Monday, March 24, 2008

Murder by numbers

Five years. 4,000 Americans.

Assume two parents and at least one sibling each, plus a couple of grandparents. That’s at least 20,000 surviving family members oh so proud of their son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, sister or brother but oh so fearful they’d die alone and afraid in this ugly mess half way around the world.

Assume at least half of these patriots left behind someone special who hasn't slept much, wondering if they’d ever get another hug, another kiss, another sweet smile, another laugh together. 2,000+ hearts broken.

Assume at least a quarter of them had a child or maybe two. 1,500 kids who’ll never, ever know their brave mommy or daddy.

Assume all of them left behind at least one childhood friend or maybe a beer-drinking buddy. Another 4,000.

Unimaginable, exponential grief.

For greed and ego and stupidity.

This isn’t a war. It’s the worst kind of travesty.
~~~~~~~~~~~
I am listening to: Mad World – Sara Hickman
I am reading: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
And I am: Stranded

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Also Hedy... not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians impacted by this. In a third world countries, there is no organized way to take care of the suffering family members, where the head of the household/bread winner is the 'man' and if the man is no more, the rest of the family is out on the streets.

Civilian kids, women and men that died cause of a bombing error.. and we all know how many they have been. Even on the Pakistan borders with Afghanistan. Lots of innocent fatalities. And the reason we get is.. "oops.. that was a mistaken target".. for what???? u impacted millions of families!!!

Susan's Snippets said...

With a son draft age and a daughter on the cusp - if drafted -I would pack our bags and then we would run for the border.

in that order

Hedy said...

FM - Thank you, thank you for reminding us of the civilians lost in this. I heard the other day that more than 100,000 civilians have died. It's just an unspeakable tragedy and thank you for sharing.