Within Europe, the EU subsidizes a news channel called: Euronews. Whats characteristic of Euronews is that there are no anchors or little people at desks saying “Good morning, Im____ and here’s whats happenning.” Instead, Euronews features reports from the field and that’s it. Often the footage comes from the public media of that country. One excellent segment is called NO COMMENT, where you watch footage from some current event with no comment, just the original sound.

Well, ever since the begining of the US’s invasion of Iraq, Euronews has offered some really unique and un-sensational coverage, and the NO COMMENT segment is always footage from the streets of Basra or Baghdad, etc. Today’s footage showed the people of Baghdad…. piling sandbags in front of their shops draging supplies into their crumbling homes. Perhaps the most striking thing was the age of these people; standing guard with what seemed to be a broken kalishnakov was an old Iraqi man… probably 70 years old.. he seemed alert and determined but scared. So scared. He probably has grandchildren. Some of them may not have survived.. or may not survive this invasion.. and the old man seems to have accepted the responsibility.. to fight in their honor. He probably can’t move very fast, so he has propped himself up against the sandbags. He’s not defending a regime. He’s not defending any man or devil-incarnate. This man is defending his home, his shop, his street, his children. And while it may not fit the American Government’s line of justification and moralization of what they have done in Iraq, it is the truth for many old men in Baghdad. Liberators? This is not the first foreign army to make that claim, these old men do not forget.

Watching these nervous old men… awaiting certain death… a thought re-occurs… how much can be justified? How many lives are “worth it”. How sure are these leaders that there was no other way? How hard did they try to avoid this?