Top story in the news today. Go look. We'll wait.

This absolutely outrages me. It would anyway, no matter who the child is, no matter where. This angers me just a little bit more than it would anywhere else, though.

That's because I am certain, deep in the bottom of my little heart of hearts, that this would not have happened had me not steamrolled that country. If we had left Sadaam in iron control of that steaming heap of whackadoos, that kid would be playing with his friends today. If we hadn't opened the door to every half-baked psycho that our government used as an excuse to go in there, that kid would be in school. And, possibly, still smiling.

But what REALLY riles me is the certainty with which I expect this to be used by conservative pundits and bloggers as a justification of the war. I fully expect to see people saying "See? This is what the people we're fighting are like. You want to end the war? You're just handing these terrorists more children to light up like kindling." And it will be a lie, and they know it.

Besides the obvious fallacy - the fact is we handed THIS kid to the terrorists when we ripped their country wide open - there is the idea that these people could possibly care less about Iraqi children. It takes a truly delusional soul to blow up a country to save the children in it. It didn't work in Waco, and doesn't work on a larger scale, either. But to take it a little further, aren't these the same people who call a two-year old girl with an American bullet in her forehead "collateral damage?" Don't these same people tell us "You've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet?" Don't they tell us it will be worthwhile in the end? Sure - because it's not YOUR two year old daughter catching the bullet, not YOUR kindergarten aged son being set on fire by masked strangers.

"But they attacked us!!" No, the Iraqis did not attack us. And no children of any nationality attacked us.

And let us finally dispense with the bullshit about how this is making us safer. It isn't. Securing our borders, checking incoming cargo, and breeding goodwill internationally might, but no one seems interested in such tactics. They're too busy working to get the 3000 killed on 9/11/01 some "justice".

But is that what we're actually working toward? Justice? How many hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians must die so that our 3000 can have justice? How many American soldiers must die before we feel that we've paid our debt to the 3000?

How many children - innocent, laughing babes that cannot even yet concieve of true evil- have to be torched before we admit that we were simply scared out of our skins on 9/11/01, and just want to get past the black eye we were given in front of the whole world by showing how God damn tough we are? How many truckloads of dead babies does it take for us to admit that we are still scared, and want to feel like we can ever be safe again?

Like this little boy will probably never, ever, feel as long as he lives.

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UPDATE:

It seems that help is on the way for this boy. He's coming here for treatment.

Now, how about if CNN puts every little kid our government's policies have helped fuck over on the news? We have a lot more guilt to assuage, I'm sure.