Iraqi child murdered by U.S. ignorance and complancency
"At least eight of those children, some reportedly as young as 10, were held at Guantanamo. They even had a special camp for them there: Camp Iguana. One of those kids committed suicide at the age of 21, after spending five years in confinement at Guantanamo. (Ironically and tragically, that particular victim of the president’s criminal policy, had been determined by the Pentagon to have been innocent only two weeks before he took his own life, but nobody bothered to tell him he was slated for release and a return home to Afghanistan.)" - Dave Lindorff, "Bush's War on Children"
As Christians, we believe that God protects children, but we are the hands that he uses. But so benumbed has our God-formed conscience become that we make not a whimper at 10 year old terrorists locked up without charges at Guantanamo. Such is the price of our "safety". Truly have we succumbed to that deadening of conscience described by Thomas Merton, "The great danger is that under the pressures of anxiety and fear, the alternation of crisis and relaxation and new crisis, the people of the world will come to accept gradually the idea of war, the idea of submission to total power, and the abdication of reason, spirit and individual conscience. The great peril of the cold war is the progressive deadening of conscience." - Thomas Merton, "Cold War Letters"
"I say Bush’s behavior is criminal because since 1949, under the Geneva Conventions signed and adopted by the US, and incorporated into US law under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, children under the age of 15 are classed as 'protected persons,' and even if captured while fighting against US forces are to be considered victims, not POWs. In 2002, the Bush administration signed an updated version of that treaty, raising the 'protected person' age to all those 'under 18.'" - Dave Lindorff, "Bush's War on Children"
No comments:
Post a Comment