A Quote by Andrew Himes
Brian Turner writes as only a soldier can, of terror and compassion, hurt and horror, sympathy and desire. He takes us into the truth and trauma of the Iraq war in language that is precise, delicate and beautiful, even as it tells of a suicide bomber, a skull shattered by a bullet, a blade in a bloodgroove.
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The only moral question with suicide bombing is who the target is. And in that sense, the suicide bomber is no different from the stealth bomber or the cruise missile. If it is targeted at civilian people, then it is morally wrong, whether done by Bush, Blair, or a suicide bomber.
But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.
He told me that once, in the war, he’d come upon a German soldier in the grass with his insides falling out; he was just lying there in agony. The soldier had looked up at Sergeant Leonard, and even though they didn’t speak the same language, they understood each other with just a look. The German lying on the ground; the American standing over him. He put a bullet in the soldier’s head. He didn’t do it with anger, as an enemy, but as a fellow man, one soldier helping another.
Terror is the desire to save your own ass, but horror is rooted in sympathy.
Storytelling is very important. It is through context and relations that we understand the importance of human dignity. The concept means nothing as an abstraction. It's important for us to understand why people do the things they do, including the monsters - the suicide bomber and the war criminal. Understanding is not acceptance. Understanding is exploring the human psyche. If we want to put an end to violence, we need to have the sort of conversation I had with the teenage suicide bomber.
Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.
It was the combination of many factors... With most people, suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty.
Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror, and therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that.
I did a study of soldiers returning from Iraq, and their levels of PTSD were much higher if they had had to shoot a woman or child, even if they knew the person was a suicide bomber.
Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror.
The reprisal against the suicide bomber does not bring peace. There is a suicide bomber, a reprisal and then a counter-reprisal. And it just goes on and on.
According to various polls conducted, the single most important issue in last week's election was not the Iraq War, not the War on Terror, not even the economy. It was the cultural war.
The wisdom that comes from having experienced heartbreak cannot be bequeathed; it can only be gained through experience. And having truly felt it, we are far more likely to have compassion for others. Anything that takes us close to true compassion takes us closer to what will one day be an experience of even greater joy.
I think the Americans are dying to leave Iraq. I was against the war but longed for the fall of Saddam; the decision to go to war clearly was taken long before the matter reached the U.N., given its inevitability. I kept my fingers crossed for the emergence of democracy in Iraq even if that would mean victory for a man whose politics I have little sympathy with.
The President reminded us that the war in Iraq is a central battlefield in the war on terror that began the morning of September the 11th.
The ultimate proof of total forgiveness takes place when we sincerely petition the Father to let those who have hurt us off the hook—even if they have hurt not only us, but also those close to us.
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