"When someone says my son died fighting for his country, I say, No, the suicide bomber who killed my son died fighting for his country." Father of American Soldier Lance CPL. Chase J. Comley, USMC, KIA in Iraq.*
In Iraq, targets of the bombs are sometimes Americans, sometimes other Iraqi religious or ethnic sects, as this six year old war continues.
Tuesday was particularly brutal in Iraq, as 24 Iraqis were killed and 142 more were seriously injured. Among them was an eight year old little girl and her baby sister, killed in a bomb explosion in a busy market in the Sadr City section of Baghdad.
Picture the scene. Let's call the eight year old girl, Farrah and her baby sister, Amira. The girls are with their mother shopping for groceries, when suddenly there is an ear shattering explosion.
As a plume of black smoke rises above the wreckage, blood spattered remains lay in the street among the rubble. People are crying, and those who are physically able are desperately looking for their loved ones, like Farrah and Amira.
Soon the shrill sounds of sirens fill the air as police and rescue workers converge on the scene. The wounded are taken to a nearby understaffed hospital now enveloped in pandemonium.
Understaffed because since the U.S. invasion many medical professionals have fled Iraq. And medical supplies too may be in short supply because they trade profitably on the black market.
The family hears the news of the explosion and in emotional shambles, works its way through security checkpoints to get to the hospital, only to find that Farrah, Amira and likely their mother died at the scene. Now they must make funeral arrangements.
The father, and his other children if he has any, return home devastated and then look at pictures of their dead loved ones on the wall, stare into empty rooms, pickup toys that will no longer be played with and hear silence where just hours earlier there was the happy sound of a baby.
And from this emotional wreckage, they must try to build new lives, while the war goes on around them. Everyone in the home is crying, as are relatives and friends and no-one knows how the family will even function each day with meals, laundry and other basic necessities of life.
This was Tuesday in Iraq, multiplied several times over to account for many more families.
U.S. families are not immune from this death and destruction either. The prior Friday, three U.S. soldiers were killed during a rocket attack near Basra. And now their families must cope with this sickening news and bury their loved ones.
Aside from no war taking place around them, the pain of their loss is every bit as severe. But we as Americans don't see it because the news media doesn't cover it. Like the Iraqis, the American families become invisible.
But there is potentially good news. It is that President Obama could end this war whenever he chooses, by calling for a cease fire. The U.S. would negotiate a settlement and leave, as the Iraqi people would then make their own decisions and operate their own nation.
Such a peace settlement could happen now or will happen years from now after far more people have been killed or injured. But it is what will happen for the Americans cannot forever occupy Iraq.
Meanwhile, in the Los Angeles area thousands of miles from Iraq the vigil attracted numerous horn honks and waves of support as we strive not to let the war's victims be forgotten.
On behalf of Farrah's family, which has no voice in America, you and I can raise our voices to end the war so no new families must endure what they and so many others, including American families, are forced to.
Dick
*The quote in the opening paragraph is from Military Families Speak Out [MFSO] in Orange County, California
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