Aside from everything else, one of the things that stays with me about the Iraq war is how we’ve become inured, immune, to horror and death and suffering. Maybe it’s always been so, God knows as a country we’ve long been involved in causing and suffering them.

I suppose it’s a natural reaction or else you’d go mad under the weight of it all. I clearly remember getting upset only once, although I’m sure there were other times. It was near the end of April in 2003 when an exploding ammunition dump killed an unspecified number of Iraqis. It was a come-day-go-day story. It was the accompanying photograph that did it.

Reuters: “Kudeir, a 30-year-old Iraqi worker, carries his badly burned nine-month-old son Amir Yas to safety in the Zaafaraniya neighbourhood in the outskirts of Baghdad April 26, 2003. Up to 40 Iraqi civilians were killed and many badly hurt in a series of explosions near Baghdad on Saturday, an Iraqi medic said after an arms dump blew up on the outskirts of the capital.”

My small daughter was asleep in the next room when I read the story. Look at the expression on his father’s face. Maybe you have to have kids of your own to understand, I don’t know. I imagined how I’d try comfort a baby who could not be made comfortable, how I’d feel. I think of Amir Yas often. I wonder where he and his father are today.

When I used to link to such images on my old blog, one or two people would describe them as ‘pornography’ which I’ve always found offensive and suspect. If we’re going to be complicit in these events, then turning away from the consequences is a supreme act of cowardice in my opinion. It’s a moral abdication.

When Ann Widdecombe can tout a video of the treatment of Canadian bears to prick our consciences but we can’t bring ourselves to look at children burnt and blasted in a war we started, I wonder what’s gone wrong.