Imagine...I Can't

Imagine hearing the incoming roar of a missile as your children cry in fear.
Imagine the terror of a three year old hearing the neighborhood they were born in explode in furious explosions coming from the air late in a darkened night.
Imagine a father seeing his son decapitated by the large piece of shrapnel from the bombs dropped on the village.
Imagine the horror of having white phosphorus burning the skin to the bone without a way to extinguish the searing heat.
Imagine sleep interrupted by men dressed in military uniforms, weapons pointed toward all the family and speaking loudly in a language unknown to all.
Imagine your husband and teen-aged son being forced to their knees with hands on their heads.
Imagine their hands being roughly tied with plastic loops behind their back and a burlap hood placed over their heads.
Imagine young men touching your daughters and you with their hands from head to toe as they speak in voices angry and loud.
Imagine your son and husband being taken away without knowing where it is they go.
Imagine your daughter and wife being left alone in a city already bombed to rubble while you and your son are taken away to a prison of unknown origin.
Imagine not understanding the yelling soldiers that entered your house, being struck with a rifle butt and made to lay flat on your belly as young men fondle your daughter and wife.
Imagine watching your adolescent son being choked and thrown to the floor next to you with his nose bleeding and his eye socket swollen.
Imagine being put in a holding cell with fifty to sixty other men in the heat of summer where the temperatures stay in the upper nineties or the one hundreds.
Imagine the smell of the place with only one sink and one hole in the floor for a toilet.
Imagine the flies and mosquitoes attracted by the crowded and filthy conditions.
Imagine the anger of some and the bullying by others among the group.
Imagine guards coming once each day to take you to a darkened cell to question you through an interpreter you recognize as a former member of the dictator’s secret police.
Imagine the sense of drowning as they strap you on a board and immerse your head into a pool of water.
Imagine being unable to answer the questions they keep asking and demanding you know answers for.
Imagine being stripped before the foreign women and made to sit nude in the cell for hours on end.
Imagine the screams of others echoing through the prison unknown in location.
Imagine your son being taken away to never be seen again.
Imagine the angry foreign voices continuously demanding you tell them where the enemy is located.
Imagine after nine months you’re released to go to a home no longer standing.
Imagine hearing your daughter perished in bombing by people who claim to be your liberator.
Imagine your wife battered and mute with inconsolable grief wracking her soul.
Imagine having no word or knowledge of your son.
Imagine seeing your neighbors lying in the street with missing limbs and the mask of death on their faces.
Imagine the burning rubble of your place of worship.
Imagine sewage as the only available water supply.
Imagine constant darkness at night without the electrical power.
Imagine scavenging food from the ruins of the city in order to survive.
Imagine seeing your brother shot in the temple by the sniper of the liberators.
Imagine the remaining live children bloated from dysentery and water-borne illnesses.
Imagine the ravages of radiation sickness caused by something the foreigners used to destroy your village. Imagine daily fights with family and neighbors for rations of available food and water.
Today I imagined all this when the man called President arrived in my city.
I imagined all of it as I read and heard about his luncheon costing one thousand dollars per person.
I imagined it all as I saw his caravan race past me and the group of people protesting his visit.
I imagined it as I saw buses lined to block any view he may have of us or we of him.
I imagined it as I thought of his lies and blatant arrogance.
I imagined it as I heard his shallow reasons to “stay the course”.
Today I imagined all of it as I was told by others in the activist community I shouldn’t come across as angry to the lying members of the mainstream press.
I imagined it all as I was told using certain words considered obscene by some was counter-productive and a form of violence.
I imagined it all as I listened to others tell some of us not to behave in a way that would upset the liars of the press and the lying President’s people.
Today I imagined it all as I saw veterans of the insanity now and insanities of the past.
I imagined it all as I saw my friend whose family lives in such a place vent her anger.
I imagined it all as I tried to forget my time as the oppressive foreigner.
I can’t imagine why I should quiet my angry voice.
I can’t imagine why the use of obscenity should upset any in this country if the true obscenity of this President and his hideous and evil actions don’t upset most people of this country all that much.
I can’t imagine having rules of gentility in times of unconscionable corruption and violence by those in power.
I can’t imagine protocols of kindness toward those perpetrators of brutality.
Maybe John Lennon could imagine we shall overcome and lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside.
I wonder if he could imagine American violence taking away his dreams of nothing to live or die for.
As for me, I’ve lost my imagination of goodness and kindness toward brutal oppressors of the poor and weak.
I’ve lost my imagination of caring about the feelings of those who only bring hate and fear to all around them.
Imagine that. I wonder if you can.


Terry Leichner
USMC