In spring 1998, Carroll and Doris King - old family friends - traveled to Iraq with a human rights delegation to examine the effects of UN sanctions there. While in Baghdad they met Ghaidaa, a woman who had suffered more than any mother I had ever heard of, but was still ready to forgive.
Ghaidaa lost nine children in the destruction of Al Amariyah, a massive, reinforced concrete shelter in Baghdad that was penetrated by American "smart bombs" during the Gulf War. More than one thousand Iraqi civilians were incinerated in the bombing, most of them women and children.
Today, Ghaidaa leads tourists among the shelter ruins, hoping that those who see its horrors - among other things, ghostly silhouettes were left wherever human bodies shielded the walls from the extreme heat - will speak out against future bombings. After taking one of Ghaidaa's tours, Carroll and Doris, stunned, asked her to forgive them for what America had done to her family and people. A former Air Force officer who had flown bombing sorties over Europe in World War II, Carroll especially felt he bore a share of the guilt. Shaking his hand, then hugging Doris and bursting into tears, Ghaidaa cried, "I forgive you."
Ghaidaa will never find "justice" on human terms. How can one ever replace nine dead children? She will certainly never be able to forget them. But in finding the hearts of two people who asked her to forgive them, she has found peace - something that no one can put a price on.
Source: Johann Christoph Arnold - Why Forgive?, pp.30-31