Every major newspaper is leading with the Kaleid Sheikh Mohammed "confession" about his planning of the 9/11 attacks and as many as thirty other terrorist strikes. The account is chilling, and I was especially struck by a quote he gave. He felt sorry, he said, for the deaths of children. But he added, "The language of war is victims."
I contrast that with a freelance piece I'm working on about refugees. It's in the very early stages of initial interviews, but one comment of a subject who escaped from Vietnam was especially compelling for me. I'm purposely not developing its context here, but the statement is interesting in its poignancy. "Without hope, there is no point in living."
The victims of war who survive soldier on. They live, build new lives and new hopes. The language of war may be victims, but the language of humanity is perseverence.
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