Someone Just Killed The Neighbors

Lenin’s Tomb has a link to a video clip of a bomb going off in Beirut. With macabre humor, the post is titled “someone just killed the neighbors”. While somewhat jarring, this title is actually very insightful: war generally is not something that happens on some sterilized battlefield away from innocent children and bystanders; rather it’s something that happens on the way to the market and in people’s kitchens. [“Regarding Our Dead Neighbors” (Swerve Left)]

This is what I’ve been talking about for years. We Americans don’t seem to truly grasp that those are actual people dying. I guess because it’s over there. The Middle East is like some twisted evil NeverNeverLand where we send our little boys and they come back in boxes and never grow up, but there aren’t real live people over there. When the news reports bombings and attacks and more dead in the Middle East every day, I just don’t think Americans realize those are real people dying. To us, they’re just numbers, statistics, faceless unknown movie extras.

I just don’t think the average American grasps what it must be like to live in the Middle East, to wake up every day not knowing if you are going to die today. We go about our daily routines getting ready for work or school, fussing over our children, obsessing over whether our kids get in the right preschool, worrying about traffic, trying to run errands, dealing with carpal tunnel or a workaholic boss, trying to get three kids to five after-school commitments plus get dinner on the table and homework…and we never really worry about whether or not that man has a bomb under his coat or that speeding car is a car bomb or if that bomb that went off over there was at our children’s school or our neighbor’s office or our mother’s store or our brother’s bus…

Now imagine that your whole life is just waking up every day and hoping that you can make it until night without anyone you know dying. What kind of life would that be?

Seems hard to imagine, doesn’t it? Seems like something that only exists in the movies, doesn’t it?

And yet…

Children are dying. Everyday.

In fact, even more are dying, unnecessarily, thanks to Israel and Hezbollah. As a country, Israel has a greater responsibility not to murder innocents who can’t defend themselves or help themselves. As Karlo at Swerve Left said, I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Pat Buchanan (emphasis mine):

Israel has a right to defend herself, a right to counterattack against Hezbollah and Hamas, a right to clean out bases from which Katyusha or Qassam rockets are being fired, and a right to occupy land from which attacks are mounted on her people.

But what Israel is doing is imposing deliberate suffering on civilians, collective punishment on innocent people, to force them to do something they are powerless to do: disarm the gunmen among them. Such a policy violates international law and comports neither with our values nor our interests. It is un-American and un-Christian.

But where are the Christians? Why is Pope Benedict virtually alone among Christian leaders to have spoken out against what is being done to Lebanese Christians and Muslims?

When al-Qaeda captured two U.S. soldiers and barbarically butchered them, the U.S. Army did not smash power plants across the Sunni Triangle. Why then is Bush not only silent but openly supportive when Israelis do this?

People are dying. Humans are dying. Our neighbors are dying. Most of them are innocent bystanders, many of them are children. They’re our neighbors. Where’s your compassion?

tags: Israel, Pat Buchanan, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Middle East, Lebanon

2 comments

1. on July 22, 2006 at 2:29 pm

   Big Dog said:

   In all reality, if we did not have forces there I don’t think anyone would give a rat’s ass if they all killed each other off. I know I would not lose sleep over terrorists killing each other. These animals are killing most of the children.

   Pat Buchanan is anti-Semitic and if you agree with him, well…in any event no one cared while Israeli children were being threatened each and every day. The terrorists have been sending rockets in for years and now Israel is tired of it.

   Helbollah does not care about the people of Lebanon. They only want to destroy Israel at all costs and they have the backing of Iran who wants to wipe Israel off the map. Israel has given the UN and the international community 6 years to get this taken care of. Now, they will deliver their own justice and handle it. Lebanon will be punished to some extent for allowing Hezbollah to remain. To say that innocent people are being targeted is a lie.

   Granted, the bridges and power plants will hurt innocents but it is a sound military strategy to keep Iran and Syria from resupplying Hezbollah. Israel is going out of its way to ensure innocent people are not killed. They drop leaflets and make announcements. Hezbollah, on the other hand, uses its own civilians as shields (a violation of the Geneva, a Geneva that the left is so willing to treat THEM by), they send rockets into the air and do not know where they will come down and they do not care if they kill innocents.

   So boo hoo for Lebanon. I feel badly for them but the terrorists have got to go and that is that.

2. on July 22, 2006 at 2:30 pm

   Big Dog said:

   Pat Buchanan also said God told him George Bush would win by a lot (which he actually did) but I remember people saying he was a wacko. Now that he is using anti-semitic rhetoric, he is sane?

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.