Small Fry

     Why are kids across the face of the globe being abused, enslaved, injured in dreadful ways, shot, and even murdered in the womb? Has it always been that violent? Or is it the result of rapid communication from all corners of the earth?

     "Suffer the little children. . ." seems to be a description of what is happening today, but it is only half of a quote by Jesus(who as a baby had escaped from Herrod's child genocide) :  "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not." In this case "suffer" is used in the sense of "allow." ". . .for of such is the kingdom of God."

     Deranged fathers are killing wives and often their own children. Why would Chris Benoit, a pro-wrestler, strangle his wife and smother his retarded son?  The World Wrestling Entertainment is guilty of raking in the big bucks at the expense of their wrestler's health by not curbing the use of steroids and pain killers, a combination that leads to severe depression, dementia, paranoia, and emotional disturbance. The death rate among the young pro-wrestlers is surpassed only by the infant death toll in Mississippi. The latest wrinkle, extreme fighting pulls no punchs between two beefcakes in an octagonal cage and deserves a quick burial. This harsh "sport" has spread to unsupervised backyard matches between kids knocking each other's brains out.   

     The murders are too numerous to list here, like a police officer who killed his mistress and dragged her out in a blanket passed his toddler son. A mother fleeing a trooper crashes into a pole and kills her three children. At other times, the killings go beyond family. In an amusement park, a girl on a ride has both feet sheered off by a cable. An eleven-year-old-boy in Wyoming was pulled out of a tent by a bear and practically eaten alive. A father drives off not knowing his little daughter is sitting on the roof of the car. He braked, and she slide off and hit the pavement. When he got to her, she raised her head and said: "I'm sorry, daddy."

                    In Iraq

      Day after day, the headlines tell of more death and destruction in Iraq. A few weeks ago our soldiers looked over a wall and made a horrifying discovery: 24 emaciated boys, most of them naked, tied outside of their beds, lying in their own waste. The story was broken by CBS Nightly News:

                        

      Our soldiers called for medical help and the boys were soon moved to a different orphanage. Iraqi officials tried to block this shocking story; after all, one of the commandments of the Muslim religion is to take care of the stricken and downtrodden. Of course, the radicals believe it is legal to execute a novelist like Rushdie, or behead an Afghan who converts to Christianity, or to pack explosives on a three-yea-old boy and send him to a police station. The boy couldn't remember what button to push to blow himself up so he asked a policeman for help.

                        

     An Iraqi nurse smiles for the camera in a scene reminiscent of a kiddie Abu Ghraib. Two nurses, two male attendants were fired, and the repulsive manager was arrested. His office was quite elegant, next to a storage room with stacks of boys' clothing and food, all of which would have been sold on the black market.

     Said a battle-hardened soldier: "I saw children that you could see literally every bone in their bodies that were so skinny they had no energy to move and no expressions on their faces."

      After a week of careful nursing the orphans began to show some signs of normalcy. In a scene on CBS, I saw one of the boys carefully reach through the bars of his crib and touch the hand of a soldier. The soldier gently took in his huge hand the tiny hand of the boy whose face radiated an amazement never to be forgotten.

                           

     Donations to Baghdad Orphanages may be made through CBS Evening News. Oprah is also doing outstanding work in reaching out to help the unfortunate. Last week she started a program for a million mentors "to adopt" inner-city children. Her school for young girls in South Africa is functioning smoothly. She recently featured on her TV show a woman who had spotted on the front page of the NY Times the face of a boy in a fishing boat. He had been sold to fishermen and his job was to sit and bail out the water all day and sleep on wet nets at night. The guest received a standing ovation for getting in touch with a Ghanaian official and buying him back, along with his brother and three friends. This is just one boy among millions of children deprived of their childhood by being forced to work like an adult.

     Lost Boys of Sudan, Sierra Leone, and other African countries have been receiving much attention as a result of their rescue from armies as child soldiers. A number of them have arrived in this country, and their stories are being told in magazines, books and videos. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah has been on the best-seller list and has led to many TV interviews. War lords discovered that children were the perfect weapon: easily manipulated, intensely loyal, fearless, and in endless supply. Spaced out on drugs, kids as young as eight-years-old are miniature killing machines, capable of leaving behind smoking huts and sawed off ears. Ismael writes: "Very quickly the ideology got lost. And then it became a bloodbath, a way for the commanders to plunder, a war of madness."

                                                                                          

After some years of rehabilitation, the Lost Boys, who are now in their late twenties, seem to be adjusting to our way of life. One would imagine that they still suffer from flashbacks in connection with their murderous earlier lives. Like our mentally and emotionally wounded soldiers, some of them may be victims of post-traumatic stress disorder.

     In his book about children at war, P. W. Singer writes: "In many conflicts today, child soldiers are feared more than adult ones. One military expert warns of the ferocity of child soldiers. They will capture you, strip you naked, run you through the streets, cut off your testicles, fry them in a pan in front of you, fillet you from head to toe, and then cut off your head and put it on a stake."

     Great balls of fire! These vicious urchins show no sign of recognizing the provisions of the Geneva Convention. Some of their enemies may deserve mistreatment for burning down villages, raping women, hacking off the limbs of adults and murdering children.

     Good-hearted church ladies and ministers who act as guardians of the Lost Boys may want to keep in mind that fighting as child soldiers could have buried sadistic impulses that unexpectedly emerge. At an early age, children have not developed a strong sense of right and wrong behavior. The vicious empowerment over other humans, often over other children, may scar the child soldier for the rest of his life. To my knowledge, there has been no reversion to such savage behavior. In a future blog, I hope to interview Abraham, once a Lost Boy but now in my judgment a perfect gentle man.

     We should also keep in mind that many of the Lost Boys avoided combat. Dominic Dut, who now lives in Syracuse, NY, says: "After being held for some time, I felt that the Lord, who was guarding me, tapped me on the shoulder and urged me to take the first opportunity I had to escape. Withe God's help, I broke free through a small opening and fled from a plan that was to put me in slavery the rest of my life. Fighting my way through fear, hunger, loneliness, and the sound of wild beasts, I made my way to freedom with the help of my Savior."   

       I have more children stories to tell, but they must wait until next month. Until then, this Pied Piper of Caz is off on another assignment to catch that little rat who thinks he can cook.

Comments

[Karl Hamann]

Hey, don't blame the bear.
I recall the fanfare surrounding Bush's "No Child Left Behind" Act that failed to provide enough money to fund the program. Or of Pete Wilson (R - Governor of California a few years back) who chose to cut pre-natal care for immigrant mothers to save money in the California budget.
"Family values" talks the talk, but don't walk the walk.