Howard Zinn on Gino Strada

On August 3, Human Rights Watch announced that the Bush Administration “appears poised to resume the production of anti-personnel mines” for the first time since 1997. It noted that “the Pentagon has requested a total of $1.3 billion” for a new type of land mine. This registered with me because I had just read Dr. Gino Strada’s Green Parrots: A War Surgeon’s Diary. The book tells of his fifteen years performing surgery in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Eritrea, Cambodia, and other places, on victims of land mines and other products of our technological expertise. The “green parrots” are land mines with tiny wings, which look like toys to children, who then pick them up—with horrible consequences.

Read "A Surgeon’s Touch" By Howard Zinn on The Progressive