Yesterday I listened to an NPR report on sectarian violence in the Baghdad surburb of Amiriya. You can listen to it here, if you have the stomach for it. Among the incidents in the story, one stood out: a short interview with a Shiite resident of Amiriya named Al-Abadi, who said “I am scared all day and all night; I might get killed at any moment,” followed by a description of his death, less than 12 hours later. As Al-Abadi drove a van full of children to school the next morning, gunmen appeared, stopped the van, and shot him dead. They dragged his body from the vehicle and left it lying face-down in a puddle of water. One of the children in the van was Al-Abadi’s daughter.
It’s enough to make you say Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all. Uh, what my evil twin meant to say was:
Have you had enough?
We dug the pit. Then we turned the snakes loose. And now we’re in there with ’em. Can we still climb out, or did we dig too deep?