NationStates Jolt Archive

NOTE: For those of you who love to style American soldiers as "killers," and worse, try this on for size. And he's not the only one. Most American soldiers are compassionate men and women who will place their own lives in jeapordy to protect civilians.


Infantryman's wife saw the photo and knew (http://www.military.com/News/Home/0,13324,4-XX-0-DAYX20050506,00.html)
U.S. Army soldier comforting a fatally wounded child (AP Photo / Michael Yon via U.S. Army)
May 2, 2005

http://img221.echo.cx/img221/420/soldiercradlesdyingchild5dm.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)

Mar 11, 2005

BY ANDREW METZ
STAFF WRITER; Craig Gordon of the Washington Bureau contributed to this story.

May 5, 2005


On a day of carnage, it was an intimate image: a soldier clutching a child in his arms.

When Amy Bieger, mother of three boys, wife of an infantryman in Iraq, saw the picture on the Internet on Tuesday night, she stared at the little feet dangling in the nook of the man's arm, at the soldier's helmeted head pressed to the child's face. She stared and tears welled up.

"I said 'Oh my God, it is one of our soldiers,'" Bieger, 34, said yesterday from her home outside the Fort Lewis, Wash., Army post. "Then I stared at the [name] patch. I made out the rank and then the last four letters of the name and I knew it was my husband."

Amid an ongoing surge in violence in Iraq, Maj. Mark Bieger, the operations officer for the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, emerged Monday from the scene of double bombings in Mosul with a fatally wounded girl in his arms.

Freelance photographer Michael Yon caught the 35-year-old West Point graduate cradling the child, and in short order the anonymous tableau of compassion and violence was touching people around the country.

"In some ways, his name or rank doesn't matter - he is first and foremost an American soldier," said Meredith Weipert, a North Carolina elementary school teacher whose stepbrother is on the same Stryker combat team. "I hope this image is seared into the heart of the American people."

U.S. military officials declined to provide information about the incident, and Amy Bieger said her husband offered her few details. But, she said, it was just like him to be in the thick of things and drawn to children. When he was deployed last year, the local paper ran a picture of his youngest son, Owen, then 3, running through a field, American flag in hand.

Bieger's dad, Dan, from Hereford, Ariz., said, he wasn't surprised either but was worried about the impact on his son. "When I saw it, it kind of ripped us up," he said. "You can't go through that stuff without changing."

Amy Bieger said that as she peered at the photo Tuesday she recognized her husband's "body language and the way his arms were wrapped around her."

"He has definitely told me stories when he sees older kids playing over there, they just remind him of his boys back here," she said. "He has a huge soft heart for an infantryman."

i don't know anybody who has anything against american soldiers, although i suppose muslims would...i respect and pity them for the job they are forced to do, and sometimes, the ways they are supposed to do it in. it's the american government i have something against...i don't doubt that the man in the picture is a model of the average american solider.

I have always held, and often expressed as much here, that humanity can largely be explained as a type of spectrum that is contained within us all. That is to say, every human being has the potential for the utmost brutality and equal and opposite compassion (this perspective can be applied to largely every part of humanity). War it would seem has a way of stripping away all the frivolous bullshit that our safe, everyday lives piles up on us. It exposes the rawest of our brutality and at the same time brings out things like this. It's a great reminded that the people over there are above all else, human, non some type of monster that you often see people even here making them out to be.

I sit here moved, thanks Eutrusca. :)

When I see or think of a US soldier in combat, I think of someone that doesn't take pleasure in killing and thinks what they're doing is the right thing to do. So I have nothing against the soldiers but I have a hell of a lot against the administration.

Although, my grandfather would strangle a US soldier if he had the chance :D

The way I see it is that people are forgetting soldiers are regular people just like you and me, and just like you and me there's good people and then there's assholes. Assholes are allowed in combat just like every other soldier, but people are confusing those people with the majority of good hearted soldiers. Whenever there is a military situation, there's going to be a few sick fucks who give all the other soldiers a bad reputation. I HATE it when people generalize soldiers like that. The closest political affiliation I have is liberal, but it just bugs the hell out of me when people say bad shit about people in the military.

http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/2005/05/little-girl.html


Major Mark Bieger found this little girl after the car bomb that attacked our guys while kids were crowding around. The soldiers here have been angry and sad for two days. They are angry because the terrorists could just as easily have waited a block or two and attacked the patrol away from the kids. Instead, the suicide bomber drove his car and hit the Stryker when about twenty children were jumping up and down and waving at the soldiers. Major Bieger, I had seen him help rescue some of our guys a week earlier during another big attack, took some of our soldiers and rushed this little girl to our hospital. He wanted her to have American surgeons and not to go to the Iraqi hospital. She didn't make it. I snapped this picture when Major Bieger ran to take her away. He kept stopping to talk with her and hug her.

The soldiers went back to that neighborhood the next day to ask what they could do. The people were very warming and welcomed us into their homes, and many kids were actually running up to say hello and to ask soldiers to shake hands.

Eventually, some insurgents must have realized we were back and started shooting at us. The American soldiers and Iraqi police started engaging the enemy and there was a running gun battle. I saw at least one IP who was shot, but he looked okay and actually smiled at me despite the big bullet hole in his leg. I smiled back.

One thing seems certain; the people in that neighborhood share our feelings about the terrorists. We are going to go back there, and if any terrorists come out, the soldiers hope to find them. Everybody is still very angry that the insurgents attacked us when the kids were around. Their day will come.

The way I see it is that people are forgetting soldiers are regular people just like you and me, and just like you and me there's good people and then there's assholes. Assholes are allowed in combat just like every other soldier, but people are confusing those people with the majority of good hearted soldiers.

Easiest way to make attacking another human being, physically or otherwise, palatable is to dehumanize them, makes it gentler to the psyche.

Easiest way to make attacking another human being, physically or otherwise, palatable is to dehumanize them, makes it gentler to the psyche.

I always found it a little strange that I have NEVER heard this from ANYONE that has actually took part in a war, having killed someone or not.

http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/2005/05/little-girl.html

Major Mark Bieger found this little girl after the car bomb that attacked our guys while kids were crowding around. The soldiers here have been angry and sad for two days. They are angry because the terrorists could just as easily have waited a block or two and attacked the patrol away from the kids. Instead, the suicide bomber drove his car and hit the Stryker when about twenty children were jumping up and down and waving at the soldiers. Major Bieger, I had seen him help rescue some of our guys a week earlier during another big attack, took some of our soldiers and rushed this little girl to our hospital. He wanted her to have American surgeons and not to go to the Iraqi hospital. She didn't make it. I snapped this picture when Major Bieger ran to take her away. He kept stopping to talk with her and hug her.

Of course they wouldn't wait. They believe their cause is furthered by claiming that, if the soldiers weren't there at all, the children would be fine.

This is the reason that I have no respect for these men. If you feel that you have a true cause to fight for, then do it. Attack the military (not that I don't care about our guys, but it is their job to defend against attacks). Do not intentionally harm civilians and children. All that does is make those of us with any compassion forget what the cause may be and wonder how anyone can call themselves religious and wantonly murder civilians and children.

Edit: Eutrusca, your thread title is a bit, shall we say, silly? I have seen more than one picture like this in the media.

Wait ... someone hasn't said, "He's probably the one who injured the kid in the first place" yet? Wow ...

Anyway ... good pic. The "media filter", though, is a filter designed not to show wounded soldiers because Americans are not allowed to know that soldiers get hurt in war.

This particular pic is probably causing Rumsfield's propoganda machine to ejaculate like mad.