CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Why Hasn’t the World Set on Fire?

Image by Siyavash Lolo.

“To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.” – James Baldwin

An aerial photo shows rectangular tracings etched into dirt, one rectangle after the other, creating a grid across the land. A yellow excavator pulls piles of earth out from within the rectangular lines until each rectangle is six feet deep, then it moves onto the next. Men jump into the graves and shovel out what the excavator couldn’t reach. We don’t know if these men are the ones burying their own daughters, or if they knew the girls at all. But in my mind, I think they do — maybe they’re the uncles or the older brothers, and I hope to God it isn’t their fathers having to do something so devastating.

Wars have existed throughout all of human history, and this isn’t the first time hundreds of graves have been dug at once. I do wonder, though, if I were born in another time, if I would have seen such an image. The only thing I can be sure of is the reason why I saw the picture in the first place.

My country bombed a girl’s elementary school last weekend. My country killed around one hundred and sixty girls in an instant. My country is the reason that the men and women who loved those little girls have to pull their severed, bloody limbs from the rubble, find their backpacks covered in........

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