Friday, March 7, 2014

TRAPPED –Women and Children in Man's Wars

Dear ones,

Children and women are not often considered when it comes to aggressive war.  Here's my research.

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TRAPPED
–Women and Children Caught in Man's Crossfire

Helene Smith ©
copyright 2013
www.macdonaldsward.com

Sophocles, Greek playwright of tragedies, wrote, “War loves to seek its victims in the young.” Greek historian Herodotus born in 484 BCE said, "In peace children inter their parents, but in war parents inter their children."

           
"I once was a little child who longed for other worlds.  But I am no more a child for I have known fear. I have learned to hate . . . How tragic, then, is youth which lives with enemies, with gallows ropes. Yet, I still believe I only sleep today.  That I'll wake up a child again, and start to laugh and play."

–Hama Herchanberg, 14 year old, died in 1948, Auschwitz Concentration Camp
     
 In a world of warriors women are worriers in their own rights for good reason. Nature reflects the lion with his crowning mane as king of the forest protecting females concerned for their offspring kept hidden with their cubs.   But what happened to all this natural male courage and bravery to safeguard and shield families?  Could it be that all the ancient bulwark and bravado went into bullying wars for man's machismo empowerment?   Is it due to man's greed and control of other people's land and natural resources that has fueled him into a roaring monster for first place competition against his fellow men that ends up in inequality and poverty so detrimental to families?
             Now, instead of defense for women, all the corporate government strength is spent on devastation instead of diplomacy that completely makes women and children vulnerable as war zones are now fought on urban streets filled with non-combatants. As man's security went out the window with the lust for war taking its place, their machismo bullying power flew in with great gusto. Yet as Virgil, born in 70 BCE, wrote with great wisdom,  "There is no safety in war."  After centuries of committing genocide, holocausts and blood-thirsty atrocities that include raping war-torn women man still does not get it.  Despite male munitions deforming and retarding man's own offspring and causing breast cancer and you name it against his spouses and children, the excitement of war lures him on like a juicy steak dangled in front of a dog.
            History has also told us that women have pursued wars, too, as Amazons of mythology describing aggressive women fighting men.  A friar under Francisco de Orellana in 1546, explorer of the Amazon River, told stories of  "she-shames" who also fought naked–each with the "strength of ten men." The mental imagery is breathtaking!
     Legendary Amazon mothers influenced by warrior partners around the Black Sea cauterized one breast of baby daughters for later development skills in shooting arrows. This site was where unrelated scalping originated.  (source: Duquesne University (PA) Forum paper, "Scalping, A Hair-Raising Experience")  Myths of Amazons from the Greco-Roman culture were described as fearless, fierce women–inspiration for naming the world's largest river in South America. 
            Joan (Jeanne) of Arc–described in a poem by Voltaire–was burned alive at the stake in a deal between England and France to end the Hundred Years War.  At that time woman wearing male clothing or carrying a sword was a punishable offense. But the underlying charge of heresy that brought the demise of  "Maid of Orleans" stemmed from the two kings losing their prestige to a woman who had led the French to victorious battles in 1429.  The Pope was especially peeved. The martyr heard voices from a deity and that made her more powerful. Heaven forbid, he must have said, "God had talked to her instead of me!"  In Japan medieval warrior, Lady Yatsushior, astride a stallion charged into battle, pregnant!
            In 1755 the United States learned the hard way bout deadly war tactics.  When the British army wearing bright red coats marched in the open were mowed down by First Americans during the Battle of the Monongahela at Pittsburgh's three rivers named for indigenous people, the "Indians" had the advantage.  It had to do with surprise attack from behind the camouflage of trees, smart strategy later studied by West Point.
            This important fact leads to how wars today provide no security or camouflage for defense no matter how much firepower is available. The forceful war department (euphemized as defense), could not provide security when Saudi Arabians took over American airplanes to use them as bombs during the September 11th tragic atrocity of 2001.  The US military with all its nuclear and supersonic military power enough to blow up Earth itself was helpless.  Why? – because no nation can defend itself against surprise attack.  All the super powered technology in the world cannot prevent this kind of violence–individual's suicide bombers in revenge of political corruption, hiding  undercover among crowds and hidden in hordes of people, the newest modus operandi of warfare reminiscent of Japanese Kamikaze pilots.  Mega weapons for this reason are now obsolete and obscene since they murder civilians as youths are programmed to kill, as well as use cowardly, illegal infant-killing munitions.  Mothers know that peace always trumps wars.  The word abolition also pertains to the banning of toxic munitions. 
             This is reason enough for giving up futile fixation of wars and concentrating on alternative energy instead of genocidal. Focusing on creative global peace departments energizes life instead of propping up industrial corporate death via lethal munitions. Maybe President Lincoln was right.  He advised making friends instead of enemies.  Stop pegging people as enemies and treat fellow people as fellow humans by serious discourse and intense diplomacy.
     Meanwhile Homo sapient males again forgot the protective nature of animals and instead offered up their children as burnt offerings to war deities out of fear and superstition–"in God's name"–what happened in the biblical story of Abraham ready to sacrifice his son Isaac to the gods.  No deity worth his salt would kill his own creations.  What archaic mentality!  Superstition, man's first religion, lasts centuries up to the present. Burnt-offering rituals were common among primitive men–as grieving women helplessly turned away in hot tears of anguish. Buried in the hearts of these patriarchs was the same passion, but stifled by imagined forces demanding to be fed burnt human flesh of children–banquets for officiating cannibalistic priests when ritual smoke cleared.
