This is in response to Bob DeMont, who was outraged by alleged “doctored” photos of a dead Lebanese baby (Aug. 9).

Let’s suppose, for a moment, that the photos he complained of were doctored, and that the rescue worker had carried the baby’s corpse around to various locations to be photographed. Does that make the violent death of the baby any less horrific? And is the rescue worker a “sicko,” as DeMont suggests, or is he a man sickened by the carnage and desperately attempting to capture the attention of the world?

The Lebanese Higher Relief Council reports that 1,020 Lebanese, most of them civilians, have been killed by the IDF. Recently, I heard an account from a Lebanese citizen in which he decried the demise of his country and estimated it would take at least 10 years to rebuild it to its former state.

Most of us probably agree that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that needs to be stopped. But is destroying the infrastructure of a country, that our own president recently praised for its democratic strides, justified?

Too many people in this country and, I fear, news sources, are unwilling to acknowledge the breadth of the destruction in Lebanon, let alone put a human face on it. When forced to see the actual faces of such suffering, we might actually have to empathize with the sufferers.

How very much easier it is to simply avoid their eyes and blame them for their own fates.

Kathleen Kienitz, Auburn