Thanks to Joseph Bosco for directing me to this devastating photo essay on soldiers who were seriously wounded in the Iraq war.
The pictures are upsetting enough, but the real poignancy is in the text, brief interviews with the young soldiers and how they view thir futures. Painful reading and viewing, but an important reminder that those reports we hear on the news each night and that by now leave most of us numb — those report are about more than just statistics.
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By Fiona Pollard
Yes, painful, and heart-wrenching.
Richard, could you give us an idea of where you’ll be visiting in the mainland?
March 4, 2004 @ 9:13 pm | Comment
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By Richard
Fiona, I expect to arrive in Beijing on Tuesday, and then I will probably go to Shanghai for a couple of days and maybe to Hangzhou. My plans aren’t set in stone. If you have suggestions, let me know!
March 5, 2004 @ 1:08 am | Comment
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By rachel
extremely touching. makes you look at your own life more critically. I don’t support the war, but i think we should support our soldiers overseas.
March 5, 2004 @ 12:21 pm | Comment
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By Jim Peterson
I think it is disgusting the way the left wingers at Mother Jones condescendingly print the patriotic attitudes of the wounded soldiers in a way that “intellectual readers” are probably expected to pity. Instead of printing stuff like a solider gladly sacrificed a limb for Iraqi’s freedom, Mother Jones makes sure the soldiers imply that they have no regrets because they “got to see the world” or “got their education paid for.” The left wing reader is supposed to pity what they would think of as simplistic, easy to please lower class guys…instead of recognizing the cold hard fact that the threat of the Iraq War and the geopolitics since the Iraq War have combined to keep the USA and Europe free from terrorist attacks since September 11th. These brave young men and women have possibly kept 1 Million Americans alive whom otherwise might have been killed by a suitcase nuke…a nuke that might still be sitting in a basement in Manhattan (waiting for a moment in the big chess game that might never happen due to Rumsfeld’s brilliant psychological tactics).
I really admire these soldiers and female readers should be considering them as boyfriends instead of as objects of pity and as motivators toward being more left wing than ever before. These soldiers did not get wounded in order to promote left wing ideology. They got wounded in order to save the world.
Honor them and respect them for this and not because they convinced you to be ideologically their opposite.
You insult them by allowing their injuries to send you in the opposite direction ideologically from what they themselves were fighting for.
Think about it.
You don’t “support the troops” if you despise what they motivate themselves to fight for (democracy).
March 8, 2004 @ 5:15 am | Comment