Editor,
One of the really disturbing things about the current war is the refusal of the U.S. media to show images of its human casualties, such as the young American men and women who die or are maimed, much less the Iraqi civilians. But even the well-controlled media slip up once in awhile.
For me, the haunting image of this war will always be from a brief story on one of the network news reports early Saturday morning. A 5-year-old Iraqi boy lies naked and writhing in pain on the ground. His face is covered with a cloth, but the news reporter tells us that the face has been blown away by a gun shot, leaving only a part of a jaw, a couple of teeth and a gaping hole gasping for air. Above the boy, a U.S. soldier in full combat gear stands weeping uncontrollably.
I think, what will become of the boy, if he lives? And equally, what will become of that soldier?
You can make all kinds of moral and political arguments for or against this war. Saddam Hussein murdered and terrorized his own people. The United States drops bunker buster bombs on an apartment house full of civilians because Hussein could be inside.
But nothing justifies what happened to that boy or to that solider. Nothing.
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War is not a natural phenomenon like a flood or an earthquake. It happens because we make it happen or allow it to happen. It is easy to blame Hussein with his cruelty and egomania or George Bush with his arrogance and barely contained glee at having led a great military victory over a tiny country of mostly starving people.
It is even easier to dismiss the horrors as unfortunate but inevitable results of war. After all, we don't deliberately set out to blow away small children in our effort to stamp out evil in the world. We even try our best to avoid it, but it just happens. Too bad.
Many years ago, I had an impassioned argument with a Christian friend about the cause of injustice and inequality. "It is not our social and political arrangements that cause such human misery," he finally declared. "It is our sinfulness."
He was wrong. It is our stupidity. Or, in the more precise terms of Buddhism, our ignorance, fear and greed. We are all responsible for the world we have created.
If we allow this to continue to happen over and over again, what kind of people are we?
Ken Carpenter
UNM staff
