In any airport in the US you can see the children of the world. They may have been
born here or they may have been born in some other corner of the planet. Can
you tell from their big eyes as they watch you walk by? Are some more childlike
than others? Would you purposely harm one of these innocent ones just beginning
the long journey of life?

For every child you might see while traveling or shopping or relaxing in the park,
there are millions more without the chance to visit those places. They are
locked away in a world of pain and violence before they can take a step on
their own. Many will never walk, or swim or play the guitar. Without adequate
healthcare or even clean drinking water the first five years of life could be their
last. Or maybe the refugee camp where they go from starvation to hunger and
back to starvation again is attacked by one or another side in the latest
terrorist war. Sometimes the needed relief doesn’t come because someone a world
away or around the corner considers food a suitable weapon in their bid for
power.

Can the good people of the United States of America turn this situation around?
Will giving to the latest poster child’s relief fund—if you happen to have a
job and can afford to give—really make a difference when we are talking about
billions world-wide and millions of our neighbors in the US of A? We would all
like to stop the pain, the hunger and hopelessness of innocent children, right?
We would wish for every child the opportunity to develop their full human
potential as they grow from infancy. Unfortunately, even if we give with all
our hearts, these efforts are doomed to failure. Why?

It is not because of some strange custom in a distant land. Nor is it the result
of this or that unreasonable, backward ruler who grips their unrealized future
with an iron fist. No, it is because oil pools deep beneath their makeshift
playgrounds. It is because Washington politicians can afford thousand dollar
prostitutes. It is because the globalization that Wall Street seeks sends
rockets and ‘boots on the ground’ instead of vaccines and doctors. Destruction
and war solve military and political squabbles while oiling the gears of
corporate greed. The children of the world are just collateral damage.

Little arms in the rubble after US ‘smart bombs’ exploded living rooms in Baghdad
cannot be reattached. Nicaraguan children with strong arms pull their stumps
along streets where they once played soccer with a taped up ball. The terrorist
bomb that blocked that goal was ‘Made in the USA’. We cannot turn back the
clock on the war crimes our government has committed in our name. But we can
begin today to drive a stake of democracy through that cold-hearted system of
greed.

Luckily for the children suffering in the US and around the globe, Americans are
beginning to wake up to a simple fact. Killing human beings under any pretext
anywhere in the world reverberates within the very bones of our own children.
Violence as practiced by the most powerful super-power in the world is costly.
The human cost we can hide through cleaver censorship of the news media—tied
had and foot to the butchers who profit from the hidden carnage. But the social
costs are felt by all but the privileged 1% The rest of us feel it when we go
to the doctor, we feel it when our social benefits are cut, we feel it when
rubber bullets and pepper spray whistle and sting. We see it in the eyes of
millions of children who live without homes and feel their bones press against
their empty stomachs.

To kill mothers and fathers and dismember children in some remote village a world
away we need to ignore the health and welfare of our own children. We need to
believe the president and the congress when they say children are not as
important as oil. Of course they are not that honest. They say we need to
balance the budget, we need to reduce the deficit, we need to fight terrorism
(with terrorism), we need to cut education, pensions and welfare so our future
will be secure. But they don’t tell us about the children under the rubble of
our terrorist response to terrorism (counter-terrorism). The children don’t
know and don’t care who launched the first attack and most of the time either
do we. The children of the world respond the same—covering their ears they
scream “make it stop!” It is up to us to stop the violence—beginning with our
own government.

The president will say that we are bombing children to save them from a greater
evil. If we do not sacrifice now the evil will come to our shores and take away
our freedoms and ruin our way of life. But look around—the evil is already
here. The freedoms we have enjoyed are being stripped away one by one in the
name of violence. Those whose hearts are cold as the bombs they make don’t care
that millions of fathers and mothers cannot work. Why should they care that our
schools look like some of the invisible schools destroyed by their smart bombs
a world away? Should it bother them that a black father working in many US
cities has more of a chance of being shot dead than a soldier in Iraq or
Afghanistan? Not a bit. Their children don’t go to public schools and those of
privilege have long ago abandoned the inner cities. The masters of the
machinery of war barely notice the snap of small bones under their steel
wheels.

None of the claims of our leaders—even if they were true—are not worth the life of
one child. But we do not see the face of the children destroyed by our
violence. The pain on their mother’s face is not familiar to us. We are
entertained to sleep as our leaders play a game we all loose. It is time for
the sleeping giant of the American people to rise to its true moral stature and
say “No more!” Not one more child anywhere in the world should suffer because
Wall Street wants to globalize their playground. Before we go hunting devils in
other lands we should do something even more difficult—cast out the devils who
rule our own lands. The children of the world are waiting.

Stop the Wars Now!  Free Healthcare for All Children in the US!