Sunday, June 01, 2003
Compassionate conservative. What does that mean?
compassionate
adj 1: showing merciful compassion; "sparing the child's mother was a compassionate act" 2: showing or having compassion; "heard the soft and compassionate voices of women" [ant: uncompassionate] 3: showing recognition of unusually distressful circumstances; "compassionate leave"; "considered for a compassionate discharge because of domestic difficulties" v : share the suffering of [syn: feel for, pity, condole with, sympathize with]
conservative
\Con*serv"a*tive\, n. 1. One who, or that which, preserves from ruin, injury, innovation, or radical change; a preserver; a conserver. The Holy Spirit is the great conservative of the new life. --Jer. Taylor. 2. One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs; also, one who holds moderate opinions in politics; -- opposed to revolutionary or radical. 3. (Eng. Hist.) A member of the Conservative party.
Sarhan, a 22 year old woman, usually slept in the dining room. As she layed in bed on the night of April 22nd, a fragment from a U.S. tank round smashed though the front door, and into Sarhan's left leg, leaving it a tangle of exposed muscle and bone. She was rushed to the hospital amid the fighting and the doctors removed much of the leg. The amputation saved her life, leading Sarhan to write poems of thanks to her surgeons. But now she has been consigned to a wheel chair.
She had never been a supporter of the U.S. invasion, but has nonetheless forgiven the anonymous soldiers who injured her in pursuit of their enemies. She has asked for help from the United States in finding a prosthetic leg. But she has been told during visits from U.S. military officials and an army chaplain that none will be forthcoming. "They told me, 'We don't have anything for you right now. It's up to a higher authority.' " I guess that means either Allah or God must intervene.
The stub where her leg was still tingles from time to time. "I knew they would hurt us," she said. "Mr. Bush said this would be a clean war. Is this a clean war?"
Sarhan is one of thousands of Iraqis who embody the collateral damage of that war, described by the Bush administration as a means of liberating the country from former president Saddam Hussein.
To many who lost livelihoods and limbs in the process, a U.S. reconstruction effort in its seventh week should be as much about recompense as restarting electrical grids, and pumping stations.
U.S. officials have made it clear, that they do NOT intend to conduct any accounting of war damages, nor compensate those who say the occupying army owes them something.
Some are sympathetic to individual hardships suffered as a result of war, but U.S. officials say they are wary of beginning a legal process that could entail millions of claims against them. We can give Billions of dollars to Halliburton to repair physical damage to oil wells and other utilities but we turn our back on any human toll our invasion of their country caused.
International relief organizations, including the Islamic Red Crescent Society, say the conventions of war hold the United States responsible for paying out such claims. However, the U.S. has already made it abundantly clear that we pick and choose which international conventions we will follow.
-------------------
The innocents. the ones our leaders call "collateral damage" are either dead or hurting, and the Bush administration does not care. We were told how our advanced weapons would be a war of surgical strikes. There were not supposed to be very few civilian casualties. We were lied to. No one in our government wants to know how many innocents were really killed. We do not want to be responsible for the human carnage we caused. We do, however feel compunction toward repairing some of the physical assets, especially anything that dealt with oil
During the battle for Bagdad. The soldiers were specifically assigned to protect the oil ministry and the oil infrastructure. Museums hospitals and schools were not on their lists. Those things deal with humanity and human well being. Those things were and are vital to the people of Iraq, not to the conquerors.
What we are doing to Iraqi people like Sarhan, the 22 year old woman, who will be wheel chair bound for the rest of her life, is not christian. It is not conservative. She did not bring this upon herself! Her only sin, was to live in a country that has a natural resource we abuse and refuse to conserve.
If this is Christian conservative, it has a new definition. Uncaring, cold-hearted greed wrapped in altruistic propaganda.
compassionate
adj 1: showing merciful compassion; "sparing the child's mother was a compassionate act" 2: showing or having compassion; "heard the soft and compassionate voices of women" [ant: uncompassionate] 3: showing recognition of unusually distressful circumstances; "compassionate leave"; "considered for a compassionate discharge because of domestic difficulties" v : share the suffering of [syn: feel for, pity, condole with, sympathize with]
conservative
\Con*serv"a*tive\, n. 1. One who, or that which, preserves from ruin, injury, innovation, or radical change; a preserver; a conserver. The Holy Spirit is the great conservative of the new life. --Jer. Taylor. 2. One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs; also, one who holds moderate opinions in politics; -- opposed to revolutionary or radical. 3. (Eng. Hist.) A member of the Conservative party.
Sarhan, a 22 year old woman, usually slept in the dining room. As she layed in bed on the night of April 22nd, a fragment from a U.S. tank round smashed though the front door, and into Sarhan's left leg, leaving it a tangle of exposed muscle and bone. She was rushed to the hospital amid the fighting and the doctors removed much of the leg. The amputation saved her life, leading Sarhan to write poems of thanks to her surgeons. But now she has been consigned to a wheel chair.
She had never been a supporter of the U.S. invasion, but has nonetheless forgiven the anonymous soldiers who injured her in pursuit of their enemies. She has asked for help from the United States in finding a prosthetic leg. But she has been told during visits from U.S. military officials and an army chaplain that none will be forthcoming. "They told me, 'We don't have anything for you right now. It's up to a higher authority.' " I guess that means either Allah or God must intervene.
The stub where her leg was still tingles from time to time. "I knew they would hurt us," she said. "Mr. Bush said this would be a clean war. Is this a clean war?"
Sarhan is one of thousands of Iraqis who embody the collateral damage of that war, described by the Bush administration as a means of liberating the country from former president Saddam Hussein.
To many who lost livelihoods and limbs in the process, a U.S. reconstruction effort in its seventh week should be as much about recompense as restarting electrical grids, and pumping stations.
U.S. officials have made it clear, that they do NOT intend to conduct any accounting of war damages, nor compensate those who say the occupying army owes them something.
Some are sympathetic to individual hardships suffered as a result of war, but U.S. officials say they are wary of beginning a legal process that could entail millions of claims against them. We can give Billions of dollars to Halliburton to repair physical damage to oil wells and other utilities but we turn our back on any human toll our invasion of their country caused.
International relief organizations, including the Islamic Red Crescent Society, say the conventions of war hold the United States responsible for paying out such claims. However, the U.S. has already made it abundantly clear that we pick and choose which international conventions we will follow.
-------------------
The innocents. the ones our leaders call "collateral damage" are either dead or hurting, and the Bush administration does not care. We were told how our advanced weapons would be a war of surgical strikes. There were not supposed to be very few civilian casualties. We were lied to. No one in our government wants to know how many innocents were really killed. We do not want to be responsible for the human carnage we caused. We do, however feel compunction toward repairing some of the physical assets, especially anything that dealt with oil
During the battle for Bagdad. The soldiers were specifically assigned to protect the oil ministry and the oil infrastructure. Museums hospitals and schools were not on their lists. Those things deal with humanity and human well being. Those things were and are vital to the people of Iraq, not to the conquerors.
What we are doing to Iraqi people like Sarhan, the 22 year old woman, who will be wheel chair bound for the rest of her life, is not christian. It is not conservative. She did not bring this upon herself! Her only sin, was to live in a country that has a natural resource we abuse and refuse to conserve.
If this is Christian conservative, it has a new definition. Uncaring, cold-hearted greed wrapped in altruistic propaganda.
# posted by Thomas @ 12:14 AM 
