Atrocities

The news out of Fallujah is heart-wrenching. This is the least of it. There are many reports of wanton slaughter of civilians, the refusal to let aid agencies in, the strategic closing of hospitals, and the wholesale destruction of the city that hearkens back to Vietnam ("burning villages in order to save them"). This goes far beyond targetting insurgents, if that were even legitimate in the first place. This is "pacification" of any resistant impulse by means of overwhelming military terror and extermination. Fallujah has been made an example by a calculative machine operating from air conditioned offices in Washington. I pray for the citizens of Fallujah and our soldiers who have been ordered to carry out this atrocity. While we sit at home debating the status of a questionable mosque shooting, an entire city is being razed.