Saturday, September 24, 2005

Bad parenting

Surfing my way thru the news, after watching the highly entertaining exchange between Phil Donahue and Bill O'Reilly on the Iraq war, I came across this story about an explosion that destroyed a truck carrying militants and weapons in the Gaza Strip. What were they doing? This truck was in some kind of parade celebrating the pullout of Israeli settlers from Gaza. The story pointedly notes that 80 were wounded, including children.

Question: What kind of parent would take their child to a parade in the streets where
1) there will be violent men present;
2) there will be automatic weapons fired into the air and *homemade* (and thus, very possibly unstable) explosives in the vicinity;
3) there is a very good possibility of a strike by a vastly militarily superior enemy (Israel)?

Seriously - when we look upon the Middle East and attempt to consider what we are dealing w/ in terms of violent religious (read: Islamic) zealotry and boiling hot ethnic hatreds, we would do well to remember that such zealotry and hatreds reach the point even of overwhelming one of the most powerful human virtues - the parent's care for his/her child.

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