"Bad Guys"
Actual quote from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth yesterday:
“It takes money to kill bad guys.”
Bad guys.
More than 1,200 civilians killed.
More than 160 children killed in one strike.
Over 10,000 injured.
3.2 million people (more people than the city of Chicago) currently fleeing their homes.
“It takes money to kill bad guys.”
There’s quite a few people dead in the last three weeks.
A few of whom have, yes, done some really bad things.
Many, many thousands of others who were just trying to live their freaking lives,
but who instead had those lives taken from them.
Babies.
Kids.
Adults.
Elderly.
All civilians. All trying to get through their day-to-day lives.
Just like you and I.
I hate the way our country can kill people as long as we’ve first given them a negative label.
I hate how effective it is.
A blind refugee can be left by border patrol in the parking lot of a closed coffee shop at night in below-freezing temperatures, and die in the cold that night, and it won’t make much of a blip in our collective consciousness, because our national officials have spent years demonizing refugees.
If we say “Refugees Bad” enough, a refugee will die in the cold and people will say he probably deserved it.
If we say “Iran Bad” enough, 160 children will die by our own missiles and we’ll say it was justified.
I hope the Secretary of Defense, a man who professes to be a Christian, will start to recognize the image of God in some of the people we’re bombing.
I hope he’ll see their humanity; their deservedness of life.
I’m hoping and praying the bombs will stop.
Consider me skeptical, but I’m hoping.
thanks for this, David.