harm’s way. We know this, and we know that he — and a lot of the Arab world — want to push the U.S. into killing innocents so that they can place blame on us. So, why do we play that game with him? Why? If we know how he operates, why can’t we avoid falling into that trap?
In the rubble was the mauled torso of 20-year-old Lava Jamal. Moments later, a few feet away, they found what was left of her head, her brown hair matted with blood.
They put both in white blankets trimmed with blue and left them against a nearby wall, where flies soon gathered. Sitting in a chair down the road, her mother cried uncontrollably into her hands, and then vomited.
Less than an hour later, another scene unfolded. This time, there were no shouts. Atef Yusuf had found his nephew, 6-year-old Raad Hatem. He lifted the boy’s body, coated in a gray dust except for the gaping wound on the back of his head. For a few minutes, he swayed with the body, back and forth, wailing. Then he stumbled to another blanket and wrapped it around the boy’s body.
“Is he a military leader?” he asked. “Are all these people military leaders?”
His eyes red, he went back to work. Still underneath the rubble were his six other nieces and nephews, he said. [Washington Post]
America is doing this. My country is killing innocents by the score, while trumpeting the news that only a “small number” of U.S. soldiers have lost their lives.
This is not the country I know in my heart. This is not the nation I want to feel proud of. Americans simply don’t do this. We are too smart, too compassionate, and too friendly for this to be happening.
We know only too well how it feels to have thousands of innocents killed in horrible ways. Is our memory so short? Did we learn nothing about the value of life? We just have to stop this. We must. This is America — we should be a beacon of peace and we should be saving lives. Not taking them so mercilessly in dogged pursuit of a madman. I would much rather have Saddam Hussein escape and run then kill dozens of innocent people around him. But this is the Bush administration, who subscribe to the idea that it’s better to send an innocent man to the electric chair than spend the money to test DNA one more time to be sure.
What does it mean to the future of our country when the unborn life is worth so much more than the lives of those already living? And when the life of a huge corporation is so much more important than the lives of human beings? I feel like those dark sci-fi novels I used to read are becoming true quicker and quicker with this man as president.
For the first time in my life, I’m scared for my country, my life, my future, and the future of coming generations, all since George W. Bush arrived.
