[HCCN] fw: Kathy Kelly, Cold, Cold Heart

Wed Feb 15 22:16:45 UTC 2012

 Return <http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/14>

Published on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
<http://www.commondreams.org>
Cold, Cold Heart
  by  Kathy Kelly <http://www.commondreams.org/kathy-kelly>

It's Valentine's Day, and opening the little cartoon on the Google page
brings up a sentimental animation with Tony Bennett singing "why can't I
free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart."

Here in Dubai, where I¹m awaiting a visa to visit Afghanistan, the weather
is already warm and humid. But my bags are packed with sweaters because
Kabul is still reeling from the coldest winter on record. Two weeks ago,
eight children under age five froze to death there in one of the sprawling
refugee camps inhabited by so many who have fled from the battles in other
provinces. Since January 15, at least 23 children under 5 have frozen to
death in the camps.

 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/mommamia/2075549905/>

And just over a week ago, eight young shepherds, all but one under 14 years
of age, lit a fire for warmth on the snowy Afghan mountainside in Kapisa
Province where they were helping support their families by grazing sheep.
French troops saw the fire, and acted on faulty information, and the boys
were all killed in two successive NATO airstrikes. The usual denunciations
from local authorities, and Western apologies, followed. (Trend News,
February 10, 2012).

So I'm thinking about warmth, and who we share it with and who we don't.

This is an unexpected trip for me. I had first planned to spend this week at
home in Chicago, and then, rather suddenly, agreed to join a group of
informal human rights observers traveling to Bahrain for the one year
anniversary of their brutally repressed "February 17th Revolution" (please
follow events there, and demand that the U.S. cease arming Bahrain's
dictatorship, at witnessbahrain.org <http://witnessbahrain.org/> ). Bahraini
authorities declined to issue me a visa, and so I asked the Afghan Youth
Peace Volunteers if I could change my plans and spend the coming week with
them.

My friends tell me that the apartment where I¹m headed has been without
electricity for several days in a row. The pipes have frozen, so there will
be no running water. But in spite of the cold, it¹s an especially good time
to visit them because twelve of them will be there, on winter vacation from
school, including two 14 year old boys I couldn't meet during my last visit
who spent much of the last year away from the others, back home in Bamiyan
province, in their mountain villages, supporting their families.

One father left the family to find work elsewhere and is now living in Iran.
My young friend doesn't hear from his father much, but I wonder what he must
think as war threatens to move there. The mother launders clothes to help
make ends meet, but with one weak arm due to a history of polio, she can't
earn enough for the family's food. Her son is an excellent student, but
she's had to ask him to give up school and start adult work full time. Older
members of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have worked hard finding him
odd jobs in various shops, hoping to put off the day when he will have to
start full time work as a shepherd.

I've just, by coincidence, read the story of another young man, training for
work in the mountains: the article reaches me from friends I have just left
in Colorado Springs, and begins: "Pfc. Josh Harris pulled the charging
handle of a grenade launcher on Thursday, leaned back and peered through the
sights. His orders were clear. ³All right,² said Spc. Michael Breton,
moments earlier. ³There is an ice cream truck out there. So shoot it.²
Pressing down with his thumbs, the MK-19 ‹ a machine gun equipped with
grenades instead of bullets ‹ launched four training grenades 300 meters
down a Fort Carson range."
(www.gazette.com/articles/gis-133359-through-peered.html
<http://www.gazette.com/articles/gis-133359-through-peered.html> ) This is
last-minute training before shipping out with the Fort's 4th Brigade Combat
Team. "By March," the reporter continues, "he¹ll likely be watching grenades
sail into the hillsides of eastern Afghanistan."

Everyone knows that these attacks will kill civilians - will kill children.
If you fire enough bullets where there are children you're going to hit
them. A few days back filmmaker John McHugh described his twelve day stint
embedded in the U.S.' "Operation Mace" in Afghanistan's Nuristan province:
³Over the course of my stay on Mace, I witnessed the truly awesome firepower
that the U.S. military brings to a fight. Between their helicopters and jets
they had dropped 19 bombs, fired two Hellfire missiles, 205 rockets, 500
rounds of 20 millimeter, and 210 rounds of 30-millimetre cannon. They also
discharged 3,750 rounds of 50 caliber machine gun ammunition. And yet, only
once, could they confirm that they had killed a single Taliban fighter.²
McHugh wrote this for Mideast-based broadcaster Al Jazeera (³The Winter
War,² February 9, 2012). Would a Western media outlet have bothered covering
the story?

It¹s hard to fathom the vast indifference of Western observers to what their
militaries are doing in Afghanistan - to the lives lost, the futures broken,
the families and friendships and loves torn apart - all of which will occur
in the next country we collectively agree to demolish, and the next. Our
apathy surely makes it easier for military and political elites to wage
multiple wars. They count on us to look out at a world that we have been
told is barbaric and feral, addled (unlike ours) with terrifying
fundamentalism driving them (unlike us) to incessant violence.

We lull ourselves into a comforting delusion that we're waging humanitarian
wars, and then wonder why people aren't more grateful. Thinking of ourselves
as exceptionally noble, we're lost in denial masked as civilizing virtue as
we hum along with Tony Bennett¹s puzzled lyrics:

"I tried so hard my dear to show that you're my only dream
Yet you're afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme.
A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart.
Why can't I free your doubtful mind, and melt your cold, cold heart?"

 <http://www.commondreams.org/kathy-kelly>
Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
<http://vcnv.org/>  Kathy Kelly's email is kathy at vcnv.org

more Kathy Kelly <http://www.commondreams.org/kathy-kelly>

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