Showing posts with label civilians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civilians. Show all posts

Monday, May 12, 2008

The ants suffer

There is an African aphorism... "when elephants fight, it is the ants who suffer."

All too often we have forgotten the ants in the mess we have caused in Iraq. The government uses words like "collateral damage" to describe the deaths of civilians and never even began counting them let alone stopped counting. We rarely see images or hear stories of the civilians, mostly too poor to escape, left behind. Of course, every dead child is the seeds of an entire family of terrorists yearning for revenge.

In an air attack on Sadr City, 2 year old Ali Hussein was injured as his house fell in on him. He died at the hospital.



The Washington Post published this photo and was castigated by some readers for showing an "anti-war" image and for publishing a photo in poor taste. As Helen Thomas reminded us in her column, "so is war."