An interview with the same girl, Samar Hassan, 6 years later.
Excerpt from the article:
“I’ve taken them many times to the hospital, where they get pills” for emotional problems, Mr. Ali [a relative taking care of the surviving children] said. “All of them take pills.”
He says Samar’s 8-year-old brother, Muhammad, talks to himself when he is alone. “When we go out and see a family, they get sad,” he said. Sometimes he finds the children in a room together, crying. “When they remember the accident, it’s like they just died.”
How Samar was doing at that point:
Samar left school last year because she was too shy and not doing well, Mr. Ali said, although Samar said she would like to return and hoped to be a doctor when she grew up. She leaves the house only on infrequent family excursions and has two friends who visit to play with dolls and chat.
9 years later, a crew working on a documentary about the photographer Chris Hondros tracked down Samar, this time with an apology from Brad Hammond, one of the soldiers who killed her parents. Per this article, here's her reply:
“Everybody knows my story and saw my picture,” she tells the filmmakers [...].
“But it’s not going to help me with anything.” She remembers that night. It’s never gone from her thoughts. “I hear them screaming in my head and the sound of shooting.” “What would sorry do?” she asks. “They’re gone. Is sorry going to bring them back? No, it won’t. That’s it. It’s done.”
After a pause, she adds:
“I will never forgive them. I will just leave it to God. God will punish them,” she says, her voice rising in anger.
“If they were in front of me, I would want to drink their blood,” she says.
“Even then I wouldn’t be satisfied.”
Edited to add: I'm actually watching Hondros, the documentary right now and have corrected some errors in my post (Samar was interviewed by that documentary crew in 2014, not 2017, the year the documentary came out). Having watched that part of the documentary, the "I will never forgive them" part is directly about the soldiers who shot her family and part of her answer to Hammond's apology.
"Intisar’s husband, Nathir Bashir Ali, suspects his house was bombed by insurgents as retribution for sending Rakan to the United States. “When Rakan came back from America, everyone thought I was a spy,” he said."
Couldn't even live in peace after it was all said and done and this is unfortunately the world we live in.
Yeah, I'm full on crying while reading and writing all this.
The NYTimes article left out that Rakan was paralyzed from the shot and also become incontinent for the rest of his short life. It's just grimness all the way down...
Also: ignorance about world. From outside it looks like Americans are just an assholes who think that they arebetter, the greatest in the world, but in reality just are an obnoxious bullies who stolen/exploited/cheated others and operate according their interests. Like modern-colonialism
The fact that she feels a lot of anger over what happened to her parents/the war is both understandable and horrifying and saddening all at the same time. I almost didn't want to put it in the post, just out of the silly, naive desire to protect this image of Samar as this innocent child victim. But of course, she is entitled to her anger, and it makes her no less innocent of a victim. I just hope she can find some sort of closure and peace in her life.
Reminder that the majority of the Abu Ghraib photos have never been released because they’re too disturbing.
And then people wonder why they’re hated.
"We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died [because of American sanctions]. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima," Stahl said. "And, you know, is the price worth it?"
"I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it."
Smedley Butler said it almost 100 years ago, but weve been making the world safe for democracy (read: capitalism) since WWII. Thats what its all boiled down to, everything else is an excuse.
We've been toppling governments on behalf of private corporations since the 19th century.
I really whats going to happen if theres a threat of actual post scarcity society coming to be. We're going to see a lot of "suicides" before that comes to pass, guaranfuckingtee.
America! Fuck Yeah!! Coming again to open Starbucks and Walmart!!
Also that seal who got in trouble for torturing a civilian while in red cell said people who were upset about Abu Ghraib were just "liberal attacks" and not universal disgust.
As someone who was born and raised in the USA but has family in parts of the world like Lebanon I can assure you the media reporting from all aspects is always severely disregarded
I remember my first visit shortly before the 2006 conflict
The amount of people missing limbs / displaced on the streets / kids digging through garbages etc was eye opening
Even the cats and dogs were missing eyes and limbs
I remember seeing one man in particular that stuck with me for 15+ years - he had no arms no legs he was just a torso in a makeshift broken down wheelchair on the streets and very old maybe 70+
The people there have no hatred for normal American people - many of them dream of visiting places like California
What they really hate is the result of ongoing wars for decades and western funded atrocities
Democrats and Republicans both get fat off war. No such thing as a Centrist in your two party government. A government that shares the same modus operandi overall.
to be fair that 500k claim is very contested, with some allegations that numbers were manipulated by Hussein's regime itself. They were also UN sanctions, not US sanctions. They were also sanctions against a regime that had violently invaded its neighbors multiple times, and conducted mass torture and repression against entire ethnic/religious groups (Kurds, Shia), as well as all political opposition. Their invasion of Iran alone caused between 1 and 2 MILLION casualties.
