Six years ago today
Shock and awe began in Iraq six years ago today. Were you shocked? Were you awed?
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.
‘It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.’
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Posted on March 20th, 2009 at 9:00am under Iraq
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But lots of those “liberal-left” people on “Harry’s Place” and “Liberal Conspiracy” will tell you that “we got rid of Saddam”. From the safety of their arse tucked into the armchair and the war unravelling on Sky TV…
Amazing.
Yay us. We’re the good guys, we are.
There are those who still think:
“Six years later, we still aren’t debating the Iraq war honestly”
“I believe reasonable people can look at that ledger (or a more complete version of it) and conclude that the Iraq war was not worth it. I also believe reasonable people can look at that ledger and conclude that the Iraq war was a defensible gamble or even the right decision. However, I do not think that reasonable people can seriously look at that ledger and conclude, as so much of the angry-shout part of the commentariat does, that all of the evidence stacks up on only one side of the balance sheet.”
Peter Feaver at FP.com Via Andrew Sullivan
I despair!
“Every child is precious and irreplaceable, and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure.“
But some children are more replaceable than others.
[...] not going to write a lengthy tirade, re-regurgitating past opinions about the rights or wrongs about the invasion, the lies we were told to sell us on the venture or the horrendous number of [...]
That quote, and some from Camus, is and are very dear to me that at least someone somewhere wrote down how impossible it is that children suffer. Thank you for posting it. I can’t really process the photo. It’s too horrifying.
If you are on fb, some groups are the International People’s Declaration of Peace; Voters for Peace; & No Wars – Ever – at least some more solidarity.
For Peace.