Moral values again
Jan. 25th, 2005 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrThis picture has been haunting me all day [warning: there is real blood involved]. This little girl's face, her terror and wild sorrow, has been tormenting me all day. She is a little younger than my girls, and her whole world has been destroyed. By us, by our proud American representatives who have gone to Iraq to spread peace and liberty, according to the man that the press assures us we voted in because he represents the kind of moral values we American supposedly want.
I look at that picture, and I feel a visceral revulsion for our role, for my role as an American in that little girl's tragedy. I want to help her, to soothe her, to comfort her, to take her in my arms and wipe the bloodstains away, wipe away the horrible image of her dead parents that has been seared forever in her memory. Yet if I stood before her now, I don't think I could even look her in the eye. I think I would die of shame. How can they be moral values if I feel such scalding, despairing shame?
And I feel a seething rage, that we are being led by an Administration whose policies and pronouncements and goals and arrogance has led to this. I want to protest to that little girl, I didn't do it, it's not my fault, but I feel the full weight of that responsibility, that blood upon my head. And what particularly makes me furious is that our President, apparently, does not.
Oh, child, I am so desperately sorry. I don't know if you will ever come to a point in your life when you can understand or believe it, but I will tell you this and hope that you will accept someday that there is a woman halfway around the world tonight who saw your pain and wept as hard as you, and said, Oh, God, I am so desperately sorry. Please forgive us.
Please forgive me.
I look at that picture, and I feel a visceral revulsion for our role, for my role as an American in that little girl's tragedy. I want to help her, to soothe her, to comfort her, to take her in my arms and wipe the bloodstains away, wipe away the horrible image of her dead parents that has been seared forever in her memory. Yet if I stood before her now, I don't think I could even look her in the eye. I think I would die of shame. How can they be moral values if I feel such scalding, despairing shame?
And I feel a seething rage, that we are being led by an Administration whose policies and pronouncements and goals and arrogance has led to this. I want to protest to that little girl, I didn't do it, it's not my fault, but I feel the full weight of that responsibility, that blood upon my head. And what particularly makes me furious is that our President, apparently, does not.
Oh, child, I am so desperately sorry. I don't know if you will ever come to a point in your life when you can understand or believe it, but I will tell you this and hope that you will accept someday that there is a woman halfway around the world tonight who saw your pain and wept as hard as you, and said, Oh, God, I am so desperately sorry. Please forgive us.
Please forgive me.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 10:29 am (UTC)I feel the full weight of that responsibility, that blood upon my head. And what particularly makes me furious is that our President, apparently, does not.
Yeah. It's taken a remarkably few years for it to go from "The buck stops here" to "Buck? What buck?"