Like criticize the stupidity of the Iraq War all you want, but in terms of UN response that's a pretty textbook case of when sanctions are used. If you are sanctioning oil sales being used to fund an aggressive military, and the regime uses what money it has left not to buy food for the people, but continues to spend it on weapons, they have to own a lot of that responsibility.
However, her response was still dumb. In fact, the UN did react to growing claims of malnutrition by reforming sanctions to be more targeted and introducing the oil for food program.
Now, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib.... that shit is all on the US
They don't wonder that because they've spent 30 odd years banging on about how people hate America because of freedom and not because of drone strikes, forever wars, and propping up dictators.
One of the weirder things about having a kid is that pictures like this are fucking gutwrenching.
Like before I had a kid it was, "man, that fucking sucks." After I had a kid, stuff like this makes me damn near physically ill. And a lot of it is because I know how my kid acts in general and this? No kid deserves this.
I don’t even have children and this tore my heart into pieces. Like, wish I could pick her up and tell her it’s going to be okay. War is disgusting and horrific.
But it never matters to the people at the top because it’s not them or their people on the front lines or suffering through them
Probably not. Sadly, she lost her brother a few years later. There were six kids in that car, including her little brother who was shot. He was flown to the United States and the American government made a big show about saving the kid.
He was then sent back to Iraq where, just a couple of years later, the family was targeted by a car bomb because people thought they were American spies because they'd accepted American medical help. The brother, along with other members of her family, were killed in that blast.
The girl grew up surrounded by death. It's very unlikely that she's fine.
Edit: I know it's not that simple. Just because the folks who murdered her parents are definitely not the good guys, that doesn't mean there actually are any "good guys."
Right? Why are we being euphemistic and pretending the issue here is that she doesn’t support our imperial project rather than it being that her family was fucking murdered in front of her
They're not good for their religious beliefs, but it's hard not to understand why they don't struggle with recruitment when an entire generation have grown up with stories like this.
In fairness the extremists are far less prevalent than some media might portray. The regular citizens are (by a very wide margin) just normal people living day to day.
Avenge how?
What happened to her is unacceptable, there is no question about that.
But would inflicting violence back really be the way to do it? I hope not.
I know that I can't imagine half her pain and sorrow, but I still believe in the saying of 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind'.
I for one hope she becomes successful enough in finance to be able to gouge the stock prices of several major US corporations involved in war profiteering, causing their total collapse on a scale not seen since Enron and the personal bankruptcy of key stakeholders. I hope she becomes famous enough that George W Bush's name is wiped from the record and that when he eventually dies, he dies in disgrace.
This was heart wrenching when I saw it years ago, but now have a 7 month old baby girl and now that pain feels so visceral. That poor girl. I hope she found some level of peace.
How do you recover her family is gone and she knows the ones who did it will never face justice cause they belong to the empire that’ll blow up random homes when it feels like it
Get ready for the next round, this time closer to home edition, but with all the horror of war, heros, winners losers and damaged vets all included at the low cost of whatever it takes.
Modern events have gotten me listening to Rage Against The Machine again and this verse from Bulls on Parade was true in 1996, still true nearly 10 years later when this picture was taken and sickeningly true 30 years later:
Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
Line up to the mind cemetery now
What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and movin'
They don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells
Rally 'round the family, pockets full of shells
I love Rage... one of the only bands I never got to see.
Honestly... the only band that I really wanted to see that I missed. Finally got to see SOAD a couple years ago... RATM is the last, and will likely never happen. We had tix for a show in Phoenix a couple years ago before he hurt himself and canceled the show.
I’ve been listening to The Decline by NoFX a lot recently and god damn doesn’t ever ring more true today than it did back then. It’s crazy how the new found access to information has shone a spot light on things that smarter people were aware of over 30 years ago.
So imports dropped after the invasion? And who was making the money from said oil? This is not what people mean when they say the US invaded Oraq for oil.
I agree he needed to go. But it just feels wrong to even call it a good reason when it was a situation fabricated entirely by the government who then came in and "fixed" it.
We must remind the military boarding oil tankers and acting on behalf of Felonious Trump that they are not the good guys and that they know what is right and what is wrong. #NotMyMilitary
I don’t know if I’m autistic or what but I am pretty much a recluse because so many humans seem devoid of empathy. I don’t get how anyone could join an army and do this.
Everything we do is so inefficient, dirty, messy, evil and just fucking up the entire planet for the next generations. I don’t know how people have kids and think what we’re doing is the answer for our futures.
I’m just totally shocked and feel alien. I can’t participate in society in any meaningful way because I’m so brain broken by the horrors that happened to me in my childhood and the much, much worse things going on around the world.
I see these 'vet' (terrorist imo) videos of how terrible it is that they fought for their country & ended up on the streets, addicted, lost families etc. Never feel the sympathy bug bite. Stating those were your marching orders doesn't recuse you of personal guilt.
