How does concern for the Iraqi children not acknowledge the success of this? Children have been in jail for five years for not participating in the youth camps. Now they are free. Their parents falling to the streets in joy at seeing their children again. An eight-year-old … in jail for four years? Excuse me? What kind of monsters are these people?
I myself dropped out of Girl Scouts at age 10 because I had no interest in spending my free afternoons making duffel bags and shell sculptures, and cooking up broth in the woods. I didn’t like group activities, or organized play. That’s fine. Girl Scouts wasn’t my thing. I didn’t go to JAIL for quitting the damn Girl Scouts.
Small children would still be locked up in prison if it weren’t for coalition tanks rolling into town.
The feminists refused to celebrate when the Taliban crumbled and Afghan women peeked out from behind their veils to smile shyly at the cameras. If it’s an administration you are against, then no matter what: you will not applaud the results. You will not even acknowledge that any success has occurred. You will paint it in black, you will cloak yourself in cynicism. You will say idiotic things like Toni Morrison said, in the aftermath of 9/11: “We should bomb these people with love.” Excuse me? Lovely, Toni: TELL ME HOW. You may choose to live in some fantasy-land, fine … that’s your choice. But tell me exactly HOW to “bomb the Taliban with love”, and how that will remove the jackboot from the neck of Afghan women? TELL ME HOW. I am sick of people spouting vague phrases, which sound smart, and fit on a bumper-sticker, but don’t add up to an IDEA, or a PLAN, or what we should DO.
The Tolstoy question: “So what is to be done?”
It is the only question that really matters. More so than “How do I feel about this?” Fine. You feel BAD about this. Fine. But then: what is to be DONE? All questions/concerns/opinions should lead to Tolstoy’s question; otherwise, you are just sitting in your ivory tower ruminating on things.
What is to be done? What is to be done?
These people moaning about the “Iraqi children” … Why haven’t they been screaming about the plight of the Iraqi children for the past 12 years, or even longer? Children being tortured, raped, having to watch their parents being tortured, raped …
There are those out there who have deplored the international sanctions placed on Iraq, because of the starving of Iraqi children. This has been a desperate humanitarian issue for many many years. Children are innocent. They don’t get to choose where they live … No child deserves that. No child deserves poverty. So I applaud the peace organizations for being concerned about the poverty-struck Iraqi children years before it was fashionable. However, how soon will we hear the self-same voices acknowledging at the very least the limited success of this mission?
