When War Comes Close to Home

Among recent incidents of "collateral damage" or, "friendly fire", we, draped in the flag of the United States, have bombed a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz (3 killed & 30 unaccounted for), and a residential neighborhood called "the Woods", in Mosul (4 killed, in addition to the injured).
What's wrong with this picture ?

This story is about a tragedy.

Obliquely, it is also about the destructive nature of religions. The quagmire in the Middle East is the result of religious bigotry.

All of the combatants cite God and their religious teachings while creating a hell on earth. Religions are based upon Imaginary good but they only produce real evil. Someday, it will destroy the Earth.

The architect of this war, George W. Bush, was recently mentioned in an artcle in this very paper on Jeb. In it is stated that he may bring his brother on the campaign trail, as a large percentage of his "base" think very highly of the Bush years and George W. Bush in general. Where is the media to ask the hard questions of candidate Jeb? When does the media start to do their jobs? The blood is on the hands of the reporters that ignore their responsiblity in a democarcy, and as they fail, so does our democracy. Time to head to the exits and allow those that think the Republican agenda is good to have it all, they will eventually cannibalize themselves.

I wish to convey my deepest sympathy to Zareena Grewal for the lost of family and friends in such horrific conditions. For decades, Irakis have suffered war close to home on a daily basis as all parties involved have wrongly invoked God or Allah and made Him the perpetrator's force behind the bloodshed taking place.

God's laws given to humanity by Moses were made to keep men and women alive and at peace with its neighbors. However, they were rejected and replaced by new laws from kings, religious leaders and powerful military chiefs who kept mankind in a perpetual state of slavery that served only their king's taste for war and power over militarily weaker peoples and nations.

Cain and Abel are not real people but the representation of good and evil that was to come with the rejection of God's laws given by Moses. In making God responsible for centuries of wars, people on "both sides of the aisle" are wrong. In making God responsible for the dead in Irak, it washes away the responsibility of the ones who committed atrocities in the name of Allah and\or God.

Thank you for this most eloquent expression of Muslim thoughts and beliefs. I am sharing your piece with my students, colleagues and members of various congregations here In Palo Alto.

"The fact that some of my family members survived the airstrike by God's mercy, and others did not, also by God's will, does not erase the human culpability and barbarity of war, the human error that caused them to be targeted."

Help me translate the passage above: is the author saying it was God's will, human error, or somehow both?

Religion is so confusing!

This tragedy comes close to our home in Michigan. My dear friend Basim and his lovely wife Miyada lived in Kalamazoo when Basim attended Western Michigan University. Basim and I were study partners and became friends. He invited me to his home and we shared meals together. We discussed religion, and I as a Christian gained respect for my Islamic brother. We talked about life, coming from such vastly different places and world view, but more so, we chose to acknowledge our connection we shared as descendants of Abraham. We believed, and I still do, that our God is what unites us.

Basim and Miyada taught me about relationship and I learned how a husband loves his wife through his example. When I returned from shopping for an engagement ring for my bride, Basim and Miyada were the first to give their approval.

I am thankful for your friendship Basim and Miyada. I close with the sentiment shared with my friend upon learning of our loss.

Basim, I am so sorry and upset for the loss you have. My thoughts go back to memories of our shared past. I love you. My heart aches. I cannot begin to imagine your grief, but as I try it hurts and brings me to a small understanding. How much anger and hurt must endure before love and compassion rule? In God's time. Our God sees us. Our God loves us. Our God one day judges. I seek His forgiveness and one day pray reunion in fellowship in His kingdom and with His children, brothers and sisters in love.

Zareena I am sorry for your family's loss, and I commend you on your courage to share such experience publicly, and despite its sadness and tragedy, yet eloquently.

As Americans of Arab/Asian/Foreign descent, we love the USA, its founding principles, and its historic quest for equality, freedom and justice. Yet, we are also saddened when sometimes US foreign policy sometimes does not seem to apply historic founding US ideals and ethics equally across the spectrum. Freedom and equality "for all' does not mean "to all Americans", but to all human beings, irrespective of origin, religion, or geography. To such effect, I do hope that an acknowledgement of such tragedy is made by those responsible, and steps are put in place to avoid such tragedies in the future, and help those that have survived but yet sustained immeasurable suffering...

