Confessing Evangelical

Well, it's not good for Smurfs, that's for sure.

Various low-quality versions of this have been doing the rounds for a few days now, but here's the best version I've managed to track down so far of the Unicef Smurf ad (800K QuickTime file). Powerful stuff, particularly the crying Baby Smurf. And really, really not suitable for young children, in case any of you have any Smurf fans in the house.

Mark Steyn isn't impressed, though. He has a point about civilian deaths in recent wars having usually occurred through more lo-tech means than air strikes, but it's not exactly his finest hour when he suggests that, compared with the brutalities of the Ugandan army in the Congo:

...having his village strafed in some clinical air strike is about the least worst option for Baby Smurf.

The implication (in the overall context of the article) being that the thousands of children killed, injured or orphaned in Iraq since 2003 should just be grateful they don't live in Rwanda ("You think you've got it bad?"). Which is just ducking the video's message, namely that modern warfare - whether conducted by machete or by "clinical" air strike - has a terrible and disproportionate effect on children and other civilians.

As the Unicef website explains:

The advertisement is part of UNICEF Belgium’s campaign to raise about $150,000 for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in Burundi. Today, 300,000 children are being used as child soldiers in more than 30 conflicts around the world. The ad is meant to draw greater attention to the issues affecting real children.

[The video's message] focuses on the devastating effects war has on children. Nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed in conflicts since 1990 are children.

The caption at the end of the video translates as: "Don't let war destroy children's worlds".