The innocent; the children, the old people, the young policemen lying in their own blood, the relatives made instantly insane with grief.

Seeing/ knowing of these events, I’d like to humbly suggest an exhortation for us all. The exhortation starts with “Never never never never ever ever ever …” then, you please personally fill in the blank with whatever will preserve your sanity whilst allowing you to keep speaking up, acting up, never standing down about egregious matters.

For me, I think mine would go, “Never never never never ever ever ever … let the slaughter of innocents be taken to the cultural desert and buried in an unmarked political grave… and “Please, never never never never ever ever ever …” allow me to become inured, no matter how events in war grab and twist my tripes.

It’s so much easier to be inured, I think. So much easier. Mullen and I talk alot late a night about what a withdrawal from Iraq may presage, what slaughter of even more innocents might occur. We both remember the fall of Saigon intimately, people trying to throw their children over the walls of the embassy to save them, people trying to cling to the sled legs of the American helicopters in a desperate attempt to escape Saigon’s immanent bloodbath, but falling to their deaths instead.

If you would, please join me in praying for this father and mother of this little Iraqi madonna. In the photo, that is the child’s father. Please pray for all of us to be somehow impossibly wise, to be granted unlimited miracles in Iraq and Afghanistan and throughout the entire world. I am praying for you too, for your sanity, for your heart, for your endurance. That’s a promise.

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CODA
Thank you Andrew Sullivan for passing this so very sad photograph forward. Many of us have come to believe that we cannot sanitize war’s realities by withholding horrendous images, that we are past being, must be past being careful about people’s visual sensitivities. In Latin, Horrescere, to act, to stand on end, bristle, be rough; to reveal the reality to prompt action. I regret deeply that that’s the exact ticket needed to roll hot at present.