"About a half-hour north of Jalalabad, the children along the road change. No waving. No smiling. No thumbs up. No screaming for candy. Only serious stares and empty eyes!
I have seen this in Iraq, and it's deeply uncomfortable until you get used to it -- if you get used to it. Children by nature are friendly, when they're unfriendly it's because their parents, possibly their extended family, maybe their whole community is worse than unfriendly. And the change can be fast, in the next village, yet most of the time the change comes slow. But you have to be looking. Otherwise you look up and the smiling and enthusiastic little ones are suddenly frosty and distant little ones." -- Embedded journalist in Farah Afghanistan, March 2009
Just as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, terrorism is in the eyes of children whose parents were killed by Americans. What would it take for them to feel otherwise? What would our explanation be....."Oops, sorry!" I somehow don't think that words will work. These children have lots of years of poverty, living without love, lack of proper medical care and comfort, through which to clearly visualize their enemy. They will also have lots of Al Qaeda recruiters to help them get vengeance.
(CBS) CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reported exclusively this year on the rescue of 24 starving orphans by the 82nd Airborne Division and Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad.
"The boys were discovered emaciated, wounded and tied to beds. Troops brought the boys to safety, and they are were being nursed back to health.
Since, Logan has checked up on them in their new orphanage, and found them more comfortable, but still trapped in a life very different than that an American special needs child would live."
She also reported, sadly, that on July 23, 2007, one of the boys, young Saddam Ali Abbas, died from his many health problems."
That is lovely and 24...sorry that went down to 23...is better than none but barely makes a dent in the 500,000 others.
Read this article for more details.
Lest we forget, we have also created many fatherless children in our own country. They are growing and hearing that the war was chosen by our leaders at the time, not warranted for our safety. How will they grow up having respect for leaders and authority?
Meanwhile, in the US, many people prefer saving eggs that are about to be tossed away rather than putting their energies into saving these many lives already alive and in desperate need of help in so many ways. Will anything reach them?
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