In one doc a fenty homeless vet said how he walked into a home, shot 1 guy, brother picked a gun. He tore the mother & daughters/kids/ goats up..think about that.. somebody enters your home, kills your brother, you're the last man there with your relatives, why wouldn't you pick up the gun? End, he said they paid off some chief/ neighbours, said sorry. Their bad. Mistaken identity & left.
Man I like it how 90% of the time whenever a post like this about a countries warcrimes or fucked up actions are mentioned, most people blame the country and everyone in power.
When it comes to posts about your atrocities. Suddenly it's humanity does to one another. I don't have any skin in the game, it's just funny how everyone geenralizes when it's comes to your country.
This is how most Americans cope with stuff like this. China has some concentration camps for the Uighurs? China evil. USA commits decades of war crimes and human rights abuses in the Middle East? Humanity bad.
Also to animals... my marine friend who had been stationed in Iraq, told me about how his squad mates made a game of baiting stray dogs and cats and dropping sand bags on them from the tops of buildings.
Funny thing is they act like they weren't the biggest terrorist organization in those lands, alienating themselves from the situation. You can see it from these "poor kid" comments people talking like it is a natural disaster. They murdered millions to divide those countries for their interests
Heres an amazing article by Luke O’Neil about her which includes one of the most impactful quotes ive ever seen:
What would she say to them if they were to tell her they were sorry?
"I will never forgive them. I will just leave it to God. God will punish them," she said, her voice rising in anger.
"If they were in front of me, I would want to drink their blood," she said.
"Even then I wouldn't be satisfied."
War is more profitable than peace and the US has been active in increasing its profitability for a very long time. Remember, our veterans are someone else’s murderers and villains. Usually innocent people such as children instead of the adults running the war machines.
The absolute horror in this photo is all-encompassing. She can't be more than 8 or 9 years old. Her tiny hands are covered in her parents' blood - their blood is everywhere. Soldiers more than twice her size with rifles are standing over her. Nobody is comforting her. She is alone in the dark in the most gut-wrenching moment of her entire life. I am so devastated for her and by her expression. For their sake, I hope there is a peaceful afterlife. There are very few people on this planet who ever deserved anything like this.
We live in a world where images like this can be spread worldwide thanks to the internet, yet people don’t care and continue repeating these atrocities.
Why are people surprised that the most warlike and militarized state in the world since WW2, with a deeply problematic militaristic culture that also fosters a self-aggrandizing idea of exceptionalism would be perpetrating heinous crimes everywhere they interfere in? This is what they do every time. Be it the Gulf, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan or South America today (as well as Gaza by proxy).
It’s too bad that a lot of its beauty has been stripped away and replaced with malls, parking lots, banal architecture, and poorly-planned cities. The National Park system is a great silver lining though.
Only a matter of time before the roaches (oligarchs) ruin the national parks too. They’re already increasing the entry fee for national parks for non natives. Most likely to deter people from coming so they can say that no one goes to these parks in order to build a fuckin Starbucks or some dumb shit in it.
It really wouldn’t surprise me. Being the parasite that it is, the only value avarice allows its hosts to see in these precious places is realty and resource extraction.
I remember seeing this photo in the early 2010’s as a young teenager and thinking, “I am the same age as this child, could I have managed without my parents”.
Knowing that if I stayed in the USA I would be inadvertently supporting this kind of thing, I set my course to leave as best as I could. I would not give a single penny or hour of labor to a nation that so readily commits these sort of acts, regardless of if they are at war or not.
Deny them your work, your time, and your taxes. With how they are treating the population they are making it clear that they don’t need your money. Let them try to fund themselves off of their many military contracts and foreign wars, see if they get very far.
I work with someone who has been traumatized by war. I would prefer not to expose him to traumatic images just because he happens to be sitting next to me when I'm on reddit.
Dawg some people don't like seeing gore and blood on their page, ESPECIALLY if it's a child. Being exposed to the horrors of realities is all fine and good but this is an extremely distressing photo and a nsfw tag is not that big of an ask.
I’m not against having one, but I’m also not going to cry about the lack of it. Shit like this needs to be seen. Nothing will ever change if we all just scroll past a blurry image. Hell, nothing might change anyway… but it definitely won’t change if we ignore it.
As a parent my heat goes out to all of the poor children being affected by all this adult bullshit & politics children are innocent & deserve much better than this it is heartbreaking❤️
Reminder that the US military will not follow international law to prosecute their military for crimes. Hence, only a handful of crimes will become public. The US military has been committed crimes against many countries for years and we continue to fund this with our taxes (willingly or not)
And this shit is why I refuse to buy into our anti-terrorism propaganda. This girl has every right to fight against the US any way she sees fit at this point. We murder innocent people in front of their kids and then act shocked when they kill Americans.
The evil man behind this was pardoned by Trump in his first term, because his education secretary was related to the owner of the PMC behind this war crime. They played the video of him around his kids hearing the news and his wife says “It’s a Christmas miracle” like her husband didn’t end a dozen families that day.
