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Saturday, August 05, 2006
Speak out: Horrors of war
By Ping J. Uckung
The current Israel-Hezbollah skirmish reminds me of 1974 when fighting between the Moro National Liberation Front and the Philippine military was at its fiercest in the town of Jolo.
I was only nine years old then.
Moro rebels came down from the mountains and brought the battle to town.
Jolo was burned to the ground as the military bombarded it from the air, ground, and sea.
Tora-Tora planes and F-4 jet fighters dropped bombs indiscriminately like birds dropping dung.
Navy boats fired their cannons towards the town, the villages, and the mountains.
From their headquarters, the military also fired their 105 mm artillery cannons and mortars.
You can hear gunfire 24 hours every day and every day of the week.
I don't know how many hundreds or thousands were killed during the battle from either side; all I can recall are the bodies of civilians, abandoned houses, burnt buildings, hordes of dislocated families, hunger, fear, and terror.
War is indeed horrible. And it is most horrible to innocent civilians.
Thus, I sympathize very deeply with the innocent Lebanese civilians who are on the receiving end of 500-pound bombs of the Israelis.
Their lives are unnecessarily ruined, if not lost, for something that they did not do.
Whatever may be the justification of Israel for attacking Lebanon would surely pale in comparison in the face of so much human suffering it has created and continue to cause to the Lebanese people.
Israel attacked Lebanon to take vengeance for two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, downgrade or eliminate Hezbollah, and to make Israel safer.
Or maybe Israel has had enough of Hezbollah's constant mischief.
However, Israel does not realize or does not care that it has created more enemies and more willing Lebanese martyrs who suffered because of its bellicose actions.
And it has not stopped Hezbollah from firing rockets into Israel.
Reports say an estimated 200,000 innocent civilians (mostly, if not all are Muslims) and 2,500 American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
The civilian death toll continues to rise in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many young American soldiers also lost their precious lives, and there are countless wounded or disabled soldiers.
Now, as the world watch the Middle East conflict by the sidelines, we continue to count the dead from either side.
Allah forbid when the entire Muslim world is dragged into the conflict and the other superpowers joined in the melee.
War is stupid. So are our world leaders.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 5, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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