This reflection is entitled...

Collateral Damage

Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12, was inside his home in Iraq playing with his sister when an American missile tore through and exploded severing both his arms and leaving him crippled for life .

The military calls it collateral damage when an errant missile hits a civilian home.

Oxford defines collateral as additional but subordinate .

Are Ali's damaged life and almost 100 thousand dead Iraqi civilians subordinate to the human cost of Cheney, Bush, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's grand and outrageous neoconservative oil grabbing designs in the middle East ?

Look deeply into Ali's sad beseeching eyes ~ and you are looking into the eyes of thousands of Iraqi children who are asking ~ why ?

Why do you bomb us and humiliate us ?

Why do you not protect us ?

Why do you enforce your Democracy upon us and taint it with your phony hand picked coalition government ~ which no one believes in ?

Why did you ruin my life and fill my giant heart with hatred for you and everything you stand for ?

Look deeply into Ali's eyes and see the speechless devastating hopelessness and despair which are the true breeding ground of terrorism.

Look deeply into Ali's eyes and see ourselves reflected ~ for we have voted for and financed this Iraqi misadventure and can no longer avoid responsibility for the untold misery and despondency we have created.

Yes , the ultimate collateral damage is our own deteriorated self respect, shame and standing in the world community ~ and, of course, additional and subordinate to neocon wishful thinking .

Ali's blood is on our hands and we have already suffered an immeasurable psychic loss in Iraq which no amount of White house spin can reverse .

I feel ashamed for my country when I look into Ali's pleading eyes and I, for one, will never stop pleading his case before my country and the world community.

We are all brothers and sisters ~ when will we start cooperating with each other and stop killing and maiming each other ?

When will we surrender to love and give Ali back his arms?

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