Being cruel to children is unthinkable. Literally! Each
day approximately 15,000 children under the age of five die from easily preventable
malnutrition and hunger related infectious diseases. And, we just don’t think about them. Nor the ten children who live on with
permanent physical or mental disabilities for every child that dies. Not
thinking and doing something about this horrific injustice has cost us dearly in
terms of the chaotic world and catastrophic risks we face today. Ironically the cost of preventing all this needless suffering is enormously cheaper than paying for the ongoing and immense consequences
of ignoring this thoughtless shameful atrocity.
Fact is, our individualist culture simply lacks the
political will (wisdom?) to pay for the essential nutrients, vaccines, clean
water, and safe sanitation to sustain these precious lives. As long as it remains a hidden holocaust we will
continue pay a monumental cost in blood, treasure and our cherished freedoms that are lost to wars, revolutions, genocides, terrorism, pandemics, environmental degradation, refugees, and growing global economic/political instability.
National security simply isn’t what we think
it is. And, the most powerful military
in the world will not be able to keep us safe and free.
This is not my assertion. It is the conclusion of a 1980 bipartisan US Presidential
Commission on World Hunger. “In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens of an
increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on overcoming
world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar. Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of
the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis
planning, patchwork management, or emergency financing... The hour is
late. Age-old forces of poverty,
disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world. Our humanity demands that we act upon these
challenges now...”
The commission specifically warned about the future
consequences if we ignored the global injustice hunger - stating “The most potentially explosive force in the world today is
the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The
anger, despair and often hatred that result represent real and persistent
threats to international order… Neither
the cost to national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain
to be derived by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or
measured in any precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on
avoiding the chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the
world begin to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other
critical global threats as the growing scarcity of fossil fuels and other
non-renewable resources, environmental hazards, pollution of the seas, and
international terrorism. Calculable or not, however, this combination of problems
now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as
advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”
The commission also stated “that
promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular,
are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security than most
policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear weapons
most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with the
strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this prevailing
belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely the physical
aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless in the
absence of the global security that only coordinated international progress
toward social justice can bring.”
Other studies and reports have followed. They also clearly document the direct and
indirect links between high infant mortality rates, world hunger, global instability,
and catastrophic national security threats.
Winning the Peace:
Hunger and Instability:
Global Catastrophic
Risks 2018 https://globalchallenges.org/en/our-work/annual-report/annual-report-2018
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals that all nations have agreed to meet by 2030 offer the most
comprehensive approach to ensuring a safe, healthy, prosperous, and sustainable
future for all the world’s children -- and their children. Yes. It will cost trillions of dollars. But it doesn't have to cost US tax payers a dime.
There is approximately $32 trillion stashed in off shore accounts by kelptocrats (and their cronies), crime cartels, and wealthy capitalists using shady tax lawyers.
Perhaps its time we start teaching our policy makers
about the original American principle. The one that could really make America great again. It's the
7th Generation principle advocated by Native Americans. Immigrants to American over the past 7 generations
kinda ruined it for them. But it’s not
too late for our nation of immigrants to start thinking further ahead than the
next election or quarterly financial reports. Perhaps the two first Native American women elected to Congress can lead the way.
The loss of a child in any culture, nation, or
religion is the most horrific of all human experiences. The only thing worse is losing two
children. Fearing your child will die is
the greatest terror in the world. Thus,
it should be the only acceptable use of the word ‘terrorism’ by government, media, or military communicators.
People who intentionally
kill other innocent people are murderers.
Killing dozens makes them mass murderers. If convicted they are criminals and deserve to be treated
as such. What crime are we
guilty of? Child neglect? Child abandonment?
What we call terrorism currently, and wage war against, has
created an endless war against a tactic. Tactics cannot be defeated. In attempting to do so, our weapons have unintentionally killed
thousands of innocent children. Our
government dehumanize these dead bodies by calling them collateral damage. The parents of those bodies call them son or daughter.
War cannot end war, terrorism, hunger or preventable child
deaths. It can end civilization as we know it. The
evolution of weaponry (cyber, bio, robotics, drones, satellites, self-driving
cars and trucks, and eventually AI) will continue yielding unprecedented
killing capacity to anyone with a grudge.
We need to create a global culture where adults (and childlike politicians)
love all children as much as they love our own. Loving our children and giving them a safe,
free and sustainable future is the one thing we can all agree on.
We need to make this special day the most special day by examining the assumptions we have about what’s important. National pride? Stock prices? Party affiliation? Our children’s future? We make choices every day. It should be obvious to any sane person that we need to start making better choices. If not, our own children’s future will be far worse than we can imagine. And it will be our fault. I wonder if they will ever be able to forgive us. I wonder if they will even be alive.
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