Our Views: Photo shows war’s horror

One of the great problems regarding media coverage of war is that we tend to get numb to it. Over time, we can become conditioned to seeing violent images from combat zones, and these pictures no longer stir our emotions.

But the Feb. 21 edition of The New York Times had a front-page photo from war-torn Syria that shook us awake. The photograph showed a little girl, perhaps 8 or 9 years old, who had returned from school to find that her home had been destroyed in an air strike by the Syrian government. Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad has authorized air strikes against his own people in an effort to quash a popular uprising against his brutal regime. In the picture, the little girl’s eyes well with tears as she bears the news of her home’s destruction. We were moved to see that the little girl was wearing a strand of bright beads around her neck that looked like Mardi Gras beads. She would have easily fit in with local carnival celebrations, but her anguish seemed a million miles removed from the frivolity of the recently completed carnival season.

We hope and pray for peace in the Middle East and everywhere around the world. And we look forward to a day in which all children can have lives touched by fun and frivolity, without the shadow of war.

Comments

1) Comment by bourbon-soda - 26/02/2013

@pvbeav - An oddity is that some of the strongest proponents of the theory of evolution are most reluctant to consider that behavior is, to any significant extent, from genes. Politically incorrect.

2) Comment by prbeav - 25/02/2013

The constancy of violent hatred in terrorist states makes one wonder if the tree of life has multiple branches where the single branch for "human being" is typically drawn. To put it another way, I have taken violence as a matter of cultural evolution or memes, but perhaps we are seeing evidence that violent hatred is in some genes.

3) Comment by [e-mail] - 25/02/2013

tradewinns has a good comment; women and children suffer in any conflict in modern war. I don't see much manhood on display. In WWII the world went berserk and hasn't recovered.

4) Comment by tradewinns - 25/02/2013

assad's brutal assualt on his own people yada yada yada. it is a civil war, you should not be taking sides. if history serves me correctly, the "rebels" struck the government first, not vice versa. the children of both sides are the only true innocents in any war, and the only ones who cannot defend themselves.