CNN manipulates with a symbol

The anger of my Arab friend grew palpable in the room as CNN showed baby Noor’s spinal defects. The four-month old child is being sponsored by a Texas church to be air-lifted from Iraq for a life-saving operation in Texas. The child touched the heart of an America soldier.

My friend, whose heart melts at any child, did not want the baby to die. What bothered her was all the other children who have died, the 300,000+ in our Iraq bombings during the Clinton administration and an unknown number since March20, 2003. Those are the deaths that Madeline Albright said was worth it.

This child’s life will not eradicate all the others deaths. It made the killers of those children look like saviours.

I too was angry. I felt manipulated. I asked my daughter what would happen to all the children in the US without medical insurance with the same illness. Would a church sponsor each of their surgeries?

We won’t even go into the child defects in Iraq from the uranium bullets or unexploded cluster bombs and land mines that are still to come.

I resent that one child who is having a chance has become a symbol for children that have no chance either in Iraq or in the US.

I wish for the success of the operation for baby Noor. But she is one child saved against the deaths of too many that should never have been put in danger.