Baghdad Burning

While reading the blogs on the River bend and Baghdad Burning I found that my favorite post was “National Day”. It was really eye opening for me to see what the initial war in Iraq was like for those innocent people who lived there. I remember being 9 years old, watching the TV and seeing the explosions around the city. The only thing I knew was that this was where the people who brought down the towers lived. I remember thinking that we were finally getting them back, and moved on with my 9 year old life. Looking back at it now, I feel embarrassed that I thought those things. I know I was innocent and naïve back then, but to read about how so many lives were changed by war is really shocking. I can’t imagine anything like that happening in the U.S. I would think that if that happened everyone would care about the innocent lives, but in Iraq innocent lives were taken and no one seemed to really care over here in the states. While reading this particular blog, I found it weird that April 9^th, 2003 will be a date that many Iraqi’s compare to our own 9/11. It just seems so surreal that we are capable of such destruction. Our military is seen in a heroic light, and to imagine that what they do invokes fear and death sometimes in innocent lives is heartbreaking. This course has really opened me up to new perspectives of war and I can see that there is little progress that comes from war. For both sides in war, it seems that the ultimate sacrifice of one’s life is given, but not much else in return. It is really sad that our world hasn’t learned from previous destructions of war, and that we show no sign of slowing down.