Words that Never Leave You: “[They] can’t bring back our brother, children, our nephews. If they apologize that would be sufficient.”
Part Twenty-Nine in an ongoing series from Hollie's book "Words That Never Leave You: Fifty Pearls of Wisdom and Reflection from Survivors Across the World."
It was the stuff of nightmares: a car burned into oblivion, the courtyard smashed and singed. Children’s toys and shoes were blackened and blown apart, windows obliterated, and doors lurched from hinges on impact.
Some nineteen days after the U.S. government claimed, amid the chaotic Afghan withdrawal, that it thwarted an ISIS-K terror attack with a targeted drone strike on a terrorist bomber less than two miles from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), officials finally admitted it was all a “mistake.”
One of the hardest days of my journalistic life was showing up at that bombed-to-oblivion Kabul home that killed eleven innocent Afghans – almost all children. Romal Ahmadi was sitting in the living room when the drone struck, killing his only three children: daughter Ayat, 2, and sons Bin Yamin, 6, and Arwin, 7.
“No one has apologized, no one has helped us,” Romal Ahmadi told me, just hours after the Pentagon confessed to the blunder. “[They] Americans can’t bring back our brother, children, our nephews. If they apologize, that would be sufficient.”
Romal speaks softly and calmly, a portrait of his composure. Yet his eyes constantly dart to the floor as if trying to still wrap his head around the tragedy that took so much of his family. It broke my heart that my government could not bring itself to apologize to these poor and mourning human beings. But it also forced me to ponder the significance of a sincere apology. When we don’t take accountability for our actions, thrusting ego to the forefront, we leave holes in our own lives and in the lives of others. If America cannot grow up and do what is right, how can we expect other nations to do so? And when we don’t do that for ourselves, how can we expect others to take the side of self-responsibility?
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