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Good morning, Netizens…
In this morning’s picture of the day, Sayed Abdul Karim, 80, sits with his grandaughter, Camina, 9, left, in an internally displaced camp three hours from their village in Galochi district, bombed in a U.S. military raid on Sunday in Laghman, Afghanistan. The operation drove hundreds of families out of their villages after 270 homes were destroyed and 16 civilians killed. (February 08, 2009) Getty Images
This is a fine picture.
Having a granddaughter who is approaching that most-magical age of her life, I have felt my granddaughter’s eyes gazing upon me with the same reverence and trust as in this picture, and in my reverie this morning, I pondered how I would feel were I in this man’s place. With her implicit trust glistening in her eyes, yet sitting in the squalor of a displaced persons camp, what could I possibly say to her except, “everything is going to be all right”, all the time hoping that it would be all right.
This raises the issue of when is it all right to sit there, filled with trepidations and fears about the future, and telling the lie to your beloved granddaughter that everything is all right, everything will get better? When do you tell a beloved and innocent child the truth, that you fear things may worsen?
How can I possibly explain or justify to my granddaughter that my generation has handed her a nine trillion-plus-dollar debt? How realistic is that perhaps some day, if things continue unabated, you or I will be in this picture? The memorable words from our generation of poets and songwriters, Crosby, Stills and Nash once prophetically wrote:
And
you, of tender years,
Can’t know the fears that your elders grew
by.
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the
truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well,
Their
children’s hell will slowly go by.
And feed them on your
dreams,
The one they picks, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t
you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just
look at them and sigh and know they love you…….
There is nothing in this world or beyond comparable to the love of grandchildren, and thus I sigh at the beginning of this, yet another new week, and know love.
Dave
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Jeffrey_Grey on February 09 at 7:30 a.m.
Dave,
I’m so deeply conflicted by this picture. I find myself with a *lot* of questions and precious few - if any - answers.
270 homes destroyed and 16 civilians killed. How do we justify that? How do we rationalize it? ‘You burned our homes and so now it’s our turn to burn yours?’ If that’s our strategy for victory, are we winning yet? Will we?
More to the particular point - Sayed age 80 and Camina age 9. What have they done to deserve this? They’ve probably never been farther from their homes than this in all their lives. They still live in an age and a culture where the next province is to them what the next planet is to us. And yet they have to answer in this way for the specter of terrorism that haunts our every waking hour? They’re responsible?
Except… They are.
You speak of our responsibility to future generations. And I agree wholeheartedly that you speak the truth. But if we’re truly responsible to the future, are we not also responsible to the present? And if we’re truly responsible to both, can we choose to allow radical terrorism to flourish in our midst - and maybe not only allow but actually give active support and encouragement?
Doesn’t that make us responsible?
So in the end, what have we done to meet our responsibilities? How do we justify our conduct and our decisions?
All of us.
thawtfulreader on February 09 at 11:54 a.m.
Better do SOMETHING different in Afghanistan, because the current operational plan is not working.
“Britain and her Nato allies in Afghanistan are stuck in a stalemate with the Taleban, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, admitted today.
His pessimistic view of military progress in Afghanistan coincided with a new poll of Afghans which reveals that confidence in the future is significantly lower than it was three years ago.
The poll of 1,500 people in Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, commissioned by the BBC and two other international broadcasters, found that only 40 per cent of Afghans still believed their country was heading in the right direction, compared with 77 per cent in 2005. Mr Miliband said the figures were realistic.
…
Britain is understood to be pushing for the “Afghanisation” of the Afghan war and is seeking to persuade Washington to drop the original aim of creating a fully-fledged democracy in Afghanistan and instead to embrace “a reasonable objective, in a reasonable time-frame, with a reasonable prospect of success,” as one senior British official put it.
…”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article5695658.ece
“Afghanisation”? You mean like “Vietnamazation”?
That really worked well.
Jeffrey_Grey on February 10 at 4:50 a.m.
This gnawed at me all day yesterday. I thought over and over about what needs to happen here, about how we can go about honoring our responsibilities.
And I think I’ve come up with a way to at least try, however tentatively or partially, to do so.
If I had the power, I’d like to go to Sayed’s tent and bow respectfully. Then I’d say,
“Honored Karim. I wish to apologize most sincerely and most humbly for the pain and uncertainty you have suffered as a result of my deeds. I deeply regret the loss of your home. If you will allow it, I will do what is in my power to try and make that loss good. More especially, I most deeply regret the loss of life which I can never make good or repay.”
“Honored sir, I ask you to believe that this pain and hardship, that this loss of life… These things were never what I wanted. If I could have my way, we would only live in peace and work together to build a better world for your lovely grand daughter - a place of peace and beauty that she herself could then better for her children.”
“But I know, honored sir, that these words seem at odds with my deeds, and so they’re hard to hear or to believe. I beg you, therefore, to let me try to explain.”
“Honored sir, if you could… If it had been within your power… Would you have not done everything possible to prevent this attack upon you? Would you have hesitated even for an instant to use every means at your disposal to protect your home and especially the life of your grand daughter? You would, for what honorable man could stand by and do nothing when his home and the lives of his loved ones were at peril?”
“But you see, Honored Karim, so it is with us. The evil men whom - it must be admitted - you suffer to live in your midst, they have destroyed *our* homes and murdered *our* children. And they have sworn that while they live, they will continue to do so. And so it is that we have used every means at our disposal to try and stop them. I ask you to believe that we don’t do this because we are arrogant or uncaring. We do it because we are afraid and desperate - and growing more so with each passing day and every new atrocity committed against us.”
“Most honorable Karim, I therefore ask you … I beg you! See reason. See the righteous path. Cast these murderers out of your midst. Accuse them before God for their crimes and help us bring them to justice, and by doing so, help us find the strength to admit to justice ourselves - that we all can finally live together in peace.”