Kids

I like kids, I really do, but why do we value them more than ourselves? I mean, seemingly beyond the altruistic act of putting our lives on the line for others in general, we seem to place children on a higher plateau.

Consider the old "Baby Onboard" placards and bumper stickers that so many cars once carried. Was that a plea to run into the car near them that had no kids on board instead? Of course not. But what was it about?

I understand Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, was castigated for seemingly telling street gangs it was more acceptable to shoot each other but to leave the kids alone. In these hot days of politics (it is an election year), I can see where he might get castigated for such remarks. But we know what he meant, don't we? It is one thing to shoot up adults, another entirely to have a few of those stray bullets hid a small child.

But why is it? The mayor of Chicago doesn't think these gang-bangers are deliberately targeting small children. No one thinks that, especially the gang-bangers. I am betting they like children too, as much or more as any of the rest of us. So does the mayor, I think, and perhaps he was just reminding them (the gang-bangers) there are are non-combatants out there, people who have no gang affiliation and aren't part of these gang wars.

I think he used children to press the point. A child is the image of innocence, seemingly unaware of the cruelty and violence of the world around him. Someone whose weightiest thoughts concern what to play or play with.... and maybe what's for dessert.

In the Middle East, pictures of dead children are quickly used to condemn the violence that seems endemic to the region. As if children are targeted on purpose. Well, perhaps in those struggles (the Middle East ones), children are targeted. Just the other day, a suicide bomber struck at some Israeli children in Bulgaria. But his target was not Israeli children, it was Israeli tourists. The children were "collateral damage". Yet you will hear more about the children than you will about their fathers or mothers, the actual targets of the bomber.

In Syria, the rebels (or whatever you want to call them) quickly exploited the children allegedly murdered by government troops or pro-Assad thugs.

I am not sure who's worse; those who don't care about any collateral damage that involves children or those who use the dead and injured children to provoke more violence.

As I said, I like children. It's adults I have a problem with.