Ziad Khaled’s eyes welled with tears when he spoke of the explosion that killed his aunt and two cousins. “She died in my own arms,” he said of his cousin Maha, an 11-year-old schoolgirl.
They’ve lost relatives and friends; fear and grief are constant emotions. Looking beyond Iraq’s latest conflict — the Arab country has waged two previous wars since 1980 — sometimes seems impossible in battle-hardened Baghdad.
Khaled’s grief is compounded by concern over his children: Khaled, 4, and Isra’a, 2. They are too young to comprehend the ugliness of war, yet they know something is wrong.
“When they hear explosions, I tell them it’s thunder and beg them to go to sleep,” said Khaled, speaking over the drone of warplanes flying above. “But even when they do go to sleep, they’re restless and keep waking up.
“They look frightened and their faces are pale,” he said.
Yes, this war is harming the Iraqi people. When we oppose this war, these are the people we seek to keep safe from the horrors of war.
5 comments on “”
we need to oppose the war that occurs in the u.s. on an all too frequent basis–the death penalty. if we are gonna be concerned about human life…along with the war, to me…this hsas bearing and warrants attention too.
Yeah, the death penalty is an issue that people should care about. I know that some innocent people have received the death penalty, so that in itself is a large enough flaw to make it illegal(as it is here and in nearly all civilized nations of the earth). As always, violence is never the answer.
amen savior apollo! this should go in the community as a rule.
😉
That’s so awful. I hate to imagine it, and yet I try to every day; I try to imagine what the parents trying to calm their children, or the people who have already been through so much tragedy and horror and having to endure *this*. It makes me so angry when Bush says we’re doing this for the Iraqi people. We’re not doing anything for them… but we are doing something *to* them, and it isn’t right.
Yeah, it truly is an awful thing that they have to endure this simply because one evil dictator doesn’t like another. These are real and innocent people who do not deserve to die or live in greater fear than Saddam has ever inspired.