My wonderful grandson Japhy Carpenter-Dorworth was 10 years old in 2006 when he wrote the following essay for a school assignment. It is filled with wisdom, compassion, care, insight, kindness and the responsible acknowledgement that all things are connected. Current world events and the actions and words of some of its leaders inspires me to put Japhy’s words here as reminder to those leaders and each of us to listen to the clarity of our children. Thanks, Japhy.

IF I COULD CHANGE ANYTHING I WOULD CHANGE THE WAR IN IRAQ

If I could change anything I would change the war in Iraq. I would change it because all the war has caused us is death and destruction. Sometimes in war teenagers are forced to go in the war and die. Animals die from bombs and starvation. Women and children die from bombs hitting them.
Uranium bombs destroy and pollute cites for hundreds of years. They also poison the people who live in the cities. Everything around the war zones is destroyed, like forests, schools and hospitals.
This war makes most Americans look like bad people, because they think all Americans are like the government. I don’t think this war makes us safer because more people want to kill us now. Also the leaders of countries lie about war being safe and having a war as a good thing.
I could change it by getting all the kids around to protest against the war.
My plan would be to get all the kids to stop school and not do any work to attract attention. Then I would try to get enough attention to get an interviewer to get me on television and ask every kid from other schools to help me. After that I would tell all the kids to get any friends or siblings to help.
Finally I would try to get on TV again. Then tell everybody we will not do work until we stop the war. Finally they would stop and all the surviving soldiers would come home. Then give some supplies and pay for all the damage we made. Then Bush should apologize to the Iraqi president and get fired.