Western corporate media’s antennae are super-sensitive to atrocities committed against children – except when their own countries are the perpetrators.
The deaths of tens of thousands – even millions – of children by bombings and blockades and other mega-aggressions are treated as non-events, while the alleged beheading of one seven-year-old by the Taliban makes international headlines. A genuine concern for the world’s children requires that “we must first acknowledge our own nation‘s history of violence.”
According to press reports, the Afghanistan Taliban executed a seven year-old boy in Helmand province after convicting him of acting as a spy. The reports were announced to the international media on the same day that British Prime Minister David Cameron met with President Hamid Karzai. Reports of the alleged atrocity were quite rightly met with outrage. President Karzai said, “Hanging or shooting to kill a seven year old boy regardless of whatever reason one would give for it is a crime against humanity.“
If the story of the executed seven year-old is true, it should not only be condemned, but should be a catalyst for self-examination for Americans. Such cruelty is not unknown in the annals of this nation’s history. In the years of lynch law terror inflicted on black Americans, little children were lynched along with adults.In the 18th century, the Massachusetts Bay Colony offered bounties for the scalps of Indian men, women, and children too.
Crimes against children cannot be relegated to the distant past either. The United States government has been responsible for the deaths of many thousands of children more recently. In 1996 then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked about the effects of sanctions imposed upon Iraq, sanctions which prohibited the importation of food and medicines, and the fact that half a million children died as a result. Albright was succinct in her assessment. “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” If the Taliban are executing children they are no worse than at least one American secretary of state.
One sitting senator, New York’s Charles Schumer, recently said that the adults and children of Gaza deserve the suffering inflicted upon them by Israel, America’s client state. He advocated continuing to “strangle them economically.” The economic strangulation once again includes food and medicine that help keep children alive. The rest of the world clearly sees the war on Gaza for what it is, a crime against humanity which violates the norms of international law, in particular the meting out of collective punishment on a civilian population
Thousands of children have been killed by American bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan or by Israeli bombs in Gaza. In December 2008 and January 2009 Israel killed 1,300 people in Gaza and an estimated 300 of those victims were children. Bombs aren’t nooses, but they mutilate, tear off limbs and separate heads from bodies. Those deaths are equally horrific.
Most Americans believe in their inalienable right to kill anyone their government tells them ought to be dead. How many millions exhorted their government to “finish the job” and “take out Saddam?” Warfare always brings death, and brings it to anyone unlucky enough to be in its path, regardless of age.
It should go without saying that child murder ought to be condemned in the strongest terms possible. When those killings are committed by our government’s action, they should be condemned just as strongly as if they were committed by people labeled as our enemies. The silence surrounding our government’s atrocities gives the impression that one death is of greater or lesser significance than another, depending upon who carried out the killing. Of course that is not so; the dead are mourned equally regardless of the killer’s identity. The temptation to express outrage is great, but there is no temptation for self-examination for Americans.
That self-examination is crucial now that the so-called Af-Pak strategy has resulted in military escalation and therefore an escalation in the number of dead human beings of all ages. If we as citizens do not remember our own atrocities and do not question our government as we should, then this tragedy can be used to justify carrying out more tragedies in the future. A shocking killing committed by the Taliban should not become a ready-made means of persuading the public to support more warfare.
It is interesting that the corporate media in this country have no difficulty in telling us about Taliban atrocities, but are less able to expose those committed by our government. War itself is an atrocity and insures that maximum cruelty and indifference to human life is the rule. If we want to proclaim our outrage we must do two things. We must first acknowledge our own nation‘s history of violence and we must proclaim our opposition to our government‘s violence and make it clear that we will no longer accept it being carried out in our names.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in Black Agenda Report. She lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.com.