"Collateral damage" should not be simply a convenience phrase... I do hope your story would remind all, that real innocent people are needlessly losing their lives... I do hope your story is forwarded to the White House for the president to read, as I do believe he is a good president, but I wonder if he is told of your tragedy, and countless similar tragedies...

Imagine the screaming we would hear 24/7 if the Bush Jr. administration had done this. But because Mr. Bumbles and the Cool Administration gets a pass, this is just another sad story.

The Islamist terror side has attacked hospitals in the past, especially since 2005.
http://www.dawn.com/news/848483/suicide-bomber-hits-d-i-khan-hospital-32...

Peace is better than war and justice is better than injustice. Even a just war brings death and destruction, homelessness and PTSD, physical scars and psychological trauma, disability and fear to countless innocents. Far more civilians are harmed by any war than combatants and we need to count that -- we need to count the effect on civilians, the effect on our troops and their families -- not just the effect on the bad guys.

War is bad for humans and other living things. It should always be a last resort. Who in America can honestly say that our wars since WWII have been just? Who can honestly say that the damage to innocents has been justified?

Zareena, thank you for sharing this account with us. As I listened to the news this weekend about the US strike on the hospital in Afghanistan, I thought of all the innocent people killed by such strikes. Thanks to you I now know about a few of those killed by US bombs. I am so sorry. I have tried since the 1960s to stop US military killings, but nothing I say will stop We The People from committing such atrocities. We need the world to speak up and the families of the dead to shout out their anger. The US needs to be shamed into stopping this deadly behavior.

Very sad story only to be matched by countless other sad stories that can be told from the past few years of ISIS and the many millennia of the past.

This is not an aberration but rather a confirmation of history. We are at constant war.

Thank you for writing about the horrid, sad death and maiming of your family members. Nothing can really bring the solace you seek. I will tell you that I read your essay aloud this morning to my husband. We were sitting on our front porch in our safe and quiet neighborbood, so far in every way from your family's home in Mosul. And yet, your words brought to us what we have in common, our children, our family elders, the light coming through curtains in our homes, the joy of children's voices, a dear pet. We just want to let you know that we honored your family this morning and reflected on the ever unfathomable inhumaity of war. When I take our dog for walks, when I look at the moon, I will think of your family and our own.

This is a tragedy, and nothing should take away from that. It is also a tragedy born out of a tremendous lack of good options in that part of the world.

I wish very much that the energy Mrs. Grewal and many of her fellow believers expend on this thoughtful article could also be directed inward. There is almost no indigenous pressure for decent governance in the vast majority of modern Arabia right now, and while we've seen decades of complaining about America, Israel, and the "hidden hand" of some extermal power, the real problems in the region simply compound and fester.

I'd like to ask Mrs. Grewal to contemplate: If Muslims strive for justice in this world, then why is it not found in just about any Muslim-majority country? If Western powers are the source of such profound injustice, why are Muslims (like you, I might add) clamoring to live there? Why do local Muslims in the Middle East, who strive for justice, seem to have no alternative to secular tyranny than to replace it with religious tyranny?

This is a tragedy, and I'm truly sorry for your loss. Your family doesn't sound like it was an active supporter of any of the bad options playing out there, but the domestic culture of the Arab world has been sick for a long time and passivity is no longer an option: Overpopulation, illiteracy, and a long overdue reformation to a massive religious inferiority complex are long overdue. Enough with the foreign policy lamentations. It's Arabian domestic policy that's wrong.

This is what happens when our politicians decided to fight an "antiseptic" war - no boots on the ground, minimal risk of our lives and limbs. Instead, we drop bombs from 5000 feet at 600 miles an hour, based on "intel" that's old or just flat out wrong. Sometimes we're caught in the spiders web of local politics where one faction uses our jets and drones to take out another faction by claiming "those are bad guys". It's not really a war to us, it's more like a video game writ large.

If you ask the young men who fly these missions and drop the bombs, you'll see a detachment from the act - they fly out, bomb their target and fly home. A couple of hours after they land, they're in the O Club, having a steak and watching satellite television. It's a job. Until these wars hit home in a very personal way - they have for me - if we care at all, it will be as spectators watching just another contest between proxies.

