The headline of the Drudge Report is shocking. Drudge published the shocking photo of a shocking cover story from the UK INDEPENDENT … The image shows a Syrian boy, drowned and dead face down..
After the image was published, it has been shared around the word millions of times over.. He was three. His name is Aylan. His brother, age 5, also died. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/03/a-desperate-refugee-family-a-capsized-boat-and-3-year-old-dead-on-a-beach-in-turkey/)
He died like many other fleeing war and desperation in Syria. We also now know that Canada rejected his family’s attempt at asylum because the United Nations don’t recognize Kurdish Syrians who spend time in Turkey as refugees.
Most of the news organizations publishing this picture are doing so with notations that normally they would showcase such harrowing images. But this one is different.. Just like some iconic images from LIFE MAGAZINE of Saigon, his AFP/GETTY IMAGES photo is historical already. It’s also extremely sad and disgusting.
Disgusting that children don’t have a chance at childhood .. That we, as people on this planet in this new century, can’t escape our man made religions.. Can’t escape our barbarism.. Can’t escape our inhumanity.
And suffer the children. As always.
My initial reaction to this picture was that this boy looked a lot like my own .. He has an outfit similar to that my son wears. I bet he looks a lot like a child in your family, too.
Guess what. He is a child of you.. He’s a child of God. Or whatever deity you find comfort in believing is real.
This child now, a short life extinguished, is face down on the planet of war and strife.
Since the war in Syria is raging, more will attempt to escape to Europe and the same fate may await them as well. Other lucky ones will make it.
Then what?
Peace? Stability? A childhood?
Never on this planet. Humanity is too egotistical and reckless to ever allow goodness to creep into the darkness we have so effectively created.
Sorry for my hopeless words.. But this photo really took me by surprise today when I first saw it. I became quite emotional. And now it’s an image I’ll never quite get out of my mind.
Will you?
