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The Horror of War Sticks With You
by James Glaser January 13, 2009 Yesterday, I printed a column from the Scottish newspaper, The Sunday Herald. The story described the horrors many of the children in Gaza see on a daily basis, where body parts of people have become quite common with all the Israeli shelling. From my own war-time experience, I know those children are going to have the vision of war they are having now with them for the rest of their lives. Just reading that story brought back images that I have been unsuccessfully trying eradicate from my mind for thirty plus years. For some reason "little" body parts are the hardest to erase. Little body parts come from little people... children. Maybe it is that children are not supposed to be involved in the war zone, but they are in almost every war. Yes, we, the nations of the world, have tried to set up rules of engagement that are supposed to protect children and other innocent civilians, but those rules seldom work. When Israel attacked Gaza, it had to know that the entire country was filled with innocent civilians, and no way of attacking or no set of tactics could protect the innocent. It isn't just Gaza. We, the United States, attacked Iraq, and where was one of the first places we used our "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign? Bagdad, the capital city filled with millions of innocent people. Modern wars and modern population numbers make the killing of innocents common place, and because of that, millions of people the world over live with the visions of war stuck in their heads. In Gaza the number of children is higher than most countries. So their population will have these visions for a longer time. |
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