Wasn’t at a checkpoint, it was a patrol. It was after curfew, it was dark, they fired warning shots, and the car sped up towards them. They didn’t know it was a civilian car until it was too late.
It’s heartbreaking and unnecessary and the US never should’ve even been over there, but please report the facts. There’s too much bullshit going around, and people are just too dumb/lazy to check anymore.
The reason that the USA can be so brutal is that there is a complete separation between what actually happens...and the everyday citizens here. We discuss bombs as if were cool tech. We read stories about the new artillery. None of the stories show pictures like this - the RESULTS of what this stuff does.
Between our own Gun Culture and the "Military as Heroes" narrative (yes, even the lead guitarists in a Military Band need "thanks for your service"), violence is our way of life. Most of it is on a large scale - causing millions of deaths by policy, proxy or direct action.
Can you imagine a news story about a new Howitzer saying "older models only embedded red hot razor sharp metal for a distance of 250 feet, while this newer one can slice up humans at 300 feet".
I have to assume that most people don't even think about all of this - in fact, I KNOW most people do not.
This all puts the murders on the high seas as of late in perspective. I don't think there is a limit as to what the American people would accept...that is, very few are going to protest.
An interview with the same girl, Samar Hassan, 6 years later.
Excerpt from the article:
How Samar was doing at that point:
9 years later, a crew working on a documentary about the photographer Chris Hondros tracked down Samar, this time with an apology from Brad Hammond, one of the soldiers who killed her parents. Per this article, here's her reply:
After a pause, she adds:
Edited to add: I'm actually watching Hondros, the documentary right now and have corrected some errors in my post (Samar was interviewed by that documentary crew in 2014, not 2017, the year the documentary came out). Having watched that part of the documentary, the "I will never forgive them" part is directly about the soldiers who shot her family and part of her answer to Hammond's apology.
Reading all of it was just grim man.
"Intisar’s husband, Nathir Bashir Ali, suspects his house was bombed by insurgents as retribution for sending Rakan to the United States. “When Rakan came back from America, everyone thought I was a spy,” he said."
Couldn't even live in peace after it was all said and done and this is unfortunately the world we live in.
Yeah, I'm full on crying while reading and writing all this.
The NYTimes article left out that Rakan was paralyzed from the shot and also become incontinent for the rest of his short life. It's just grimness all the way down...
How can anyone read this and not think that we're the actual terrorists?
Racism.
Well....asked and answered.
Also: ignorance about world. From outside it looks like Americans are just an assholes who think that they arebetter, the greatest in the world, but in reality just are an obnoxious bullies who stolen/exploited/cheated others and operate according their interests. Like modern-colonialism
Well you may have just landed on why conservatives don’t want people to be able to read.
And that's how you create martyrs.
That last bit is a sobering reminder that the cycle of violence can’t be stopped by violence.
The fact that she feels a lot of anger over what happened to her parents/the war is both understandable and horrifying and saddening all at the same time. I almost didn't want to put it in the post, just out of the silly, naive desire to protect this image of Samar as this innocent child victim. But of course, she is entitled to her anger, and it makes her no less innocent of a victim. I just hope she can find some sort of closure and peace in her life.
Nuclear stockpile's America's second largest,
The world's most destructive and the world's most heartless,
Under the auspices that war will be rendered harmless,
And everlasting peace will be in reach if we just bomb shit
-Lupe Fiasco, Atomic Misphilosophy
Huh? It certainly can’t be stopped by thoughts and prayers or by a strongly worded letter. WWII didn’t end because everyone suddenly got along.
Yeah all it took was a couple of nukes, firebombing civilians, mass starvation, and bombing cities to ruins; is that the point you're trying to make?
Good point, everyone should have just tried holding hands with the Nazis. A good hug could have stopped those death camps.
That simply isn't true. But it's a nice thing to say.
May those responsible enjoy their PTSD and and join the ranks of their brethren where they usually end up
Reminder that the majority of the Abu Ghraib photos have never been released because they’re too disturbing.
And then people wonder why they’re hated.
Sadly war is all too easily “worth it” when it’s not your children or your parents or you in the crossfire.
Wars always worth it to the few greedy fucks who get rich from it.
Smedley Butler said it almost 100 years ago, but weve been making the world safe for democracy (read: capitalism) since WWII. Thats what its all boiled down to, everything else is an excuse.
We've been toppling governments on behalf of private corporations since the 19th century.
I really whats going to happen if theres a threat of actual post scarcity society coming to be. We're going to see a lot of "suicides" before that comes to pass, guaranfuckingtee.
America! Fuck Yeah!! Coming again to open Starbucks and Walmart!!
War is a Racket is next to me right now.
Politicians:
Imagine you're playing a game of Civ. That's what it is for these oligarchs and world leaders.
More disturbing than the ones released? I really don’t want to imagine.
