The link below was *not* on the BBC today. I found the link below when I looked at the BBC site.
What was on the BBC this morning at 9 am EST was a story that American armed forces in Afghanistan were broadcasting over the radio urgent pleas to everyone to not pick up the food packages that were being dropped. The reason for this was that the packaging of the food parcels and the packaging of cluster bombs are very similar. The BBC reported that there is a particular problem in that children are often the ones sent out to pick up the food packages which are turning out to be cluster bombs. Of course, as an adult, I am not in favor of adults picking up what they think are food packages and finding out - the hard way, in that one last brief second of life - that what they are picking up is a cluster bomb. Maybe this is one of the reasons that relief agencies have been against these food drops - if you want to get food to people, bring it to people, as Church World Service, Lutheran World Relief, the UN, and everyone else does - bring it in on trucks and give it to people. But perhaps a whole lot more difficult is knowing that children, women, men, civilians are out picking up cluster bombs that look like food packages - which were dropped in the same places. Innocents. Is this the nature of war, do we write off as unfortunate but "they" started it? That would be the terrorists' justification for killing innocents - they were after the World Trade Center where there were corporations, banks, and other entities that are part of the evil that they feel is globalization and exploitation and killing (through economic and other policies) of innocents and they had to strike at the very center of world trade to stop this - and if innocents were killed, well, we had been warned through words and deeds that they, the people behind September 11th, felt that these things must stop. Hell, the WTC was bombed before, people should have known, if innocents were killed, well, unfortunate, they had been warned - that is terrorist thinking which I deplore and condemn as immoral. So they killed innocents to strike at what they felt was evil and we kill innocents to strike at what we fell is evil and why is what we do better than what they do - because we do it and we always give ourselves the higher moral ground? Because they started it - but they would argue we started it by our policies. They would argue we started it by our support of terrorism against Palestinians. And then we could argue that they started it by their treatment of Israel. They we could say that they started it because they opposed our creating a new nation of Israel in 1948 in their midst - without their approval. And they would say we started it because we created that nation of Israel only after the Holocaust, which they had nothing to do with. And so on and so on and so on. Ever more saying, not me, you started it. Each side saying, you kill innocents - I am just having accidental consequences of war. Last night I spent the evening with my Army Ranger buddy with whom I have been friends for many years. He and I are 95% in agreement, and the 5% that we aren't, we understand of each other. His feeling as an Army ranger is that you want to get bin Laden, send special forces and get bin Laden - but, my Ranger friend says, there is no call to wage war against the people, the nation of Afghanistan. He says we cannot argue that we don't like their government so we can wage war on them, because they can wage war on us for the same reason, they don't like our government. You want bin Laden, go get bin laden, leave the people alone. He wonders, like I do, where does this stop. And children are out there picking up cluster bombs that look like food. And we dropped those things together to oppose violence against innocents. Somehow it doesn't make sense. It sounds very wrong when they do it, sounds very wrong when we do it. I will never forget the horror of September 11th. But my mind is not eased by picturing someone's child being blown to hell by a cluster bomb, especially as they reach out for they think is food. Returning evil for evil does not eliminate evil. It only extends evil. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1619000/1619159.stm
