Do you cry, Mr. President?

I believe you are a good man, Mr. President, and a thoughtful, loving father to your beautiful daughters. I see how you interact with your wife and know you offer her your love and support. I cried with you over the children and other victims of Newtown, Connecticut. Your pain, as a president and as a father, was sharply evident. 

And then I wondered, do you cry for the dead children of Afghanistan and Pakistan?

It is reported that 176 children have died in your drone strikes, the ones purported to be “targeted killings of terrorists.” This number is nearly nine times the number of children who died because an obsessed young man had weapons of mass death in his hands. Do you cry for those children whom you have “inadvertently” targeted? Do their deaths weigh heavily on your heart?

Those children, too, had loving parents who dreamed of a better future for them. Those children, too, are lost forever to their families, while they lie in graves outside the consciousness of the people of the United States. 

We see the roll calls of the Newtown victims’ names and cry anew for losses too terrible to bear.

But do you cry when you know your programs have sent so many innocent children to their deaths?

I wish I knew—and I wish you’d stop sending in weapons that kill the children.