Show these photos to Putin
Americans are no strangers to the tales of death in wars. No country on Earth can count itself lucky enough to be spared such tragedy. Yet, war-time death is so common that we register the happening with little or no thought. After all, we don’t know those who passed on from a soldier’s bullet or a drone’s bomb. Yes, it is sad when one dies in a war, but it happens.
Everyone dies eventually, anyway, from not only war but disease and accidents. Is the death of a child any more tragic than that of an adult? In my opinion, yes, it is. Adults are responsible for themselves, are dependent on only themselves, and made some mark on the world. Children are dependent on others, must trust adults to make good decisions for them, and must wait to experience many of life’s burdens and joys. Children are potentials, hopes, and dreams fostered by those older and supposedly wiser.
“Caution: graphic content warning” titled an online news story about a 6-year-old girl in Ukraine killed by a Russian bombing in a residential neighborhood near Mariupol. The girl was severely injured while shopping in a supermarket with her parents. If the story were just text, I would have read it the same as many other death stories from many other wars, with a “tsk-tsk,” and a muttered, “How sad.” But there were photos of this child.
She wore blood-stained pajamas with cartoon unicorns. Her socks were purple. Her coat was pink, my granddaughter’s favorite color. One photo showed her attended to in the ambulance, her father beside her, crying into hands covered with her blood. Her eyes were open, but I don’t believe she could see. Her face was eerily peaceful.
In another photo, doctors tried desperately to revive her. One doctor was crying, visibly upset. The attempts to save her failed. She was gone. The last photo showed her on a gurney, covered with her pink coat, only her bare feet and legs visible. No one else was in the picture.
I’m not ashamed to say I wept. Just writing these words brings her face back to the front of my mind, and my eyes fill with tears. The viciousness of war, the ambitions of evil dictators, the favoring of entitled interests, and the violent conflict that comes all too easy are responsible for this little girl’s death. She posed no threat to anyone. She was in a market, for God’s sake! Why was she targeted? Collateral damage? Casualty of war, no one’s fault? Was it a mistake? Oh, so sorry, we didn’t adjust our firing profile to account for the wind. Just one of those things, it happens.
She is not the first face of innocent death in battle. Hundreds of children just as loved and precious have died in every war.
America is not without blame, either. Look at what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places of American-involved conflict. We’ve killed our share of the innocent, unintentional or not. It doesn’t matter who caused the killing. The children are still dead. They died because one side felt it necessary to rain destruction down onto a population. To show their strength, prove a point, and get what they wanted.
Children are dying in a war thousands of miles from Americans. And all we care about is what war will cost us in terms of gasoline pricing, interest rates, and the value of the dollar. Children die in schools from shootings, and all we argue about is whether gun ownership is to blame. Dead children wash up on beaches, just debris from ill-planned escape plans by refugees who some say should know better. Young girls are kidnapped and killed in Africa simply because they wish for education.
In a perfect world, soldiers would be the only casualty of war; children and the innocent would survive. But if the world were perfect, there would be no war at all. Was perfection required to prevent this little girl’s death? No, it was not. The only requirement would be the restraint not to kill to satisfy greed.
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