{"id":416,"date":"2003-04-04T14:24:35","date_gmt":"2003-04-04T19:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=416"},"modified":"2003-04-04T14:24:35","modified_gmt":"2003-04-04T19:24:35","slug":"children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=416","title":{"rendered":"children"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Ana, ana’ \\(me,me\\) as he tapped his chest.  Take just one picture of me.  I never got his name, but he lives in the Saddam City district of northern Baghdad.  Photo credit: Farah Laith<\/p>\n

Click to visit more images of the enemy at IraqJournal.org.<\/p>\n

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A coworker said to me the other day, “Yeah, well, I’m behind Bush one hundred percent.  I saw the pictures on the news of the kids that got killed, and that’s not nice, but you know, they’re just going to grow up and be just like their parents.”<\/p>\n

“And.  What’s.  Wrong.  With.  That?” I asked, incredulous.  “What have they done to us?”  She responded with some vague blither about 911.  “You don’t even know,” I said.  “The fact is that they haven’t done anything to us.  You don’t even know the lies, much less believe them, yet you are willing to let children die.”<\/p>\n

Her voice can be a scraping irritating noise even when her words have negligible meaning.  But her cavalier disregard of the slaughter of children, and her use of racism to justify it was revolting.  I nearly struck her.  I had to walk away.  <\/p>\n

She is just an overwhelmed child herself, what with all the considerable trauma and stress she has endured in her own life.  Which makes it worse.  She doesn’t have the time or the inclination to be bothered with the esoterica of injustice ten timezones away. Indeed, for anyone, accusing one’s own country of criminal behavior requires an uncommon discernment both incisive and fearless.  And so her opinion is not the result of a rigorous and objective examination of the facts, but is simply a regurgitation of the recieved propaganda, passed on essentially unchanged.  I’d like to think no one else thinks this way.  I’d like to think the propaganda did not have this effect on one as typical as she.  She is in her twenties—starting a family, starting a career, starting an American life.  She is a mother.  And she is studying to be a nurse.  I dread to think how many other young people in america?children really?think as she does.  <\/p>\n

I want to throw-up.<\/p>\n

There is no question in my mind why the world hates us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Ana, ana’ \\(me,me\\) as he tapped his chest.  Take just one picture of me.  I never got his name, but he lives in the Saddam City district of northern Baghdad.  Photo credit: Farah Laith Click to visit more images of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[539,213,821,653,822],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-baghdad","tag-bush","tag-farah-laith","tag-nurse","tag-saddam-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}