The People of Iraq

Today in Baghdad at least 76 people were killed in car bombs. Sometimes with all the horrific attacks that rip a part bodies and bloody the streets, we forget about the daily suffering that have nothing to do with a spectacular explosion. We forget about the young children who can’t focus in school because they fear they might die. Many don’t go to school at all, the roads are to dangerous.

We forget about the little girl who looks up at her penniless father and asks her baba for bread. We forget about the hundreds of thousands of women who are now widows and are forced to find a way to feed their family. We forget about the day when the four-year-old who grew up in this war can’t get a job as an adult because it was to dangerous to go to school. We forget that not everything is Sunni vs. Shiite, Sunni vs. Sunni, Shiite vs. Shiite or Kurd vs Arab. We forget that not everything is about Al Qaida, a group that only formed in Iraq after the 2003 invasion and according to some reports is only responsible for 15 percent of the violence in Iraq. We forget that it’s not just about U.S. government catch phrases like, “democracy is hard,” or “If we don’t fight them here, they will follow us home.” We forget that this is more than labels, this is people.

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