America has a Double Standard When It
Comes to Kids. Victims if Prostitutes,
Terrorists if They Are Caught Fighting
the US
Posted By Ariel & Dave Lindorff
June 26, 2008
Double standards when it comes to children are pretty
appalling—especially when it comes to “our” kids vs. “their”
kids, but here in America they aren’t limited to just
right-wingers.
Take reaction to the US Supreme Court’s latest ruling that you
cannot execute rapists—even those who rape children—on the
theory that only killing someone justifies execution.
Politicians who make their careers by promoting state sponsored
murder have been quick to condemn this latest “liberal outrage”
by calling for more laws that would make execution the
punishment for raping a child (admittedly a monstrous crime).
"Anybody in the country who cares about children should be
outraged that we have a Supreme Court that would issue a
decision like this," says Republican Alabama Attorney General
Troy King, who said the court’s 5-4 decision makes America “a
less safe place to grow up.”
Even Barack Obama has weighed in, along with John McCain, in
condemning the court’s decision, saying that states should be
free to pass death statutes for child rape.
Texas Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, supporting death for
“repeat child molesters," says, “Our top priority remains
protecting our most precious resource — our children." (Huh? I
thought in Texas it was oil.)
Then there’s the FBI’s latest sweeping busts of child
prostitution rings, which rescued 21 juveniles from sex-selling
rings. In announcing the arrests of some 300 people, FBI
Director Robert Mueller said, "Our top priority in these cases
has always been to identify children victims and move swiftly to
remove them from these dangerous environments.”
"These kids are victims,” said Ernie Allen, president of the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “They lack
the ability to walk away. This is the 21st-century slavery."
The question is, where are Mueller and Allen and these allegedly
concerned politicians when it comes to children who are forced
or lured into fighting against the US, whether in Afghanistan or
Iraq? Where are they when those children are captured by US
military forces and incarcerated with adult captives in
hell-holes like Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq, or Guantanamo, where there was a special children’s
section called Camp Iguana? I certainly haven’t heard a word
from either Obama or that famous POW John McCain in defense of
America’s child war prisoners.
Take Omar Khadr, shot and then captured and tortured by US
forces at the tender age of 15 in 2002 in Afghanistan and held
for six years in Guantanamo. Last week, I reported on his story
and on plans to try him by military tribunal as a terrorist
because he had dared, allegedly, to toss a grenade at US Special
Forces troops who had called in an air strike on him and several
adult fighters, killing one US soldier (at least one witness to
the incident, a US soldier, says it was not Khadr who three the
grenade). Nobody’s saying that Khadr was a victim. Nobody’s
saying that he “lacked the ability to walk away” from the
Taliban forces that his father and older brothers had him join
at the age of 14 a year before. Nobody’s saying he should be
“identified” and “removed from these dangerous environments.”
Nobody in government or in child protection organizations is
even investigating to see if Khadr, as a 15-year-old captive,
was tortured! Indeed, the US has been blocking both Khadr’s
military defense attorney and his Canadian lawyer (Khadr is a
Canadian citizen) from getting military records giving the
details of his capture and subsequent treatment.
Canadian journalist Chris Cook reports that the Canadian
government actually argued in Canadian court against releasing
the US reports in its possession because doing so might “upset
relations” between Canada and the United States. (The Canadian
Supreme Court in May rejected that pathetically subservient
claim by a 9-0 vote, ordering full disclosure.)
The thing is, Khadr is just one of at least 2500 children who
have been captured and held as “enemy combatants” by the US in
the Bush/Cheney so-called “War” on Terror.
Like child prostitutes, these captives, if they were even
actually involved in operations against the US (who would know,
since they’ve never been given hearings in court, and since in
many cases the evidence, such as it is, against them is the
result of torture, either of the children themselves, or of
others), are at worst child soldiers, who cannot be held
responsible for their actions. Indeed, under the UN Charter and
the Geneva Convention, as amended by a protocol signed by the US
in 2002, any of them who, at the time of their capture, were
under 18, as was Khadr, are to be considered not POWs or “enemy
combatants,” but rather victims, who need care and treatment.
Aside from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who has filed an article
of impeachment against President Bush, charging him with a war
crime for holding these children, and for authorizing rules of
engagement that have encouraged the killing of children as young
as 14, who are “presumed” to be combatants, and for the six
other members of the House who have co-signed his impeachment
bill (Rep. Robert Wexler, D-FL, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-CA, Rep.
Lynn Woolsey, D-CA, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-WI, Rep. Maurice
Hinchey, D-NY, and Rep. Sam Farr, D-CA), no members of Congress
have called for the protection of children captured or held by
US military forces.
Their, and the American public’s “concern” for the welfare of
children, is narrowly limited to those who are lured or forced
into prostitution. That’s it.
Of course, we should not be surprised at this double standard.
Most of these same politicians are also quick to support laws
that take young children from poor (and usually minority) urban
backgrounds who commit violent crimes and have them tried, and
punished, as adults. Again, these children are as much victims
as the kids who become child prostitutes, but there’s no love
lost on them by these “child welfare” charlatans.
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