Also that seal who got in trouble for torturing a civilian while in red cell said people who were upset about Abu Ghraib were just "liberal attacks" and not universal disgust.
As someone who was born and raised in the USA but has family in parts of the world like Lebanon I can assure you the media reporting from all aspects is always severely disregarded
I remember my first visit shortly before the 2006 conflict
The amount of people missing limbs / displaced on the streets / kids digging through garbages etc was eye opening
Even the cats and dogs were missing eyes and limbs
I remember seeing one man in particular that stuck with me for 15+ years - he had no arms no legs he was just a torso in a makeshift broken down wheelchair on the streets and very old maybe 70+
The people there have no hatred for normal American people - many of them dream of visiting places like California
What they really hate is the result of ongoing wars for decades and western funded atrocities
Madeline Albright was a huge piece of shit. In other words, a centrist’s hero!
War crimes are okay if corpos can make a buck!
They’re encouraged, even!
Blessed be thy job creators
Not to mention an ethnic cleanser and an art thief. No joke
Art thief?
Yup, she used to moonlight as a cat burglar. Pulled off some big heists, too.
Lmao, she's a neo liberal.
Democrats and Republicans both get fat off war. No such thing as a Centrist in your two party government. A government that shares the same modus operandi overall.
And then people point to how people were describing Bush 20 years ago to say "see people were always doomers." No, Bush was always a war criminal.
to be fair that 500k claim is very contested, with some allegations that numbers were manipulated by Hussein's regime itself. They were also UN sanctions, not US sanctions. They were also sanctions against a regime that had violently invaded its neighbors multiple times, and conducted mass torture and repression against entire ethnic/religious groups (Kurds, Shia), as well as all political opposition. Their invasion of Iran alone caused between 1 and 2 MILLION casualties.
Like criticize the stupidity of the Iraq War all you want, but in terms of UN response that's a pretty textbook case of when sanctions are used. If you are sanctioning oil sales being used to fund an aggressive military, and the regime uses what money it has left not to buy food for the people, but continues to spend it on weapons, they have to own a lot of that responsibility.
However, her response was still dumb. In fact, the UN did react to growing claims of malnutrition by reforming sanctions to be more targeted and introducing the oil for food program.
Now, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib.... that shit is all on the US
Israel backed “American” wars coincidently against all of Israel’s enemies. So wierd.
They don't wonder that because they've spent 30 odd years banging on about how people hate America because of freedom and not because of drone strikes, forever wars, and propping up dictators.
I wonder how this girl - being an adult now - is doing. I hope she's fine somehow.
I don't think that is something you can ever actually work through no matter how much therapy you do. War is disgusting and horrific.
I don't even want to imagine her pain.
Some things will never wash away.
One of the weirder things about having a kid is that pictures like this are fucking gutwrenching.
Like before I had a kid it was, "man, that fucking sucks." After I had a kid, stuff like this makes me damn near physically ill. And a lot of it is because I know how my kid acts in general and this? No kid deserves this.
That's my reaction too. Seeing my kids in her face, and knowing there is NOTHING that could fix that in her life, ever, ever again.
Oh man I feel you, children are too precious
I don’t even have children and this tore my heart into pieces. Like, wish I could pick her up and tell her it’s going to be okay. War is disgusting and horrific. But it never matters to the people at the top because it’s not them or their people on the front lines or suffering through them
Movies too. I can't watch any movies where kids suffer anymore. It's too difficult.
Probably not. Sadly, she lost her brother a few years later. There were six kids in that car, including her little brother who was shot. He was flown to the United States and the American government made a big show about saving the kid.
He was then sent back to Iraq where, just a couple of years later, the family was targeted by a car bomb because people thought they were American spies because they'd accepted American medical help. The brother, along with other members of her family, were killed in that blast.
The girl grew up surrounded by death. It's very unlikely that she's fine.
Probably roots for the other side now.
So... The good guys?
Edit: I know it's not that simple. Just because the folks who murdered her parents are definitely not the good guys, that doesn't mean there actually are any "good guys."
Right? Why are we being euphemistic and pretending the issue here is that she doesn’t support our imperial project rather than it being that her family was fucking murdered in front of her
"Good" is gray when every nation is self serving when it comes to their interests. But would certainly drive a person to the opposition
It doesn't seem that gray. What the fuck did we accomplish, or even aim to accomplish, that was worth this?
I don't think there were any good guys in that war. There were a lot of bad guys over there, and then the bad guys that went over there to kill them.
I'm so curious how reddit has come around to 'islamic fundamentalists are the good guys'.
For a website that hates authoritartians and fascists, it sure seems to have no issue with Islamic ones.
They're not good for their religious beliefs, but it's hard not to understand why they don't struggle with recruitment when an entire generation have grown up with stories like this.
In fairness the extremists are far less prevalent than some media might portray. The regular citizens are (by a very wide margin) just normal people living day to day.
hope she can avenge her parents some day
Avenge how?
