I was planning on writing some cutesy anecdotal piece from last weekend with the kids. It fell flat on its head as soon as I saw coverage of the children in Syria. It seems this year is a constant flow of child abuses in all forms. From celebrity child abuse scandals to children witnessing their parents’ torture and subsequent murder in Syria.
How do they ever recover from that experience? I鈥檓 sure most kids can鈥檛 cope with verbally fighting parents or parents who have let the right hook out onto their partner’s body. But torture and murder? I can鈥檛 even fathom it. Can you imagine being forced to watch your father being ripped apart in front of you, or your mother raped as you watched. No. Neither can I.
What becomes of the witness?
How do they grow up free of the burden of what they should never see?
It seems there is so much evil around presently. A colleague and I were eating in the kitchen at work today and we noted our ability to not flinch at recent atrocities. We both wondered why there was so much misery occurring. Tornadoes, bombs, machetes and kids drawing headless victims. Does all this make us desensitised?
Maybe that鈥檚 what鈥檚 happened to the moronic American pollie using the ridiculous example of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to guide why nothing can be done from their side yet in Syria. Maybe the USA is becoming desensitised to the point of apathy.
But isn鈥檛 forcing children into the tortures of war greater than sarin gas? Isn鈥檛 that a time delayed weapon of mass destruction? Syrian children will be tormented for generations over this. For reasons I shall never understand, we still have ignorant and unwilling heads of state with conflicted self interests.
Maybe I should have written about the kids, but I didn鈥檛 have the heart to once I saw those kids on tv tonight. I actually felt numb.
