It is a reality of war that it's conduct creates collateral damage -- a euphemism for the destruction of non-military targets and the death of innocent civilians. No matter how carefully a military force conducts its operations, innocents will be caught in the crossfire. A reality that is all the more likely when the opposing side uses civilians and institutions like schools, churches and hospitals to give itself cover. When it comes to collateral damage, nothing is more poignant than images of children, maimed or killed, as the violence of war engulfs them.
On May 22, a British-born suicide bomber of Libyan ancestry detonated an improvised explosive device outside a stadium in Manchester, England. I will not say his name. He deserves nothing more than the anonymity of a coward. At the time the American pop star Ariana Grande was holding a concert, one of a number that had been planned as part of a worldwide tour. The attack resulted in the deaths of 22 people, mostly children. 120 people were injured 59 of whom were hospitalized. About 20 remain in critical condition. They ranged in age from eight-year-old Saffie-Rose Roussos to a middle-aged Polish couple residing in York who were waiting to pick up their daughters, Alex and Patrycja. The girls are safe, now orphans.
People sit under a billboard in Manchester city center, Tuesday May 23, 2017, the day after the suicide attack at an Ariana Grande concert that left 22 people dead as it ended on Monday night.
It is impossible to find any geopolitical significance in the attack. The music of Ariana Grande is not particularly political. She is not associated with issues that are socially or politically controversial. There was no defining ethnic, social or political characteristic in her audience; no emotional or historical significance to the venue or its location. It was a stadium full of young girls and their mothers. We cannot therefore escape the fact that the deaths of the children that resulted from the Manchester bombing were not collateral damage -- they were the target.
Miss Grande cancelled the rest of her tour and went home. Understandable, what 23-year-old girl who suddenly finds herself in a war zone wouldn't run to the safety of home and its gated protection? Still, in doing so she validated the bomber's actions. The message to other would be suicide bombers intent on shutting down the decadent music of the West is unmistakable. Blow yourself up outside the entrance of a concert venue, take a few infidel children with you and that will be the end of the concert tour.
How does a civilization die? Certainly, its members can be subject to a genocidal extermination either by disease or by willful slaughter. History is replete with such examples, including sadly, our own treatment of the native peoples of the Americas. The symbols of a civilization, the cultural artifacts that define it and illustrate its evolution can be destroyed. The Nazis burned books, destroyed art, melted down into anonymity religious artifacts made of precious metals. So too, did the Spanish conquerors of the civilizations of the Americas. The use of a language can be banned as the British did, from the Gaelic of the Scottish Highlands to the Afrikaans of the Transvaal. But most of all civilizations die when they lose their voice.
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