Can't We Do Better?

BAGHDAD-A dictator is dethroned and a country liberated from his tyrannical, sometimes torturous rule, and amidst human interest groups protesting the early morning hanging of the fourth man involved in the killings of 148 Shiites, to car bombs in Kirkuk killing 12, the smallest cries of this war seem to be unheard across the globe.

Our advanced ability to make aerial war is fought with B-2 stealth bombers, F-117 stealth fighters, and Air Force AC-130 gunships, heavily armed with elaborate sensors that can go after discrete targets. We boast an equally advanced technology that most citizens cannot comprehend. We have the freedom to plan and choose strategy almost at will because we're "the good guys." One would think that we could avoid what has been historically accepted as being "the casualties of war."

But early last year, several innocent Iraqi family members, including women and children, were killed when US forces destroyed their home in an air strike. The reason the home was targeted? US forces said they saw three men suspected of planting a roadside bomb enter the home in Beiji, to Tikrit's north. Police Colonel Sufyan Mustafa commented, "Even if there had been, why didn't they surround the area and detain the terrorists instead?"

In 2004, The Iraqi Health Ministry statistics indicated that more children have been killed around Ramadi and Fallujah than in Baghdad, even though those cities together have only one-fifth of the Iraqi capital's population. The ministry defines children as anyone younger than twelve years of age.

"I think they lost the hearts and minds a long time ago," stated Juan Cole, a history professor at University of Michigan who specializes in Shiite Islam, commenting on the coalition forces already having lost the political campaign, in his opinion.

In 2005, A U.S. fighter jet bombed a crowd gathered at the edge of a provincial capital in western Iraq around a burned Humvee, killing 25 people, 18 of whom were children. The military said the raid had targeted insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks.

Residents of the area commented that a Humvee had been cordoned off on the street, and curious children and other locals had approached it when the military left it there. Some of the children were tossing rocks at the vehicle in play when the bomb hit.

Following the attack, at Ramadi hospital, grieving families fought over the severed body parts, each claiming what they despairingly believed were pieces of their fallen loved ones.

The father of an eight year old girl lamented over having to bury his daughter without having been able to find one of the girl's legs.

Can't we do better?

I cannot even fathom the scene of my husband returning home from searching for my daughter's missing body parts, telling me that her leg just cannot be found, and that we would have to bury her without it. The whole scenario is so distant and an almost improbable idea in our country for a mother to have to go through. It is not even the substance or plots of my nightmares, now or ever.

Oh, there are many reasons why this part of the world is more likely to go through this and that, and that part of the world is less likely to go through other things, and so forth. However, these are travesties perpetuated by the military rolling forward under the same flag that I salute. Therefore, these are things that I believe can be avoided.

The irony that stands out in my mind, as well, is the statement made a couple of years ago by a White House spokesperson:

"Saddam Hussein does not share our sanctity for human life." -Martin Fitzwater.

So perhaps it is the threshold for that "sanctity of human life" that needs to be considered and possibly rebuilt in this country before heading off to liberate and rebuild another nation in the world by first using aerial assault and state-of-the-art targeting methods? I am willing to bet the spared innocent civilians would be thankful if we did.