Picture of the Day - 3
Baquba.
I know this crosses my usual guidance lines on gore, but if you haven't noticed over the last couple days, I'm having alot of trouble getting my head around, or finding the words to express, my absolute horror at what I see going on in Iraq now and in the near future.
I'd thought about and discussed the ongoing civil war many times, but even then it was never real. In my picture obsession, I've seen some of the most truly horrific pictures out of Iraq, horrible things done to innocent people, to children. In my head I knew about it all.
But for some reason now, it's all coalescing in me and this picture somehow captures that. After seeing pictures of Iraqis for so long, of firefights, of victims, something in my mind has transitioned and I am now seeing them all in a reflection of blood.
Quite frankly, I'm having alot of trouble with this.
Sorry, it's not funny. Sorry, it's not witty. Sorry, it's not informational. But it's the truth.
So, you're just going to have to be patient as I work through this. - Mike
posted by mikevotes at
4:26 PM
5 Comments:
I feel the same way that you do Mike. Even the photo on MSNBC this morning was horrific. I have had a horrible feeling in my gut all day thinking about what is going on...and knowing that we helped make it flare-up. There is no way to gloss this over.
By
Ptelea, at 7:55 PM
Thanks. That means alot. I'm going through these periods of heavy emotional response during one of these I wrote this post.
I must not be as genteel as you, because I don't think we helped make it flare up, I think we are the primary cause.
I think that's why this is hurting me so much. I imagine being in their shoes.
I imagine I'm a young educated Iraqi with a wife and maybe a kid, going to college, just trying to stay out of trouble, then the US invades, my school closes, there are no jobs, my wife and child can't leave the house, I've got an uncle in custody somewhere and a brother who is dead, and now I'm afraid to stick my head out the door. No water, no power, no medicine when my kid gets sick. My future gone.
And for what.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 9:04 PM
nice pic mike. You about sum it up. We talk about Iraq like it is a contest, left vs right. We have to remember this is somewhere where someone a lot like us lives. It is depressing to say the least.
By
Graeme, at 3:40 AM
It's the kind of thing you warn about, and fear, but desperately hope won't come to pass. When it does, you're paralyzed at first, still hoping it will quickly end. As the situation worsens and spirals out of control, the anger builds, and the guilt. Not guilt because, as so many righties insist, we lefties "want America to lose," but because we ARE America TOO, and whether we oppose a policy or not, we feel responsible as Americans for its consequences.
There's no sugar-coating it. We invaded a sovereign nation that posed no threat to us; we destroyed it, killing thousands of innocents in the process; and now it is blowing up in a predictable (and predicted) civil war.
I have this habit of putting myself in the other guy's shoes. And if I was the other guy (Iraqi), I'd hate America with good reason.
What hath George Bush wrought?
By
Motherlode, at 8:14 AM
You got it, Motherlode. I don't want anybody to lose. I don't want anybody to die because this president followed some wildassed academic theory (that he certainly didn't fully understand) to start a war.
And, in the longer term, your'e right. Bush's policies have created more terrorists. That's the bottom line.
And Graeme, I really view Iraq as right and wrong, not left and right.
Reading your writings, I think you share that position, but I just wanted to make this clear.
I do not object to this war because I don't like Bush, I don't like Bush because I reject this war.
And, you're right about "someone a lot like us." I think that's the thing that penetrated me so deeply over the past couple of days. I think what has happened to me is that I have lost hope for those people like me.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 8:25 AM
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