] The photograph's caption doesn't give her a name. Nor
] does it name the man who cradles her. He is just "a
] Marine medic" And she is just "a 4-year-old
] girl."
]
] He sits cross-legged on the ground, one heel scraping a
] small hollow in the sand, eyes closed as he holds her.
] She curls into the fetal position, her bare feet pale in
] the sun. Her doll fingers reach to touch his camouflaged
] chest, the pink sleeve of her sweater smudged with blood.
]
] Her mother, we are told, was killed in the crossfire near
] a place called Rifa.
]
] That is one way we might describe it. Another way, the
] military way, is shorter and simpler: collateral damage.
] Or, if that seems a bit abstract, there's
] "liberated," the Newspeak of our patriotic age.
]
] Of course, those words mean nothing to the 4-year-old
] girl. She is too young to have the words she needs to
] frame her world's end. There is only the incomprehensible
] fact of her mother's absence, this strange, helmeted man.