Children Of War

February 19,2010

Children Soldiers; maybe it’s a bizarre scenario to you too. It shouldn’t be happening no matter the circumstances. But then again I don’t and maybe you don’t live in those countries where it does happen Even in the world’s so called civilized societies we know it’s a reality occurrence in our neighborhoods as well. Petri dishes of poverty.

Child soldiers are one aspect of wars I could never validate nor agree with those who claim its justification. Perhaps we’re not close enough to the struggles of those people’s or nations to understand their necessity. But then again, from what most of us are aware, it’s not really any kind of a legitimate fighting force who enlist, train and drug children to be killers. When these army’s are short of men, children are the next to fall.

Obviously, no matter what the struggle, children shouldn’t be killing other people let alone other children who are sometimes trying to kill them. We know even in our so called civilized societies gang warfare in inner and even outer cities is a lot about children. Grammar school age kids with guns. Poverty, especially jobs and such can be attributed to rising numbers of children involved in gang activity; belonging to survive?

In any case that subject is one part of this blog entry that we’re learning more and more about. Just the other day I was in a store, not a book store, and looking through books on one of those turning racks. The book that caught mmy eye was one written by a young boy, still a child of sixteen and one who was a soldier in the country of his origin. He was living in New York City at the time but was recalling his days as a rebel soldier.

I’ve not yet finished the book but in other instances of children being left out of society we have no further to look than the recent news of the last earthquake that happened in Haiti. Many of the adult people killed have left children on the doorsteps of humanity. Opened arms or not, they’re still there with the question of what possibly can be done to help the entire lot; again left to beg, scrape or steal for food and the wont to survive.

What happens with them at this point is anybody’s guess. Some will find another home, most probably won’t. Huge earthquake disasters are catastrophes that occur too fast and are too large to help millions of distressed and starving people. To shelter, feed and heal everyone in short order, is impossible. A huge tragedy, not just for the people whose country the earthquake occurs but for the whole of humanity, earth’s family.

Like wars, no matter the ruin or country affected, children are the greater part of the abandoned in the worst of circumstances. Positively, many countries are trying to pull together to help the people of Haiti. Thankfully, a good sign for our earth’s concerned communities. Just the other day I read a sign on a hardware store where one of the local angels of good was trying to collect mmusical instruments to send to Haiti… great.

Catastrophes give us no choice of easy circumstances. Beginning at birth and especially in times of war children are always the helpless. As in many wars past and of course present wars, continuing as we speak; children are relegated to marginal or collateral damage; lost until accounted for; like being buried or hidden in mass graves some will never be found nor recovered. Name the country, you’ll find young walking wounded.

The very young as well as the very old are the last segments of society caught in the middle. Like bullets gone astray; guns pointed skyward to find its unintended mark of an innocent. In a neighborhood it may be an accident. In a war they’re always the illegitimacy of the times sucking them into the circumstance of so what; distant eyes.

How many recent photo’s let alone those in history when there were no cameras, video’s or I phones, have we seen missing or wandering children roaming the streets of despair or lost in a desperate battle of survival for food, shelter or most importantly, love? How many milk carton memories or products advertising anguish of a family’s lost child or loved one have you seen while having breakfast in your warm cocoon?

Most children come into this world as little gifts of expectancy to their parents and in turn their village or community. I don’t mean that to be as the parents just had a baby. What I mean is children are born with the anticipation of growth; to travel miles and to live some years to reach the heights of knowledge while gaining a lifetime of experiences towards and beyond adulthood; in turn to have families of their own.

In whatever amount of years it takes to be contributing members of world societies they are born into or gravitate towards, children aren’t expected to reach death until much later; hopefully after gaining the whole of a so called normal existence.

Wars and especially poverty can definitely hinder or stop that process. Many children really have no say in how or what happens to them because they are or they become:

Children of War

…in all the

World's War's

End of all the

Whirled's Words

Wrongs soar rites

Light id paths
Or
Language shadows

Children of War
Sing
Verse is anticipating

Life
Width

Chorus is precipitating

[Death]+