Thank you for this article. It reminds us, and we certainly need reminding here in America, that war is fundamentally about killing & harming human beings like ourselves. The evil notion that war is romantic is promulgated mostly by people who have never been in war and/or profit in some way from it. I'm not a complete pacifist, but if we applied the old concepts of moral justification for war, horrors such as portrayed in this article would hopefully be minimized. (The most egregious example of violation of Just War Criteria was starting the unnecessary war in Iraq in 2003).

“It is essential not to lose sight of the moral dimension of war." Ron Paul

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” Mohandas Gandhi

"All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets". Voltaire

The author states that "Muslims strive for justice in this world ..."

Herein lies part of our problem. Many Muslims strive for justice but some, notably, do not. Where the author declares an absolute, so do others claim the opposite absolute ... that all Muslims strive for injustice. Broad and false statements about ethnic groups are the root of the problem, even when the statements sound nice.

I believe that the author strives for justice, using her Muslim beliefs as a starting point. This is more than enough.

Quoting the wonderful song by Marvin Gaye, "war is not the answer, only love can conquer hate", rings true to my beliefs. It seems to me that the purpose of religion, pick any you like, is to drive home this message. Yet there is not one religion (now even Hindi join these ranks) that doesn't embrace violence against followers of other religions. That fact makes it much more difficult for me to adhere to any of them. If there is a God, then he/she must understand the deliberate misreading of this message, yet one more reason to be suspicious.
If there is a God, I cannot believe he/she would micromanage our daily lives, answering individual prayers, intervening at every incident of misuse, etc. Collateral damage would seem to support that proposition. But correcting the continual misinterpretation of the message wouldn't be considered micromanagement, but rather a badly needed redefining of the misunderstood meaning that would seem central to the very existence of a divine being.
Please God, or Allah, if you are there, clarify your message, as it seems there is a lot of pain being dished out by many of those who believe you are in favor of their misinterpretations.

We have just finished mourning the loss of 9 students in Oregon, blaming not checking people who buy guns for the reason. The perpetrator was a very mentally ill man whose habits and behavior by family and friends were ignored. But what is our excuse? Are our leaders out of their minds, obsessed with military hardware to revenge ourselves for imaginary findings? We need to have psychiatric care for the people who make the decisions in office in our country which are destructive enough to be unable to properly describe the results. I am haunted by the sweet, hopeful faces of the relatives of the writer who perished. What it has cost her to write this moving report cannot be imagined. We must face reality and listen to voices like Bernie Sanders, or humanity and the planet will be doomed before long. Our country has become a disgrace in the world and to many of its citizens.

"War is not the answer." A sign sits outside the campus ministry office of Guilford College in Greensboro, NC, a Quaker College. It has sat there for many years.

The first half of this article is important and excellent. The US needs to do a better job at reducing civilian casualties, 100%. It should acknowledge failures to do so to give some sort of peace to the living family of victims. It's both morally wrong and tactically wrong to incur unnecessary civilian casualties.

The second half of this article lost me when it labeled criticism of Islam as racism (beliefs are a race now?) and went on to try and convince us just how beautiful Islam *really* is (the author's version of it anyway) and how all adherents are just "striving for justice in this world."

This is a hard game. If you use force the wrong people sometimes get hurt. Half of the pepple GOP, want more and more. The rest want none. I think it is best to talk to your enemy rather than shoot

You claim it is a "racist lie that for Muslims, life is cheap, that Muslims prefer death to life." This was not an invention of some mean and twisted old Monty Burns like billionaire in his broad estate, it was a statement made directly by Osama Bin Laden, as head of Al Qaeda , immediately after the cruel and senseless murder of thousands of American civilians , using American aircraft filled with women and Children used as missiles.
Bin Laden said ,"We (Muslims) will win the war of religions and societies because you Americans love life and we Muslims love death."
You twist or bend history because you are angry that your unfortunate family has been hurt. This reminds me of Philip Caputo's dream in A Rumor Of War" where he sees Americans killing Americans the way they killed Vietnamese.
ALl Wars have this problem and this war was begun by a man who was elected with votes from a majority of America's Muslim vote.

Sorry for your loss. It is the routine condolence.