What happened to her is unacceptable, there is no question about that.
But would inflicting violence back really be the way to do it? I hope not.
I know that I can't imagine half her pain and sorrow, but I still believe in the saying of 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind'.
I for one hope she becomes successful enough in finance to be able to gouge the stock prices of several major US corporations involved in war profiteering, causing their total collapse on a scale not seen since Enron and the personal bankruptcy of key stakeholders. I hope she becomes famous enough that George W Bush's name is wiped from the record and that when he eventually dies, he dies in disgrace.
9-12?
You want the U.S. to go to war with Iraq again?
That is a heart-wrenching picture. So sad. That poor little girl.
This was heart wrenching when I saw it years ago, but now have a 7 month old baby girl and now that pain feels so visceral. That poor girl. I hope she found some level of peace.
I wonder where she is now, how she recovered. I hope she is okay
I wish her well also but I think we both know the answer to this question.
She is featured in the documentary called War Photographer. She was alive and healthy then. She is obviously still very mad about it.
I can’t imagine you’re doing “well” after trauma like that. Thanks for the info.
How do you recover her family is gone and she knows the ones who did it will never face justice cause they belong to the empire that’ll blow up random homes when it feels like it
Doubtful shes alive.
What do you think
Looks like what they think is what they fucking typed.
Get ready for the next round, this time closer to home edition, but with all the horror of war, heros, winners losers and damaged vets all included at the low cost of whatever it takes.
Oh and don't forget the death and destruction we all love that.
War is so stupid
this wasnt war. this was USA killing and destroying a country for no reason.
We have to keep creating radicals to create enemies.... the war machine keeps turning
Modern events have gotten me listening to Rage Against The Machine again and this verse from Bulls on Parade was true in 1996, still true nearly 10 years later when this picture was taken and sickeningly true 30 years later:
I love Rage... one of the only bands I never got to see. Honestly... the only band that I really wanted to see that I missed. Finally got to see SOAD a couple years ago... RATM is the last, and will likely never happen. We had tix for a show in Phoenix a couple years ago before he hurt himself and canceled the show.
I listen to rage almost everyday
Even more relevant today
I’ve been listening to The Decline by NoFX a lot recently and god damn doesn’t ever ring more true today than it did back then. It’s crazy how the new found access to information has shone a spot light on things that smarter people were aware of over 30 years ago.
You ever listen to “The Idiots are Taking Over” by NOFX? I think about that song all the time.
"The only good bug is a dead one."
This is the real answer. We are now doing it to Venezuela. Gotta keep giving those government contracts to their buddies!
Oil is a reason.
Round two seems eminent in Venezuela.
But the US didn't even get any oil from Iraq... So even the bullshit reason wasn't real
What do you mean 'didn't get any oil from Iraq'? EIA shows we've imported multiple billions of barrels of Oil from Iraq since 2000.
So imports dropped after the invasion? And who was making the money from said oil? This is not what people mean when they say the US invaded Oraq for oil.
Well there were reasons.
The only good one being getting Saddam out of power. Everything else was not.
The same Saddam who the CIA supported and got into power in the first place?
The same Saddam who the US Government much more officially supported during the Iran-Iraq war while fully aware of his brutality?
That guy? Yeah. The US really needed to fix that problem they willingly created.
Yup. The same.
Like I said, weren't any real good reasons except getting him out of power
I agree he needed to go. But it just feels wrong to even call it a good reason when it was a situation fabricated entirely by the government who then came in and "fixed" it.
You must not be familiar with wars throughout history.
Still counts as war
This was another Republican administration killing innocent people for oil. Republcans are terrorists.
And Trump is about to spread his stupidity to Venezuela
We must remind the military boarding oil tankers and acting on behalf of Felonious Trump that they are not the good guys and that they know what is right and what is wrong. #NotMyMilitary
This is the same military that goes into American cities. This is your military lol
Yeah, the military have never been good guys. Hopefully watching them all follow illegal orders will finally wake people up.
Sadly, I’m not too optimistic.
Profound understatement, but I agree with the basic sentiment.
It wasn't even a war. America invaded
How do you define war?
What do you think a war is
I don’t know if I’m autistic or what but I am pretty much a recluse because so many humans seem devoid of empathy. I don’t get how anyone could join an army and do this. Everything we do is so inefficient, dirty, messy, evil and just fucking up the entire planet for the next generations. I don’t know how people have kids and think what we’re doing is the answer for our futures. I’m just totally shocked and feel alien. I can’t participate in society in any meaningful way because I’m so brain broken by the horrors that happened to me in my childhood and the much, much worse things going on around the world.
I see these 'vet' (terrorist imo) videos of how terrible it is that they fought for their country & ended up on the streets, addicted, lost families etc. Never feel the sympathy bug bite. Stating those were your marching orders doesn't recuse you of personal guilt.
