NaBloPoMo 2024 - day 17
1 week ago
Friday, May 6, 2005
A Picture Is Worth....
Many Moved by Photo of Soldier, Iraqi Child
At first glance, I was convinced this link would take me to a Bush Administration PR picture of an American GI captured in a Kodak moment, dandling an Iraqi tot on his knee and handing her a chocolate bar.
I was unprepared for the image that clicked to life on my monitor when I went to the story. A startling, gut-wrenching photo of a heartbroken soldier snuggling a bloody bundle from which protrude the top of a small, dark head and a pair of tiny feet.
A picture like this can be spun a thousand ways, pro- or anti-war. For those who support the war--Abu Ghraib, Gitmo...any stories of our military’s inhumanity will evaporate behind the strength of this one image.
For those of us who have abhorred the war from the beginning…all we can think is, "What have we done? What have we done to that country, to those children…and to our own young men whom we have sentenced to a lifetime of such memories?"
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What have we done. I feel exactly as you do. How could we have ever let this happen? I am still appalled and amazed, but mostly appalled.
ReplyDeleteNeil
I hear you.
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes out to that poor young soldier, thinking of the sorrow and anguish he must feel cradling that child in his arms as she died.
ReplyDeleteBut I wonder, why does it take that soldier's presence to humanize this photo for so many Americans? There are, tragically, many (too many) pictures of dead or dying Iraqi children. Yet pictures featuring just those children are shunned by the press and arouse cries of "propaganda" from the same war supporters who weep over this picture.
Why can't these people empathize with the fate of the children of Iraq unless it also portrays America in a sympathetic light? Guilt perhaps?
dhal made an excellent point. The reaction to this picture says a lot about our society. Numerous pictures of injured or dead Iraqi children have been published but somehow it takes an American GI to humanize it. But then this is a country where former secretary of state Madalin Albright said that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children was an acceptable price to pay. It's disturbing.
ReplyDeletedave
oh......my.
ReplyDelete:(
I wrote about this, too. But I think the soldier is a woman. Look how small the hands are....
ReplyDeleteWell, duh. So it is a man...we need to come home..
ReplyDeleteVery, very sad...
ReplyDeleteI thought the later. It's so sad! :-( ---Robbie
ReplyDeleteoh lisa, how heartbreakingly true your last paragraph - it's what i think every single day when i read the news. i know what the VN war did to the boys of my generation, i have friends who were damaged beyond repair - and i don't just mean physically. these boys who come home will live on into their older years with the same kind of eternal unrepairable damage.
ReplyDeleteMy heart breaks.
ReplyDelete