corrente

Riverbend has more on the subject of what is happening in a city where actual people once lived actual lives, you know, going to work, to school, to the doctor, or to the market to shop and gossip, people who celebrated birthdays and graduations, for whom family means the large, extended kind, and for whom a neighborhood is a web of personal connections. Weirdly, the whole city has become a center of terrorism. All those people leading everyday lives have turned into terrorists, or potential terrorists. Or so we're told. Thus the entire city is "fair game," and "in play," sort of like John Kerry's Vietnam medals, only more deadly. Falluja has become a city of targets to be attacked from the air. Well, this is war and war is hell, and didn't the Iraqi's attack us first? Oh, that's right, they didn't. Damn, I keep forgetting we're there to liberate them. Increasingly the question becomes, who will liberate them from us?

Meet a mother and her children, refugees in their own country, who have left behind in Falluja, the father and the oldest son. I'll let Riverbend do the introductions.

She also reacts to the election results. Ours. With unblinking wit.

In addition to all that, she points us to an effort to provide help to the refugees from Falluja and other cities under attacked initiated by the Jarrar family. I'm still a bit unclear on exactly how to contribute; a hoped for Paypal account hasn't worked out. Do check it out; I can't imagine a more worthy cause for any American to support, and even small contributions will go a long way in Iraq, or Jordan, where supplies are to be purchased, toward helping to provide the kinds of help all refugees need.