Reply #1: Lately, I've become a little indifferent to atrocities, [View All]

[pnorman]

to a point that sometimes alarms me whenever I give it thought. There's so much around these days, that it's overwhelming. But that article moved me more than I had expected it to. Here's one excerpt:

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To those who wonder why I write to condemn this war in Iraq, I say, "It is because of the children; children see a world in war they will never forget. Ever after, it is a world without innocence or trust. Beneath every normal act—marriage, birth, accomplishments—lurks the fear and threat of impending dispossession and wanton loss. I owe it to that child who was me and who never got to be a child again—and to the children everywhere whose joys are stolen by war."

Indeed, I often feel I'm not really entitled to my presence in this world—I have survived, through my family's survival, as a shadow of what might have become me. So many children didn't make it—nor did their parents. Buried somewhere deep in my unconscious is the belief that we were meant to die and that all of life is just stolen luck—chance. For me, protesting this awful war in Iraq is no intellectual abstraction. It is personal. I am there more than I am here.

Americans wondered in 2003 why Europeans (and millions of others) opposed this war. I say, they know war. And perhaps I'm right.

Perhaps, if Americans had been allowed to know and feel Hiroshima they would have rejected war, but they were never given the chance.
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pnorman