Paradise Preoccupied

A couple of items in the news recently have me lingering on the edge of despair, wondering if there is any hope at all for a world fit to live in.

First was a report I caught the end of on the BBC about how children in Gaza were handing out sweets in celebration of the suicide bombings in Israel that managed to blow some people to bits.

Then, this morning a brought this, complete with video, from an Al-Qaeda training school that teaches little boys how to be terrorists.

Also in the news, a Khmer Rouge leader asking to be released on bail … Brother Number Two, nonetheless.

All three of these are stories of child abuse, yet none are thought to be so in the minds of many.

Although Nuon Chea was a grown man at the time he participated in masterminding the murders of almost two million Cambodians, it was children in the country he turned to for the hands-on, get-their-backs-into-it killing, and the success of getting the kids involved hasn’t been forgotten.

“Lord of the Flies” is terrifying enough as a novel, but when the same inclinations that can take a group of boys from manners to mayhem completely on their own are guided with intent, and armed to the teeth, sinister and sordid no longer fit as descriptive terms, and cultural boundaries should not be allowed to come between kids and their right to be protected from the sort of horrors they are being inducted into.

There is nothing natural about a child feeling joy over death and destruction as a matter of choice, and a process that teaches this reaction to pain and suffering is wrong … just plain wrong. Getting them to cause the pain and suffering is not only wrong, but criminally so, and anyone perpetuating a system of hand-me-down terrorism should be subject to punishment.

Anyone inclined to agree with children being intentionally involved in the horrors grownups create has been warped beyond redemption, and unfortunately, this may also be so for the children at their mercy.