How we follow the news in America depends very much on how vivid our imaginations are, or how vivid we allow them to be. As an artist, I let mine often have free reign, so when I heard the horrific story on “Democracy Now” about what happened to young Salee by the American forces in Iraq, my response was visceral.

Over a year later, I helped No More Victims bring three year old Mustafa to San Francisco to have surgery. He had been completely deafened by a US missile strike next door to where he was living.

We are not heroes. The hospital, the doctors, the fundraisers, the exuberant media making feel-good stories about Mustafa’s donated cochlear implant are all scratching the surface of a tragedy our country brought on another nation’s people.

In the recovery room, when Mustafa still had the bandage wrapped over his ear, I couldn’t believe what I heard. The broadcast journalist was asking the father one minute about any anger he experienced discovering his son had been deafened, and the next minute whether this wasn’t a happy ending to the story.

A happy ending?! It’s a joke right? The media is desperate to create happy Hollywood endings even in plain sight of a boy whose body will never again be the same. No More Victims is helping a tiny fraction of the injured children in Iraq. Who in America is going to help the rest?