Eventually human sacrifice transformed to battlefield alters also involving youths, with "the fairer sex " evolving faster than males more interested in education and health of other children than in killing other  peoples offspring. Man, short for human, after centuries of aggression is finally realizing diplomacy, communication, rhetoric, negotiation, and equality among all peoples through enforcement of humane laws bring peace and order. In war no one wins.
            In a gun shell this is the history of women conditioned to war–lock, stock, and barrel–how they fought in it and now against it.  And after centuries of grief and sorrow women especially along with veterans of wars, and gays more interested in the arts  conclude it is inevitable to bring savage slaughter to an end.  Female intuition recognizes warrior mentality in a war economy world will never go away on its own.
     Lysistrada, an ancient Greek drama by Aristophanes, is a story about how women united to prohibit aggression without any weapon other than clever reasoning power–and their bodies bargained for peace terms.    
This was during the Peloponnesian Wars of 400-404 BCE that were about to end for lack of funds wasted by the folly of aggression.  Grecian mothers concerned that wars were destroying and wasting the lives of their children, took an oath around a bowl of wine to reject the pleasures of sex from their husbands and lovers until they stopped fighting.
            Women have fought in all wars. But for the most part the female gender had to disguise herself and her motive in order to be with her spouse since worry of others is almost as severe as death. Ironically national war re-enactment authoritative males have prohibited female participation as soldiers until recent years, mimicking what the army has done for years. 
            On the home front women are still active behind battle lines. During the American Revolutionary War Betsy Ross had her hand in designing the US flag, as she carried out patriotic duty. Both Martha Washington and Katy Greene, General Nathanial Greene's wife, in tattered, drab war-torn dresses rolled bandages and knitted wool socks for soldiers during the six-month winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Wives were permitted to visit their husbands of high rank during the Revolution. 
            Dolly Madison, at the time of the War of 1812, rescued  (with male help) the famous portrait of George Washington in the White House, what slaves built before it was burned. During the same war Rhoda Wadsworth Clark from St. Marys, Georgia (second oldest US city) revealed her patriotism. Her husband, Colonel Archibald Clark–port customs officer–had just been dragged away and imprisoned temporarily on a British flagship that had landed. 
            However, before the Captain Cockburn  and his sailors ram shacked and torched much of the town that was later burned again during the Civil War (1861-65), Rhoda bravely stood up to the commander and confronted him in the entranceway of her home, famous for its visitor Aaron Burr who hot-footed there after killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel.  The Brit noticed a royal emblem was woven into the rug where the two of them were talking.  A historical conversation followed.  "Ah, I see you honor the golden symbol on the English Royal Coat of Arms, madam."  But the woman quickly replied in no uncertain terms, "Not really, sir.  You see, I am standing on it with my feet!"
             From 1807 until 1838 Parliament debated over slavery in England and ended the violation of human rights without shooting one bullet or killing any person or horse, proving enforcement of law and order is superior to man-mangling man. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "Peace is acceptance of law, and for fostering justice, on all the world."
            In the 1700s Aaron Burr tried to abolish slavery through Congress, but slave-owner members quashed his efforts. Although he had inherited slaves, he taught them to read and write and then freed them.  If only an equal count of females and males had been in Congress at that time, the Civil War would never have happened. Nevertheless, women succumbing to the wiles of the world have bravely supported their partners while wielding weapons and facing the gore. More than 400 women fought in America's uncivil war disguised as men, together with women spies. 
            So–illicit slavery continued.  "Damn the torpedoes!" shouted US Admiral Daniel Farragut ignoring mines rigged in the waterway–shades of Civil War on the Alabama River in Mobile Bay in 1865.  Harriet Tubman, two years before, under brigade command of the Union government, led a raid by African-American Second South Carolina Regiment on the Combahee River–shutting off southern supplies and freeing hundreds of people from bondage.
But her courageous action never made it into early history books written by so-called  "whites." An artist depicted this hero aboard a gunboat in a painting at Hilton Head's "Red Piano" gallery in South Carolina. The abolitionist served as a commander, scout, spy, and nurse. John Brown called her General Tubman (America's Most Unsung Civil War General).
            During the two-day battle of Gettysburg a soldier struggled up a hill under heavy gunfire. He was shot, but his partner picked up his flag and carried on for her husband.  During this unnecessary war nearly seven hundred thousand soldiers and a million horses died, along with thousands of aftermath deaths from war hazards and suicide.
            Underpaid women and girls (before labor laws, many twelve year olds) worked in munitions factories while their husbands and sweethearts were at war.  Boys were not often employed since they could not be trusted with black powder. (Why men shouldn't commit wars.)  In Lawrenceville near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the Civil War Arsenal blew up with employees jumping out of windows from a two-story warehouse. 
Over 70 women and children burned or suffocated within the sulfur-smelling smoke.  Scraps of drab dresses hung from macabre branches of trees above body parts strewed grotesquely on the grounds.  One little girl was identified by a ring on her finger, the only remaining part of her.  A woman laborer had a foot in a shoe left sticking out of a burned pile of gray ashes.  Immediately the town's women became aids bringing "wine, lint, and bandages" to the wounded.  Statistics are cold and passionless, but reality exposes the actual sorrow and grief of wars.
Julia Ward Howe from New England and Ann Jarvis from West Virginia share the honor of founding Mother's Day for the purpose of international peace. Howe, in 1870, wrote,
"The voice of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out murder nor violence indicate possession, as men have often forsaken the plow for the sword of murder at the summons of war.”