In one doc a fenty homeless vet said how he walked into a home, shot 1 guy, brother picked a gun. He tore the mother & daughters/kids/ goats up..think about that.. somebody enters your home, kills your brother, you're the last man there with your relatives, why wouldn't you pick up the gun? End, he said they paid off some chief/ neighbours, said sorry. Their bad. Mistaken identity & left.
The shit humanity does to one another. History repeats itself.
Man I like it how 90% of the time whenever a post like this about a countries warcrimes or fucked up actions are mentioned, most people blame the country and everyone in power.
When it comes to posts about your atrocities. Suddenly it's humanity does to one another. I don't have any skin in the game, it's just funny how everyone geenralizes when it's comes to your country.
This is how most Americans cope with stuff like this. China has some concentration camps for the Uighurs? China evil. USA commits decades of war crimes and human rights abuses in the Middle East? Humanity bad.
Also to animals... my marine friend who had been stationed in Iraq, told me about how his squad mates made a game of baiting stray dogs and cats and dropping sand bags on them from the tops of buildings.
that's fucking vile
Unfortunately pretty tame compared to some of his other experiences.
Military industrial complex
He absolutely deserves this.
I’d argue he deserved a bit more than that.
He should be in jail.
By that logic so should every president in the last 25 years.
I am not against this*
Remember you have the duty to refuse an unlawful order if you are in the military.
USA doing something shitty then portraying themselves as war heroes who are sad they killed innocent people and kids, shit never changes
Funny thing is they act like they weren't the biggest terrorist organization in those lands, alienating themselves from the situation. You can see it from these "poor kid" comments people talking like it is a natural disaster. They murdered millions to divide those countries for their interests
But, but, we’re the good guys…
Here is the Wikipedia article on the incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2005_Tal_Afar_shootings
We are the bad guys
Soon in Venezuela (tm)
Soon in streets near us!
If you ever want to be super bummed, look at the list of US war crimes on wikipedia
Heres an amazing article by Luke O’Neil about her which includes one of the most impactful quotes ive ever seen:
What would she say to them if they were to tell her they were sorry? "I will never forgive them. I will just leave it to God. God will punish them," she said, her voice rising in anger. "If they were in front of me, I would want to drink their blood," she said. "Even then I wouldn't be satisfied."
Read it here.
War is more profitable than peace and the US has been active in increasing its profitability for a very long time. Remember, our veterans are someone else’s murderers and villains. Usually innocent people such as children instead of the adults running the war machines.
US doing US things
Is there any info to back this claim up?
Found it: https://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/chris_hondros_how_he_got_that_picture.php
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/may/11/chris-hondros-obituary
Please let's stay tf out of Venezuela
Hey we’re the good guys just keep repeating that
The absolute horror in this photo is all-encompassing. She can't be more than 8 or 9 years old. Her tiny hands are covered in her parents' blood - their blood is everywhere. Soldiers more than twice her size with rifles are standing over her. Nobody is comforting her. She is alone in the dark in the most gut-wrenching moment of her entire life. I am so devastated for her and by her expression. For their sake, I hope there is a peaceful afterlife. There are very few people on this planet who ever deserved anything like this.
We live in a world where images like this can be spread worldwide thanks to the internet, yet people don’t care and continue repeating these atrocities.
Humanity is truly its own worst enemy
Why are people surprised that the most warlike and militarized state in the world since WW2, with a deeply problematic militaristic culture that also fosters a self-aggrandizing idea of exceptionalism would be perpetrating heinous crimes everywhere they interfere in? This is what they do every time. Be it the Gulf, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan or South America today (as well as Gaza by proxy).
Ah yes, America.
Shithole of a country.
It is an amazingly beautiful and vast country. Some of the people living there and all of the people running it are shit. But I get the sentiment!
It’s too bad that a lot of its beauty has been stripped away and replaced with malls, parking lots, banal architecture, and poorly-planned cities. The National Park system is a great silver lining though.
National parks system is top tier and one of my favorite things about the country
Amen to that!
Only a matter of time before the roaches (oligarchs) ruin the national parks too. They’re already increasing the entry fee for national parks for non natives. Most likely to deter people from coming so they can say that no one goes to these parks in order to build a fuckin Starbucks or some dumb shit in it.
It really wouldn’t surprise me. Being the parasite that it is, the only value avarice allows its hosts to see in these precious places is realty and resource extraction.
The country is rotten to the core
Are we the Baddies?
U.S. military have been continuously terrorizing the globe since 2000. Now they’re lead by a convicted felon, rapist and accused pedophile.
The world is in trouble.
I remember seeing this photo in the early 2010’s as a young teenager and thinking, “I am the same age as this child, could I have managed without my parents”.
Knowing that if I stayed in the USA I would be inadvertently supporting this kind of thing, I set my course to leave as best as I could. I would not give a single penny or hour of labor to a nation that so readily commits these sort of acts, regardless of if they are at war or not.
