I was truly touched by the tears your
president shed during his speech because of the killing the twenty beautiful
children and the six remarkable adults as he called them. He reminded me of the tears I shed watching
my country ruined by the shock and awe bombing during the last war on Iraq
almost ten years ago.
You gathered to mourn the death of those kids
but when the war was launched, my sister who lived in the states that time and
I cried alone as our family members were still in Iraq and we didn't know what
happened to them. The American missiles didn't differentiate between children
and adults during the war, all Iraqis were exposed to death all days long.
No one offered us condolences for the loss of
our country, our dreams and our hopes for good days to come. We were alone with
our grief; the whole world watched the continuous bombing in silence. Some
people protested but their voices weren't heard. The leaders of the Middle East
watched their brothers and sisters killed, your military bases were on their
lands yet they did nothing to stop you from the war.
Your President called the kids who were
killed at the school by names. Our children who were killed by the American
bombs had no names. I remember a picture of bodies of small kids covered with
blood and piled on the back of a truck, those kids were killed during the
bombing of a small city in Iraq. No apologies where given to their parents or to
the Iraqis for taking the lives of these kids... there were no teddy bears and
no candles..
Do you know Abeer? Abeer is the Iraqi kid who
was fifteen when she was raped in front of her family members by the American
soldiers. The soldiers burnt the house to hide their atrocities. How many of
the American people know the story of Abeer? .
The depleted uranium your troops used in
Fallujah caused higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality? Young
women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the
increasing number of babies being born deformed, with no heads, two heads, and
a single eye in the foreheads or missing limbs. Do you know that young children
in Fallujah are now experiencing cancers and leukemia?
We had endless shooting across my country by the
American troops during the war and even after Iraq surrounded, many of your
soldiers kept shooting at the civilians they thought were a threat. My
relative's wife was shot by your soldier in a checkpoint when her husband
didn't hear the soldier asking him to stop. The cause of the violence in Iraq
wasn't complex as you concluded for your country. The cause was the brutality
of the troops.
Yet in Iraq we don't hear someone walks in a
shopping centre or in a school and start shooting people. But we heard that
innocent people were killed by your troops, I wonder why?
As your president said in Connecticut a few
days ago: "Let the little children come to me" Jesus said, "and do not hinder
them, for to such belongs to kingdom of heaven"
For the Iraqi children who are alive after
experiencing the war, they will watch the news and will feel for your children.
Those who died and no one acknowledged their death they will belong to kingdom
of heaven like the American children who lost their lives during the shooting
and they will be one. Children are children and they deserve to be given the
opportunity to live whether they are Iraqis or American.
One man took the life of the twenty beautiful
children and the six remarkable adults, but your government took the life of
thousands of beautiful children and remarkable adults in Iraq during the ugly
war on Iraq.
Why does the death of the twenty children
affect you so much when the death of the thousands of the Iraqi children was
ignored?
Your loss is big but our loss is greater..
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