MURDER OF CHILDREN: THE AMERICAN WAY

Our government and the supporters of what it has become have been using the Newtown Massacre as in inroad to taking our guns or severely limiting access to them.

Take Governor Andrew Cuomo for example. During a recent appearance on an Albany radio station he said, “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.”

Then there’s President Obama, who has been using the bully pulpit as means to demonize gun owners and the Second Amendment and was given a free pass to overstep the legal bounds of the Presidency by Reuters, which in a recent widely-distributed article said, “Even without Congress, Obama could act to restrict guns”, echoing sentiments of most Americans who don’t understand the Constitution. 

Given the hypocritical nature of our government, how can anyone take seriously the reasons for the crusade du jour, this attempt to disarm Americans “for the sake of the children?” I can’t, because what I do take seriously is the threat that our government poses to its children and others around the globe with gun in hand  -- and even without:

·    * In 2011, President Obama ordered a hit on American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. The individual, who had did not belong to al-Qaeda and whose bad luck was that he was the son of a terrorist whom we hadn’t seen in 2 years, was killed by a drone attack in Yemen. No due process of law. No trial. How old was al-Awlaki? 16. A child.

·    * According to the United Nations, the war in Afghanistan killed or wounded 578 children in the first six months of 2012. Two-thirds of the victims of US and NATO air strikes in Afghanistan during that same time span were women and children. Those statistics are similar to the horrors of the Iraq War in which 120,000 civilians were killed, of which 37% were attributable to the United States and its allies.

·   * Israel is the largest recipient of American aid. Since 1949, aid has averaged $1.9 billion per year. In 2009 the US promised to increase aid to the Israelis to the tune of $30 billion over this decade. Most of that aid is militaristic in nature – weapons, warcrafts, ammunition. How has our $122 billion in weaponry been put to use? Since September of 2000 the Israelis have killed 1,500 Palestinian children. That staggering total is disproportionate to the number of Israeli children killed by Palestinian bombings over that same time period (129)

·  * Since 1973, when the Supreme Court disallowed most state and federal restrictions of abortion via the Roe v. Wade ruling, American law has allowed the legal abortion (murder) of 55 million young lives. Some 1.3 million babies are now aborted each year. 

Somehow, and quite tragically at that, all of this murdering of children is acceptable. Americans cheered the murder of al-Awlaki as a necessary outcome of the global War on Terror.  Few American tears have been shed over the deaths of children in our Middle East occupations since they have been perceived to be either incidental or collateral damage in that same war. Our elected officials and pundits count Israel among our best allies. 47% of Americans consider themselves as pro-Abortion while 45 million women have had a young life ripped from their bodies.  

Sadly, those incidences represent just a sampling of the hypocrisy of our elected officials and those who enable them. They decry the murder of children in Newtown (as they should), but they end up using it as a means of propaganda by which to empower our corrupt government -- a government that is either directly responsible for or complicit in the deaths of millions of children -- to infringe upon or outright steal individual rights to gun ownership and self-defense.

So, just how do we stop murders and massacres? Quite simply: We need an American people who have a better understanding of and devotion to morality and/or reason, all while possessing a greater respect for life and the human condition. But, to get to that point, we need to expect – and demand - the same from our government, because quite frankly, the senseless murder of children has become the American Way.



Gasport resident Bob Confer also writes for the New American at TheNewAmerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobconfer


This column originally appeared in the 07 January 2013 Lockport Union Sun & Journal