            In 1881 Clara Barton and friends founded the American Red Cross in Washington, DC. Women auxiliaries have been active for centuries with "angels," volunteer nurses, helping soldiers and veterans in partnership with the military as they bring aid for natural disasters as well.                  During WWII women were models for "Rosie the Riveter" illustrations in which they portrayed the distaff side of corporate industrial war. One poster depicted a factory woman wearing a red and white polka dot scarf tied in a knot on her hair while she flexed her arm beside the words, "We can do it!"  But the most famous one that Norman Rockwell designed for a cover on The Saturday Evening Post magazine showed a brawny woman model with her foot holding down a copy of Hitler's manifesto Mien Kampf.  The original poster sold at Sotheby's for $5 million!  Female clout during wars and their aftermaths is priceless today.  One should never underestimate the power of women.
            From experience females have become relentless in their attempt to abolish all wars, already illegal through International Law, International Criminal Court (ICC), Geneva Protocol and Convention for Rights of Children. Again, toxic agent laws forbid urban fighting on streets–war zones–where women and children are trapped in the slaughter and mayhem. There, many die or end up in tents within refugee war camps.
     Today parents who have lost sons and daughters in the futility of war, realize their children have been sacrificed as targets on battlefields–under power of old tarnished leaders with puffed-up egos never having suffered from senseless terrorism as they pride themselves wrapped in epaulette's, brass buttons and commander's emblems out of harm's way–the paradox of war.  History records brave General Washington and other leaders marching with their men into battle.  Many were thrown off their horses numerous times, with 700,000 men and a million horses also losing their lives during the Civil War between the North and the South.
            Besides protecting their youths, women historically have had to defend themselves against rape, especially during combat.  Two million German women during WWII were victims of rape, as were Jewish women during the holocaustic Shoah–blatant genocide as well.  Rape occurs in all wars where testosterone is high–and also to get enemy blood into foreign lands, the Troy Horse of war. Mongol Genghis Kahn in his reign of terror reputedly fathered thousands of heirs having his own blood.  Someone once said, "It's a wonder we all don't come from ancient male conquistadors!"
Today deluded, depressed young combat soldiers suffer from lifelong handicaps, amputations, psyche wards, nightmares of those killed and those doing the killing–extreme post-war stress and distress.  Sadly thousands of combat soldiers commit suicide from experiencing gore and slaughter of war, even those manning drones out of harm's wary, now the main cause of death in the United States.
             Today war veterans march side-by-side women, all activists seeking peace. Ever since 2003, over forty thousand soldiers have dropped out of the army for moral reasons against violence and terrorism of war. Ironically the military banned women from combat believing they are "ill-suited for battle." Army General Elizabeth Hoisington opposed women joining the infantry. She questioned, "It's bad enough that men must suffer. But do we have to make young women suffer, too?"                                                                                                            
     The answer is "No." But women are used to seeing blood, lame excuse for excluding females who have a long history of being combat soldiers after centuries of experience. However, instead of sacrificing any youth in slaughter, women are now up in arms to enforce punitive action against all vengeful wars of peril. The most abominable atrocity of rich-man's corporate wars is worldwide lethal ammunition aborting and distorting war-torn embryos. Many of these infants are born of combat parents in contact with "depleted" 238 highly cancerous uranium (DU) combined with other lethal agents. The military blows to smithereens (word coined in 1940s-1950s, beginning of the nuclear age) its own children!
            Discerning women want to drop the "L" out of war glory.  Bellicose, bombastic-tempered explosive wars have no glory as they even cause catastrophic earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and famines that in turn trigger tsunamis that blow up nuclear ractors–all of which increases poverty. Jeannette Rankin, first female elected to Congress, said, "You can't win a war any more than you can an earthquake." In the second Persian Gulf War over 500,000 children starved from intentional US sanctions, what harms children the most. Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone Magazine wrote, "Why should any child starve in war?"
            Wars are carbon-boot filth, the worst serial crimes and biggest gas-guzzlers and CO2 polluters on the globe, with gun powder (that changes weather conditions) made from carbon, sulfur and saltpeter.            
