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April
7, 2003 9:35 a.m.
A
Message from the War
Tell
your children.
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 ur
kids know America is doing a noble thing in Iraq.
They know about brave
PFC Lynch and her rescuers. About Coalition soldiers giving chocolate
to Iraqi kids. About statues of Saddam Hussein being toppled. About water
and food coming in by the ton to aid suffering Iraqis.
We can't tell
them everything because they are all under nine. How do you explain the
hunt for a man like Chemical Ali, who gassed the Kurds? Or the discovery
of a warehouse filled with human remains, where atrocities were committed
and photographed for posterity? Or about a pregnant woman blowing herself
up in order to harm our soldiers?
The facts say a lot
about the mission:
They grab conscripts
off the streets and order them to drive suicidally at Coalition troops.
We renamed their
international airport for the capital city, not for its cruel dictator.
They herd civilians
into the crossfire.
We cradle babies
who were wounded in the crossfire.
They torture children
in front of their parents.
We give water, candy,
and smiles to shyly approaching children.
We provide EPWs with
the best medical care they've ever received.
They execute our
captured soldiers and jeer over the bodies.
Our kids don't know
all of that.
But they know about
9/11. About one little classmate whose dad went to work that day and never
came home. About the baby brother who would never know his father. About
that student's older brother who came to school and spoke to the kids
before he was deployed to Kuwait. About our friend, a major in the United
States Marine Corps, who is in Iraq. They saw him on TV.
We received an e-mail
from him this weekend:
Hi guys —
I am just out of Iraq and heading back in in a few days. Things are
OK. Most people are saying things are going great, but I stay more grounded
than that as I feel if I asked a number of parents who lost some of
our Marines at Nasiriyah they would not agree with our perspective.
This is a real thing and kids are not coming home — this is not
an adventure anymore. I truly feel like we are doing good here as this
world will hopefully be a better and safer place. It is your job to
let your children know that other people paid a sacrifice for them when
they will be able to play little league baseball without having to show
papers to cross a county border or get searched by armed military in
a "police state."
Some of the things
I have seen make me proud to be an American, but more so it MAKES ME
APPRECIATE IT. We do not have our children living with no electricity,
no shoes, no water, filth in the streets with trash stuck to barbed
wire, waiting at corners to beg a foreign military for handouts as they
drive by. Our kids do not literally spend an entire day filling dirty
old plastic containers with water that leaks from a pipe at a military
checkpoint. We do not have a war-torn town or mass graves on the outskirts
of our town where hundreds of our residents were either shot in the
head or gassed by our own leaders leaving children with their eyes wide
open and foaming blood draining from their little cute-noses still being
held by their also dead parents...and our kids do not hide their faces
in fear of death if their faces ends up in a photo which may be thought
of as "aiding the enemy."
No — we do
not have those problems — we get upset because we expect to be
given everything and it is always someone else's fault. We blame our
crimes on the neighborhood we grew up in. We get upset because the cable
goes out or the traffic light is too long...and God help us if the AC
goes out — yeah our lives are practically unbearable...
Our kids have not
read this e-mail but I think they would get it. Don't worry, Major Dave,
we'll let the children know.
—
Susan Konig, an NRO contributor, has just written a book, Why Animals
Sleep So Close to the Road (and other lies I tell my children). |
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