War is unpleasant indeed. It is supposed to make civilized society recoil.
We did not pick a fight with Daesh, they started with the goal of provoking all
of western society. We did not create the conflict between islamic sects, they
have been massacring each other for a millennium. Saddam and his poisonous
regime could have only held the lid on for a little while longer. I don't think the
left wing majority here remembers that it was Saddam who started this recent
mess with invasions. While we should not be the world's sole police, the world does need police.

Bombs fall where they fall. I don't have access to the intel underlying this airstrike and neither do you. Was this a legitimate target or not, or a lie spread by a jealous neighbor? Was there intent to hit your family home? I don't
know and neither do you.

I do know that I, myself, want the life crushed from these barbarous gangsters.
I do, even though I have just as much "skin" in the fight as you. My son and his friends are in the infantry, have been in combat, and have seen up close the
mutilations inflicts by islamists.

Hospitals in Afghanistan. Houses in Mosul. Wedding parties in Yemen.

I suppose there is some amorphous threat that justifies all this. We are, after all, just trying to help people oppressed by someone else. But this is not help. I do not want this blood on my hands... spilled by people I pay with my taxes to "keep us safe". This does not "keep us safe".

Good job Mr. President. You have exposed the moral bankruptcy of America to my eyes. I thought Obama was different. Silly me.

Zareena's word:
"This sustains the racist lie that for Muslims, life is cheap, that Muslims prefer death to life."

I have an Indian Muslim friend, married, 30 with a toddler.

Here is a recent e.mail exchange following the Haj stampede:
Q:Has any of your family were involved in the Haj tragedy?
A:Hello,
Everything is ok
Thank God
Thank you
Q:there are many who cannot "thank God"!
A: if you go and ask them they will still THANK GOD

Mark's other half
What a beautiful essay, with sad poignance and much truth.
I am not of any monotheistic religion, and sometimes I do not know if that is good or bad. But I do believe there is a war of civilization going on between the West and the Middle East, though nobody likes to admit that, and analyze it honestly.

And what will all the analysis do, like all the research on poverty, if it was done? Will it find an acceptable, appropriate, mutually agreeable and beneficial solution?

I do try to do my part to understand with compassion and truth others' struggles so I may educate others, as you do your part to educate us with your sharing of your struggle and pain. I give you these three quotes from Khalil Gibran (one of my favorite Middle Eastern poet and philosopher):

Faith is an oasis in the heart
which will never be reached
by the caravan of thinking.

Yesterday is but today's memory,
and tomorrow is today's dream.

Love...
it surrounds every being
and extends slowly to embrace
all that shall be.

My husband (Mark) and I, as we grieve for your irreplaceable loss, wish you love, comfort, security, healing and support...so you may go on to fight your battles with strength.

Dear Zareena: It offers me some comfort to join others in expressing our sadness and condolences. I hope it offers you some comfort as well. Yes, the red eclipsed moon was a beautiful and divine experience free of national or religious borders, high above the torment and hypocrisy below. What the world needs now more than ever is leadership backed by wisdom and vision. In its absence, ISIL, the NRA, and F-16s fill the void. Peace.

Call me a meanie. In the picture I see a woman that is dressed to please the man and the local imam. Dressing this way for any woman is not natural, no matter how hard one tries to justify it.
OTOH, Muslims carry out terrorists attacks around the world, mostly on innocent while oppressing their own people. Muslims have used up their sympathy card. I am a meanie, but also a realist.

I offer my condolences to Ms. Grewal and her family, and wish the United States had never gone to war in Iraq (or Afghanistan).

Still, Muslims have blood on their hands. Muslims attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Muslims have been beheading Christians and Jews for many years. Muslims do horrible things in the name of Islam.

At most, only one organized religion is true. I think the number is zero. If there is a God, what man or woman knows His mind? It might really annoy God that humans pretend to understand Him.

With every strike, enourmous amounts of money and resources are spent: an abusrdity even when missiles are hitting their prefixed target (usually a pickup truck or a twenty something simpleton with a machine gun).

