Larry D. Lauer

There are endless horrible images of the ravages of war on television. Do they compel people to act?  Do they horrify, but just leave us feeling helpless?  Or, do most of us just quickly dismiss them with mumbles about a world that’s coming apart?

The Vietnam war was reported every day on television. I remember that my first exposure to real war on the tube was horrifying. But gradually as those images became daily experiences they lost much of their early shock. People I interviewed admitted that eventually these reports started to look more like a movie to them. And those early feelings of real horror would only return when they reminded themselves that this was actually real war.

War reporting on television is our daily reminder that a steady diet of most anything on this medium eventually can become accepted as commonplace. We learned that surprising lesson in our recent presidential election. Flat-out lies, personal attacks, and vulgarities became commonplace all too quickly. And I fear that the horrible daily images of bombed-out buildings with desperate families and dying children are becoming all too commonplace as well.

But once in a while there is an image so powerful that it sticks in the mind and won’t let go. We all are haunted by that one image of that lone little child, fully dressed, curled-up, so innocent-looking, washed up on that beach– even though we deep down also knew that there were countless others just like him.

Now, much to my dismay, the other day I saw one more such horribly haunting image.

A bomb had just exploded and people were running away from the rubble for their life. In the middle of the chaos and devastation there was one lone child sitting there with only two bloody stumps remaining for his legs. His father was running aimlessly and yelling desperately for help. And with his arms both stretched upward toward the sky this ravaged little child simply said,” Daddy, please pick me up!”

This one will leave me crying for a lifetime.