CHILDREN DIE

A site that too often goes beyond rational argument and into paranoia about vast corporate conspiracies is Democratic Underground, and we have considered removing our link because it is seldom that DU adds anything serious to political discussion. I have personally been honored by a posting ban on the site because the very strict requirements of uniform thought make Free Republic look like the UN. Today DU member "punpirate" has posted a very earnest and emotional argument against all war, which can be summed up by this line: "To be pro-war is to sacrifice children for political aims. America could be above such, but it is not." Yes, the military may seem callous by referring to the deaths of children as "collateral damage" and despite our best efforts, bullets and missiles will stray and children will die. But children will die if America is "above" war and leaves Saddam in power, just as they died in Basra after the first Gulf War. We know that during this war, children will die who wouldn't have otherwise. We also know that after the war, Saddam and his thugs will not be able to rape and kill adults and children ever again. After this war, Iraqi children will no longer die needlessly because their fathers opposed Saddam.

Yes, there's something comforting about knowing that Saddam is doing the killing and American troops are not. But while Saddam intends to kill children, America does not and the accidental and intentional killings will end when this war does. Without the war, the intentional killings will continue and every surrendering or smiling Iraqi you have seen on the news will be hunted down and murdered by Saddam's stormtroopers.

Punpirate mourns the death of his own daughter and understands how Iraqi's who lose children to American bombs must feel:

It doesn't matter what pilot drops the bomb on the child who is the Iraqi analogue of my child; it doesn't matter if there are words to make that strong, adult military man feel better about what he's done on order of his commander-in-chief. The child is still dead. The brothers and sisters remember who dropped that bomb. The mother and father wail and remember. The aunts and uncles mourn and curse the people who took that child from them, prevented that child from taking its rightful place in the world.

And across town or down in Basra are other families who don't have fathers because Saddam's gestapo came in the night and forced them at gunpoint to fight for Saddam. Those families don't have brothers and uncles because they were killed or "disappeared" when they suggested that, just maybe, Saddam should build less palaces and feed the people. Those families have mothers and daughters who sob quielty at night because they remember Saddam's rape squads. And unlike those families who experience the heartrending loss of a child because of an errant U.S. missile, they know who is responsible for their losses and they see him on television every day. They see his goons, the Ba'athists and the Fedayeen Saddam, on their street corners "keeping order." And they cheer the American bombs.