Dear Zarrena! The pain and grief that you are going through are going to be your life long inner struggle, for good because the loss of family members that are normal human beings with normal life ambitions and dynamics will make you go through tough introspection and gain moral strength: for worse because you (like me) would never be able to justify these killings. What can you/we do? I do not know how old you are; I am born decades after WWII and hence did not live through the madness of Adolf Hitler. Now I, like you, are seeing a million Hitler in the disguise of ISIS Jihadists and war mongering dumb headed politicians and hot headed, short sighted military generals that kill MSF volunteers and patients. Your personal crisis is just a miniature version of the global crisis we are facing today. I have no political background and I do not have any knowledge on state crafts. I however do know that a silent war of civilization is going on that is destroying your family members and our peace of mind that is equally tragic. I can only say that probably a huge upheaval of the moderate Muslim mind is probably the only way out of this apocalyptic situation. ME is burning and the people of the ME must be among the first to extinguish this hellish fire that is consuming you and me, slowly and painfully!

I am so sad for you and your people; beneath that lovely moon so much destruction. Your words are important.

This makes very painful reading.

There is no "fog of war" explanation that can explain or justify such awful violence. One has the sense that the military knows the public has gone numb to "collateral damage" and is simply being careless.

An article like this breaks with a shock through the numbness.

I can only apologize for my country's aggression and bigotry.

Like all empires, it always needs an enemy and it's current one is Muslims.

I offer you Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead:

May the great Name of God be exalted and sanctified, throughout the world, which he has created according to his will.
May his Kingship be established in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of the entire household of Israel, swiftly and in the near future; and say, Amen.

May his great name be blessed, forever and ever.
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, honored elevated and lauded be the Name of the holy one, Blessed is he- above and beyond any blessings and hymns, Praises and consolations which are uttered in the world; and say Amen. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life, upon us and upon all Israel; and say, Amen.

He who makes peace in his high holy places, may he bring peace upon us, and upon all Israel; and say Amen.
---------------------------------------------------------
We are all one regardless of our religion or lack of one, of our background., our nationality.

Trillions allocated by the Congress and the White House for endless wars and military industrial expenditures here and around the world to enrich a few at the expense of the many. The US must create a viable economy that does not rely on war to function. After all it is funded by tax money. That money can be used to provide extensive beneficial social programs and free education, health care, mass transit child care, pensions publicly funded elections.
Instead we spread death and destruction throughout the world and at home we live in fear that our lives could be suddenly shattered by the next individual or mass shooting perpetrated by insane gun laws.

I am so sorry. It has long been said that we cannot be effective warriors without dehumanizing 'the enemy'. We humans have not progressed very much from our basic animal instincts of killing one another. As superior mammals we validate this as a 'right' justified by whatever beliefs we hold dear. We now clearly see with the advent of cell phone cameras, the beastly massacres being wrought in the Middle East. I feel terrible pain in reading your eloquent description of the carnage that destroyed your family. I am nauseated by news of the bombing of the Doctors Without Boarder Hospital in Kunduz. The end does not always justify the means if what we are doing is murdering so many guiltless people. Is there really such a thing as an ethical war? I want my country to error on the cautious side and value all human life: When doubt exists, even a sliver, don't shoot.

So very, very sorry for your loss. Thank you so much for your words.
War is human problem-solving at its very worst.
After so many millinea of it, can we not do better?

Zareena, thank you for sharing this story. It reminds readers that war, air strikes, etc have such a grave impact on every-day-people and are not like a fake video game. I'm so sorry for your family's loss.

Wonderfully said. Thank you for making so clear how Islam is a source of spiritual strength. Earlier this year I visited Norman cathedrals in Sicily displaying combined Gothic, Byzantine and Arabic design. May the world see such times again . . . but I fear they will come only after us.

We have just finished mourning the loss of 9 students in Oregon, blaming not checking people who buy guns. The perpetrator was a very mentally ill man whose habits and behavior by family and friends were ignored.
But what is our excuse? Are our leaders out of their minds, obsessed with military hardware to revenge ourselves for imaginary findings?
We need to have psychiatric care for the people who make the decisions in office in our country which are destructive enough to be unable to properly describe the results.
I am haunted by the sweet, hopeful faces of the relatives of the writer who perished. What it has cost him to write this moving report cannot be imagined.
We must face reality and listen to voices like Bernie Sanders, or humanity and the plant will be doomed before long. Our country has become a disgrace in the world and to many of its citizens.

