“It ain’t over till it’s over,” New York Yankee’s famed catcher Yogi Berra once said. Berra may be right about baseball; he was wrong about wars. Wars don’t end when someone wins. They end only when the last generation of victims dies.
That’s what makes the recent UNICEF report on child victims so disturbing. Child victims will live longer than adult victims.
UNICEF’s statistics are staggering.
The deaths are bad enough: 700 children killed by conflicts in Afghanistan; 135 children forced to act as suicide bombers in sub-Saharan West Africa. But – pardon me for even saying this – at least they’re now dead. They won’t carry their experiences with them for the rest of their lives.
Not so the survivors. In Ukraine, 220,000 still play amid landmines and unexploded ordnances. In Yemen, 5,000 children have been injured by war against terrorist factions. In Myanmar, almost half of the 650,000 Rohinga refugees forced from their homes into Bangladesh are children. In the (grossly misnamed) Democratic Republic of Congo, 850,000 children have been driven from their homes.
Long-term effects
You think they’ll recover easily from these traumas? Kids are resilient, aren’t they? They’ll bounce back and be fine…
Think again! If American women can testify that sexual harassment 40 years ago (by Roy Moore, for example) has affected their lives ever since, imagine what gang rape by a dozen armed soldiers does to a girl’s life image.
Google “Rape in Congo,” and see how much you can read before you throw up. One soldier bragged of raping 53 women, some as young as five years old. Read it for yourself.
And then there are the kids forced to become those soldiers – to kill, maim, and rape on command. UNICEF estimates 2,000 children a year recruited into armed groups in Somalia, almost 5,000 a year in South Sudan.
Deadly after-effects
Here in a much less primitive world, we don’t train our military to rape as a tool of conquest and humiliation. But we’re slowly beginning to recognize the long-term repercussions of being trained to kill -- and/or seeing your buddies killed, maimed, disabled for life.
U.S. figures are easiest to obtain. There, it’s clear that far more American personnel have killed themselves in the last 15 years than were killed by enemy combatants.
Officially, 4,486 Americans died in Iraq, 1,950 in Afghanistan. Total over 15 years, 6,436. Currently, past and present military staff are killing themselves at a rate of 22 a day – more than 8,000 a year.
Their war was not over when it was over.
Comparable figures are harder to come by for Canadian military. Canadian data seems deliberately written to obfuscate.
Still, after two days of trying every conceivable combination of keyword searches, I found a Globe and Mail report that “1,486 former military members ended their lives from 1976 to 2012, with one-third of the suicides occurring after 2002, when Canadian troops were entrenched in the Afghanistan war.”
Male suicides ranked about 40 per cent higher than the general population; female suicides about 80 per cent higher.
Compare that to actual deaths in action -- 158 in Afghanistan; 23 in Bosnia.
Again, it would seem, the after-effects of war have been more deadly than the war itself.
Maybe I asked the wrong questions. Or maybe the Armed Forces don’t want to know how many of its veterans have been left emotionally handicapped by their experiences.
But my point seems supported – a war does not end when Johnny comes marching home. The trauma continues.
How long? No one knows. No one bothered keeping track of these things after the two World Wars and the Korean War.
Life sentences
And how long will the children in the UNICEF report have their lives harmed by their traumatic experiences? Until their deaths, I suggest. My own grandchildren recently demonstrated their ability to remember events from the age of two or three.
I see no reason to expect that children in Syria and Somalia, in Yemen and the Congo, in Myanmar and Ukraine, will be able to erase their darkest memories of being uprooted, abused, wounded, and victimized.
Their war will not end when someone signs a peace treaty.
“Brutality cannot be the new normal," said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF director of emergency programs. "As these attacks continue year after year, we cannot become numb.”
Maybe it’s too much to dream of achieving world peace. Maybe we need to apply the tactics that worked for eliminating smallpox and almost eradicating polio – raise one generation free of violence and conflict.
Is that too much to hope for?
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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
Bob Rollwagen’s response to last week’s column might equally well have been a response to this week’s: “Jesus grew up with liberal loving parents. If only that was realityt for a majority of Christian children.”
Bob added some kind words: “I look forward to sharing views of the world in 2018. It is always interesting to see the results of your blogs in how individuals understand them. It generally reveals their politics.”
Tom Watson felt the same: “Your column is a nice way to end an old year and start a new one.”
Isabel Gibson had a comment about de-cluttering: “A psychologist and work/life coach I knew in Edmonton used to talk about saving bits that would document our year's experiences, or provide an anchor for the associated memory. Don't throw out that ticket stub! Save that boarding pass! Then remember (ha) to go back through them every so often, to refresh the memories.”
Richard Best: A saying I learned decades ago plays into your Sharp Edges discussion about decisions and choices: ‘Not to decide is to decide not to.’ It took me a while to recognize the truth of this statement.”
Vic Sedo sensed that some of the objections to updated Nativity stories, downplaying “that Bethlehem thing with shepherds and angels” tended to visualize “Jesus coming from a middle or upper class, probably had a RV or a fancy tent of sorts.”
Clare Neufeld wrote on New Year’s Day, “I’m enjoying a moment of free time, while our late son’s family, our 13-year-old grandson plays phone games on his new iPhone, 10-year-old granddaughter makes Pom-Pom critters, their mother makes lunch, and Bev knits several toques for them to take home to KS.”
Clare then plunged back into the debate about free speech: “If ‘free speech’ is to be interpreted (morally, legally, socially, etc.), as meaning EACH one shall ‘give unconstrained voice to whatever stimulation or turbulence takes place inside the brain’, does it then also follow, that in a ‘free society’, one’s actions shall ‘know no external constraint…?”
“I’m honestly and sincerely confused -- and absolutely uncertain -- about some convictions expressed about how some folks somewhere seemed to be incensed that a bully should feel confused, therefore unconvinced, when he is, (however kindly or brutally) challenged regarding bullying.
"On the other hand, when there is seemingly a double standard – a similar intolerance toward the suggestion that vengeful righteousness be called out as equally misguided exercise of ‘tit for tat’ toward bad behaviour. Are we becoming intolerant of tolerance or balance?”
JT: I’ve edited Clare’s musings fairly heavily, but I hope conveying his concern – that in protesting against abuses of free speech, we may equally be denying free speech.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols.
Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca
Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://wwwDOThymnsightDOTca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom
Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet