Truth About Killing Children Is The First Casualty Of 21st Century Wars

Photo credit: Omar Sobhani/Reuters, published by Al Jazeera next to Oct. 28 article "Afghans fear being left out in the cold"

Whether killing children by cold and starvation, as "collateral damage" in drone strikes, by targeted assassination via drone, or for generations to come by poisoning the land, the U.S corporate war machine profits. The moral imbeciles who run the companies draining the Treasury at the expense of young humans everywhere will not stop until one of two things happens: the people rise up and quit cooperating with the system (women's strike anyone?) or Mother Nature swamps the machinery of evil with floodwaters so they grind mercifully to a halt.

I woke up this morning thinking about the epic flooding of Wall St. yesterday by the biggest storm in recorded history. I wondered who would clean up the mess, and I realized that Halliburton or some other war profiteers were probably already wining and dining the people who can award those contracts. Perhaps 2012 will be the turning point where this sort of thing begins to end.

Meanwhile, people with their humanity still intact were busy organizing relief for residents of afflicted boroughs in NYC. Here's a tweet from Occupy Wall St. with directions on how you can help if you're so inclined:

If you're on the Lower E. Side & in need, text us at (646) 580-7473 or visit https://lowereastside.recovers.org if you have internet. #SandyVolunteer

Why not warmth? is being organized by the Afghan Peace Volunteers and Voices for Creative Nonviolence as winter approaches. According to Kathy Kelly, who lives in Kabul for a month at a time several times a year, women there can be paid to create comforters, or duvets, that will be distributed to families in need:

 A harsh winter is on its way following last year's January that killed over 100 small Afghan children, 26 of them in Kabul's overflowing refugee camps...If you’d like to help with outreach and fundraising, welcome aboard! Checks can be made payable to Voices for Creative Nonviolence, with “duvet project” written in the Memo section and sent to Voices at VCNV, 1249 West Argyle, Chicago, IL 60640.

One of the many news items that galled me before Hurricane Sandy hit was this report on an Obama administration spin doctor explaining why killing a 16 year old U.S. citizen by drone strike in Yemen was okay.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, was 16 when assassinated by a drone.

From Ryan Grim blogging in Huffpo:

A 16-year-old American boy killed in an Obama administration drone strike "should have [had] a far more responsible father," Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs says in a new video released by the group We Are Change.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda propagandist killed by a U.S. drone a year ago. But the child was killed in a separate strike some two weeks after his father was killed..."I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business," Gibbs, the former White House press secretary, told the interviewer from We Are Change, when asked to justify "an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial -- and, he's underage, he's a minor."

 Esquire ran an in-depth piece on the incident if you want to know more: "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama."

The assertion that it is okay to kill kids if you disagree with their parents' political views has been made before. You may remember Bradley Manning, still in jail for allegedly having leaked via Wikileaks this video of U.S. soldiers shooting down on civilians COMING TO THE RESCUE of other civilians they have just shot. One of the men in the helicopter is heard observing that there are kids in the van they have just shot up. "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," says his buddy. Those kids survived the attack, but their father did not. I guess it was his fault for trying to help Reuters journalists who were injured in a battle.

The moral rot at the heart of the U.S. empire continues to eat away at what's left of our soul.