Americans are shocked and dismayed when crazy people massacre their kids but they don't pay much attention when their government massacres other people's kids. America has been an absolute disaster for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Directly and indirectly we have slaughtered millions of them and destroyed the lives of millions more. The only thing we have accomplished is to generate profits for our war-industrial complex, but apparently that is what counts.

Americans have grown used to our role in world affairs. We have learned to like to throw our weight around. Occasionally some maniac will decide to emulate his government and kill a bunch of people. We don't like that, but as a Buddhist I believe that your actions will come back to you.

Oh, I am so sorry that my country killed members of your family, leaving all the rest of you to mourn, yet unable to mourn properly. I believe my country's reactions to 9/11 have been misguided and tragic. I do believe that Pres. Obama has tried to avoid unintended deaths. But that is cold comfort to the families of the dead.

Thank you for reminding us that the dead were loved and treasured as those in our own families. Please tell Basrim's parents that my heart breaks for them and that I am so sorry.

Beautiful and horrifying. Though myself not a Muslim, this is the Islam I know from five decades of experience both living in the Middle East and trying to teach American students about Islam. Thank you for a wonderful if horrifying story. There is no, I repeat, no justification for war. I don't care how the mouthpieces of these killing machines try to justify what they are doing. There is and never can be justice in killing--perhaps the better word is murdering--other human beings.

this beautifully written piece connects all of our lives.
the sudden and long lasting tragedy will haunt their family forever.
may peace somehow be with us all.

"The American-led air campaign did not hit a weapons storage facility belonging to the Islamic State, or ISIS, as one local report claimed.."
Given this and today's news about the bombing of the Doctors without Borders hospital in Afghanistan it seems like Obama defenders will have to modify their claim the citizens of the US are being disrespectful of Obama considering he "ended two wars".

The religion I was raised in--Judaism--also teaches that God is the source of the universe. At Yom Kippur we acknowledge that God will determine whether we live or die in the next year and, if we are to die, how that will happen. Our Christian next-door neighbors share the same belief. This does not mean that we are fatalists. We do whatever we can to cure disease, to save lives, and to improve the lives of others.

Words cannot express my feelings about my government's actions in Iraq--starting from the sanctions that killed at least half a million Iraqi children, through the unprovoked invasions, and now the bombings that kill so many innocents, and which our military dismisses as "collateral damage." The same is true of our actions in Afghanistan, up to and including the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital, and our drone attacks in Yemen and supplying the Saudi government with weapons to massacre the civilian population there.

Sure, let's pretend that Muslims prefer death over life. That they are somehow less human than we are, that they are untermenschen, gooks, dirty Jews, vermin. And let's hope we never are called to account in the Hague.

Thanks for your thoughtful reflection and your "translation" into "American speak" of what an ordinary or an intellectual Muslim makes of the world, and of life and death, through his/her faith. I think that perhaps there is a great disregard for life (Muslim's lives) among Americans (not among Muslims). I cannot make sense of these bombings and "mistakes." Who is in charge targeting those killer bombs? It was your family. Then Doctors' Without Borders medical facility--a humanitarian outrage. I hope that at a minimum these cases are "investigated". Bombing hospitals and civilian housing is barbaric and against international law. My condolences for the deaths of your relatives, particularly the very young.

A very beautiful essay. I feel so sorry for your loss.

beautifully written....touched me deeply....

Thank you for writing this. At the very least, I can bear witness to this horror.

In America, we are taught from birth to rationalize the deaths of innocent civilians in war as "collateral damage." What a terrible phrase, for it strips away any human emotion at the inevitable human cost of war. Offering prayers and condolences while seeking to justify endless death and destruction is morally debilitating. As a Nation we are numb to war, justifying our killing of innocents by the "other" who kill innocents. Beheadings, drone strikes, conventional bombings, etc. all lead to one thing--death.

Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.

Peace.

Just as the senseless bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan -- there is no moral high ground here. Just missions plotted out by tacticians who don't see and can't fathom the human cost of the destruction unleashed. I am truly sorry for your family's loss and all of the losses people have suffered and continue to suffer in Iraq. The pain and sorrow is incalculable and I am sad and heart-broken that it continues.