Wednesday, March 21, 2007

From the NYTimes:
BAGHDAD, March 20 — Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday....

“Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said, according to a transcript. “We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back.”

Who blows up their children? Who the fuck blows up their children? What kind of sick, desperate people do that? What has happened to these people to make them think that blowing up their children is a viable, effective, and sound solution?

My parents tend to fly off the handle. I'm ashamed to admit that certain people in my family have made the following statements to me:

After 9-11, "Nuke 'em till they glow." (verbatim; this was while I was living in the heart of DC when the attacks happened and I watched the pentagon burn from the top of my work building)

After a rental car "encounter," "Well, the fucking 'spics are after our jobs anyway. And you know you can't trust an indian person at all. They're all out to get you." (not quite verbatim, but I can't remember the EXACT words. They were something that absurd.)

I don't want to be like my family. I don't want to be so callous, so white trash, so stupid. I know there is a complex history with the middle east that I will never understand precisely because I have grown up in the west. I know that each group has their concerns, their pains, there travesties, their anger, and their heart felt sense of injustice. I know that people around the world are desperate.

But really, World, what's going on when we sacrifice our children so heartlessly? Why didn't the adults stay in the car and sacrifice themselves? Either with the children or without the children? Did the children choose this? And if they did, did they do so consciously?

I'm just at such a loss for what could drive people to such drastic measures. Is there anything in this world that would make me blow up my children? You know, I have never had to face such difficulties, so I can't say, "Unequivocably, no." I'm sure that the mother who gave birth to those children never thought her children would die like that. Would be used. But I can't imagine the events that would lead me to agree to blowing up my child. I simply can't even fathom it.

4 comments:

Heidi said...

This makes me so sad. So many people dying every day in this horrible war. Shame on me for not making it to the protest yesterday. I have called my congresspeople though.

Netter said...

I can't imagine any ideological reason to blow up my child, or anyone's child. How are non-Muslims infidels and devils if insurgents are blowing up their own children? Or even worse, some one else's children. Aren't our accidental bombings of civilians one of the reasons they want us out of Iraq?

Amy Lane said...

I think (and I'm just as in the dark as you) that one of the problems of the Middle East is that the poor have nowhere to go but the millitary when they grow up...perhaps the parents were like those sick people here who believe that the world is too fucked up for a child anyway and death is merciful...

But that brings me to the old Catholic belief that the very very worst sin is despair. And it's horrible horrible shit like this that makes me see why that might be true.

Susan said...

This sort of behavior isn't exclusive to tribal war-torn regions either. Have you heard of that newly minted term "family annihilators"? It refers to the practice of these (usually) men who, presumably to get revenge on their spouse, murder their children. There was the guy from NH who ditched his dead kids along the highway in Ohio, the guy in Florida who dropped both his children out his high-rise hotel window (one at a time; did the first one, went back for the second one; think about that...), and recently in western MA a guy who dropped his wife off for her shift at Walmart then blew up his car with his kids and himself inside while the wife stood there and watched helplessly.

WTF?