Our fellow DUer, DancingBear, authored this moving essay last Saturday, and I asked his permission to re-post it for those who were away from DU over the weekend and may have missed it.
Unfortunately for all of us, this piece becomes MORE relevant with each passing day ...
It is entitled "Watching the Right Children Die"
It will be all over the news now - there can be no doubt of that. They are not brown children, nor black children. They do not live in a Muslim land, and they are not considered terrorists-by-association. They are not considered collateral damage in some misguided crusade for the greater good, and they will not be missing from the evening news Faces Of War segment, since thankfully for CNN their parents do not wear funny clothes or pray to the wrong people. It’s all about audience share, baby, it’s all about the audience.
They live in Israel, you see, and unlike their brethren in other less “worthy” parts of the world they have what the news guys here in the US call television charisma. Their parents are on “our side” you see, so when they die it makes the news. They have acquired, through some device unknown to me, The Right Stuff. It cannot stop their deaths, but in the saddest of ironies it will lead to thousands more. Their dolls and teddy bears and picture books will ramp up the Rapture Index and give the gift of hating the other side the window seat.
While others die an anonymous death, their deaths will be met with howls of outrage from those who moments before considered the maimed and the dead in the deserts of Iraq as just part of doing business. They will ratchet up their hatred for anything that does not come with an “approved by George W. Bush” label stamped on it, and the innocent maimed children in those unapproved lands will be spat on and left alone. They will have plenty of time to read (if they can) their new mantra - All Children Left Behind.
The right children will die for all the wrong reasons, and if they could they would tell you that there is no right or wrong at their age. There is only baseball, or soccer, or gymnastics, or playgrounds. There are friends they know a block away, and friends they have yet to meet a country away. They would tell you that their parent’s hatred is not theirs, but because they are only children the misguided righteous will ignore them and continue to kill in the name of peace. The misguided will mourn their deaths, all the while deciding that killing thousands upon thousands more will somehow wash the blood away. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. Somehow, the sanctity of a child’s life depends on where they live and whom they pray to. It should make a grown man cry. Some of us do. Just not enough.
All the while, The Pig Who Stole America eats a pig on foreign soil, and while the bodies mount he spews the lies once again and with a wink towards the bottom line tells us all that God will bless America.
Don’t bet on it.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
