A Deadly Fate

Arkan Ali Taha, 14, often stayed late at his father's newsroom in Kirkuk. The editor-in-chief of the weekly Voice of Villages, Ali Taha, treated his son as a journalist in training.

This week the teen was in a cab rushing from home to bring in a flash disk with needed information. He never made it to the paper.

He got caught in the crossfire between gunmen and the U.S. military. Arkan was killed in the back of a taxi. The coroner determined it was an American bullet that caused the fatal wound, his father said Saturday.

"I had four sons and now I have three," he said. "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

With the soothing rhythm of the verses of Quran being read in the background to mourn his son's passing, Ali Taha, recalled his son's loves.

The teen listened to pop music and was obsessed with computer games. He loved the weekly trips he took with his father to sites in the area.

The most recent trip was to the Dokan Dam, the primary water source in Kirkuk. He loved to stay late into the night at the Voice of Villages newsroom, a U.S. supported weekly, and help in any way he could.

Who knows what he would've been when he grew up. Who knows what life he would've lived. God had other plans, his father said.

"It was his destiny," he said. "He left at that time to meet that fate. We believe that everything that happens is the voice of God."

A U.S. military press release said that the soldiers were recovering a disabled vehicle when they came under fire. A soldier was wounded. When U.S. soldiers returned fire a "young Iraqi man" in the back of a taxi was shot, the statement said.

"This is an accident that could happen to any Iraqi living in this country today," his father said.

Taha looked to God for strength as so many other Iraqis do now. They mourn and they go on.

Comments

[Susan]

That is so sad.

[Batguano101]

Firefights are hazardous to life.

Wars always kill civilians.

An emotion milking story is always available.

Superb job of reinforcing to the Iraqis- pretend no war is going on and US troops job in a firefight is not to shoot to kill but to read the minds of people in vehicles.

Good spin off of the famous Blackwater shoot out. You strike the same points without being blatant.

Excellent refocus of the insurgent attack to make it invisible in plain sight in your story.

[Susan]

Wars do always kill civilians. And that is why starting up a war where none exists is the highest of evils and an act of mass murder. This is particularly true when you start up a war of aggression against a country where none of the people had harmed you in the first place.

What the US under bush & cheney has done is a huge war crime in my opinion. It is sad but true that the US military will suffer more for these crimes than either bush or cheney or any other war supporter.

I hear Perle is getting in on the oil deals in Kurdistan.

[batguano101]

Susan-

Milking the boy's death is a cheap shot reinforcing and promoting the violence rather than pointing out:
1. The Iraqi people are responsible for allowing insurgents to operate.
2. The Iraqi government is responsible for death squads and motivating insurgents.
3. The US congress is responsible for "taking impeachment off the table" and for blocking it from hearings.
4. Blaming the US troops, just as in the Blackwater event, for not reading minds to tell friend from foe in the middle of battle.
5. Preventing Iraqis from uniting against the insurgents by misdirecting their own anger and frustration away from insurgents to US troops.
6. Promoting insurgent propaganda and recruiting by blaming the US troops even through the firefight was started by the insurgents that killed the boy.

Susan if you want to stop the war, do so directing your emotion where it changes something, the civilian authority process which gives the mission to our military.

Emotion milking switching the blame for civilian deaths from everyone responsible to US troops is a cheap shot: prolonging the war, supporting the insurgents, and undermining holding Iraqi officials and population responsible for the attack against the US troops that caused the firefight.

[Susan]

This writer did not "blame" US troops, she reported that they fired the shots.

And if the US military cannot get rid of the insurgents, what are unarmed civilians supposed to do?

If the Iraqi officials/government are responsible for the attacks on US troops, then why are US troops in that country propping up the government there?

And who are you to tell the Iraqi people who they should or should not be angry with? Who make you master of the Iraqi people?

and as for "directing your emotion where it changes something, the civilian authority process which gives the mission to our military"... well, I have been doing that for almost seven years.

Maybe you could tell me HOW to do it be effective. Letters, lobbying, protests, vigils, you name it, I've probably done it is it was non-violent.... and still no success here in the USA.