Deny them your work, your time, and your taxes. With how they are treating the population they are making it clear that they don’t need your money. Let them try to fund themselves off of their many military contracts and foreign wars, see if they get very far.
How about some, I dunno...NSFW tag?
Fuck off. Every American should be forced to see these photos.
This picture was taken at someones "work".
If you feel it is an unsafe picture, why?
Pictures are worth a thousand words, I am told.
I think this picture can be summed up in one,
Tragic.
I'm sorry, do you think NSFW literally means not safe for anyones work?
I work with someone who has been traumatized by war. I would prefer not to expose him to traumatic images just because he happens to be sitting next to me when I'm on reddit.
Exactly, sheesh! I don't like to have traumatized children pop up in my feed like this.
God this is horrible
also breaks rule 3
"No pictures which include excessive blood or inside-the-flesh details made visible via any form of laceration."
classic people thinking rules dont apply when they want to be edgy or karma farm
Aww, do the horrors of other people’s realities disturb you?
Good.
Some of us have PTSD that doesn't need to be triggered by our news feeds. No need to be rude.
Dawg some people don't like seeing gore and blood on their page, ESPECIALLY if it's a child. Being exposed to the horrors of realities is all fine and good but this is an extremely distressing photo and a nsfw tag is not that big of an ask.
I’m not against having one, but I’m also not going to cry about the lack of it. Shit like this needs to be seen. Nothing will ever change if we all just scroll past a blurry image. Hell, nothing might change anyway… but it definitely won’t change if we ignore it.
This. I don't believe in censoring this stuff when it needs to be seen and brought to light.
Fuck American imperialism
JFC...
As a parent my heat goes out to all of the poor children being affected by all this adult bullshit & politics children are innocent & deserve much better than this it is heartbreaking❤️
Source for the photo?
here’s 1 from 2011
Thank you.
https://antiwar.com/
Reminder that the US military will not follow international law to prosecute their military for crimes. Hence, only a handful of crimes will become public. The US military has been committed crimes against many countries for years and we continue to fund this with our taxes (willingly or not)
Israel does this everyday in gaza. Yes, with american weapons.
And Saudi Arabia does it every day in Yemen. And the taliban do it every day in Afghanistan to their own people. Also with American weapons.
Yes, and it needs to stop. Now.
20 years from now this picture will be a Venezuelan girl with dead parents.
"Thank you for your service"
"Support the troops"
Your troops are monsters.
Quick reminder that America has been doing this shit since the beginning of America.
Daily reminder to say 'Thank You for Your Service ' for each person who makes this shit war happen.
Think of how many multiples we could have implemented of a modern-Marshall Plan - in lieu of all of the shit this image conjures up.
When people say they miss gwb this is what springs to mind.
😞
And here we go again, about to do it in Venezuela
A lot of those psychopathic murderers went back home, eventually ended up becoming maga heads.
And this shit is why I refuse to buy into our anti-terrorism propaganda. This girl has every right to fight against the US any way she sees fit at this point. We murder innocent people in front of their kids and then act shocked when they kill Americans.
Not much different for Immigrant kids in the US except that ICE enjoys killing and seeing the children suffer.
Why do people support conflict?
Fear or Profit
There is no god.
The evil man behind this was pardoned by Trump in his first term, because his education secretary was related to the owner of the PMC behind this war crime. They played the video of him around his kids hearing the news and his wife says “It’s a Christmas miracle” like her husband didn’t end a dozen families that day.
Nsfw please
We need to be protected from the "projects" our tax dollars finance? This is why it continues....
I hate our world sometimes... Or is it all the time?
Wasn’t at a checkpoint, it was a patrol. It was after curfew, it was dark, they fired warning shots, and the car sped up towards them. They didn’t know it was a civilian car until it was too late.
It’s heartbreaking and unnecessary and the US never should’ve even been over there, but please report the facts. There’s too much bullshit going around, and people are just too dumb/lazy to check anymore.
Keeping the world safe for Democracy...I guess!
The reason that the USA can be so brutal is that there is a complete separation between what actually happens...and the everyday citizens here. We discuss bombs as if were cool tech. We read stories about the new artillery. None of the stories show pictures like this - the RESULTS of what this stuff does.
Between our own Gun Culture and the "Military as Heroes" narrative (yes, even the lead guitarists in a Military Band need "thanks for your service"), violence is our way of life. Most of it is on a large scale - causing millions of deaths by policy, proxy or direct action.
Can you imagine a news story about a new Howitzer saying "older models only embedded red hot razor sharp metal for a distance of 250 feet, while this newer one can slice up humans at 300 feet".
I have to assume that most people don't even think about all of this - in fact, I KNOW most people do not.
This all puts the murders on the high seas as of late in perspective. I don't think there is a limit as to what the American people would accept...that is, very few are going to protest.