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Good Post Mr Mephisto.
How many people here have contravened a traffic law?
It's not a difficult thing to do. People have road accidents on a daily basis. The difference is that here, a failure to comply with the law of the road resulted in the orphaning of these children - a traumatisation of the soldiers involved (how would you get over the knowledge that you'd killed someone's mother and father?) - an increase in the level of distrust and dislike of the American presence, and another win for the insurgency.
All of these victims, after being pushed into this crazy situation by politicians who have made tough decisions on our behalf. The current situation is sponsored by our tax dollars. We are paying for this to happen, and the rest of the world knows that every bullet or bomb that kills an Iraqi civillian was paid for by the American, British and other associated tax-payers.
How angry did we get when we saw Gadaffi sponsoring the murder of westerners? How acceptable did we find Saddam's payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers? And the perception in the rest of the world is that we, the people of the coalition, are paying to support things like this.
How much of a stretch of imagination would it take to convince these orphaned children that the destruction of the west is something to believe in?
I'm not saying the soldiers are doing a bad job - I'm saying that things like this WILL continue to happen while foreign troops remain in Iraq. We have to accept that and continue with the current policy, or reject it, and decide what to do instead.
Are these the eggs that must be broken in order to make the metaphorical omlette?
What can we do if we want there to be a change?
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