What that war picture from Afghanistan means to me

I have a son, a seven year old called Josh who lives very happily in a town called Surprise, Arizona.

Like all parents or those who care deeply for someone in their life, the thought of seeing your children suffer or face harm is indescribable and unimaginable. The parents of Josh Bernard have witnessed the AP image of their son's death broadcast around the US press and the world.

Lance Corporal Bernard, aged 21 was hit in the leg by a Rocket Propelled Grenade. Lying on his side in great agony and unable to breathe, his assault rifle stands useless within his grasp; one leg has been blown clean off and the mangled remains of another emerging from a patch of red gore. We see two fellow soldiers in blurred action attending to him.

Understandably, Lance Corporal Bernard's family did not wish this harrowing picture to feature on the AP Wire.

However, I am glad that the image has been used. Not in the sense that it bolsters argument for or against the continued involvement of NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Like all great pictorial documenation the judgment of the camera is simple. The truth is self-evident and before our eyes. Human beings in the twenty first century should not be committed to inflicting such suffering upon each other.

Josh Bernard was in the words of his father a shy, humble, unassuming young man with strong values of service and personal honour. Although the use of this picture has caused additional grief to their family, I hope that in time they will see or derive some personal benefit from sharing their loss with the wider world and the Josh they knew and loved.

Where does this leave me on the other side of the Atlantic? In heartfelt honesty, I would like my son to grow up in a world where young American men don't have to travel vast distances to kill and be killed by other young men.

Auden wrote : "To ask the hard question is easy"; never more so than in the globalised, intrinsically interconnected world of instant communications, information and response of today.

The responsibility lies on all of us to consider and take action as individuals, communities, and societies. Wherever we are, whatever our circumstances and background, what am I doing, and what are we doing for the sake of contributing to a peaceful world?

The 20th century and the first disastrous early years of this century have sign-posted where the answers won't come from. If we don't know the answers, we certainly know the dead ends.

The solution won't be more politics and more money, no matter how they are painted, where they claim to derive from or what hopes they are sold on.

The answer lies in our hearts if we did but know it.