            In summary many women want to empty the entire contents of Pandora's Box by advocating international government Departments of Internal Peace for real defense–check and balance.  Enormous amounts of federal funds would be saved from wars costing zillions and instead be used for unbiased education and health care for everyone. Through a world coalition of Peace Departments, national funds from absence of aggression by enforcing the end of illegal munitions, could fund free unbiased education and health care for everyone, with millions left over. Meanwhile government funds are stolen from young people seeking education and healthcare, often homeless combat veterans. As General Eisenhower said, "The world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of scientists, the hopes of the children." One powerful Predator Drone costs $5 million.
            Women are also in favor of saluting brave uniformed peace activists with honor–medals, colorful ribbons, (originating with Native Americans) and epaulettes for human services, as well as service perks. There are more than enough natural disasters for heroes to be honored through service employment, such as National Guard, without anyone sent over seas for youths to shoot up other youths, what destroys and breaks up families.  Mothers everywhere are asking. "Is this human devastation worth a few cloth battle stripes?" 
            The Roman Empire fell from war instability.            Offensive war department costs are swamping America today as it sinks from industrial war contamination. Waves of lobbying sharks, secret resentful espionage as spyglasses peer into spyglasses in comical cartoons, and bloody dollar-sign eyeballs bulge for excessive battleships and airplanes. Top-heavy metal for corporate industrial wars and nuclear bombs for unlawful threats (since these devices are illegal), sink all other needs.  Seven or more hydrogen bombs were dropped into heating oceans as toxic battleship and radioactive submarines are purposely sunk into seas killing wildlife and nature as they pollute the seas and mutate reproduction organs of all animals, under the excuse of making coral reefs. After centuries of endless madness, women, as peace workers have learned to fight with power coming from their hearts and minds, without the coward's crutch of nuclear bombs and radioactive missiles. Black powder alone causes weather changes. Today's horrifying, drastic storms reflect a planet sick of wars with the military using climate warfare through micromagnetic and lasr devices to win wars and cause drastic storms and earthquakes, as it did when bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail running through Laos to extend a monsoon season to stop enemy supplies from getting through. This nation is the most bombed nation with millions of cluster bombs, in forms of bomblets that are still killing children. More than 40 years US metal from these bombs during the Vietnam War are still supplying a recycle industry as teams of Laotian women detonate dud bombs with numerous deaths in the process. Male war historians seldom calculate the deaths of aftermath aggression in their zeal to describe the thrill of bloody battle scenes.
     Flame throwing, roaring explosions, rocket missiles, detonations of carbon combustion, sulfurous chemical mushroom clouds, and illegal cluster, buster bombs filled with General Shrapnel's 1784 invention of ever lasting misery are still manufactured to fill a Devil's arsenal from Hell.  Aren't the makers of these satanic weapons responsible for war deaths, too?  The entire system of war is a domino game of devastation.
            Killing of youths, women, and non-combatants through "collateral damage" violates human rights. When will taxpayers stand their ground against the game of war that is annihilating Earth and its people?
Worldwide corporate-profit-wars are vaporizing human beings.  A crime alone is committed when little kids fear for good reason the sky is falling as people are zapped away like flies from deadly drones.
     All this plus leaking nuclear waste dumps is sounding a death toll for Earth and all life.   We are for whom the bells toll. No wonder extraterrestrials haven't landed among flaming explosions and radioactive missiles blasting the sky! They must shake their heads and turn away to return to myriads of heavenly bodies not chomping to blow each other up.
     But militants hit rock bottom with holocaustic genocide as youths are ordered to kill youths with baby aborting munitions now all outlawed by International Humanitarian Criminal Crime Law. Civilians are affected in the same way, as genetic youth-killing goes on generation after another–all for devil-war. 
     Since radioactive, biological, and chemical clean-up is more expensive than the cost of the original weaponry, its poisonous waste is now insidiously made into radioactive "spent" bullets having enough power to blow holes in tank armor as it also invades women's wombs through DNA. Remember when the incarcerated Ploughshare Nuns carried out civil disobedience against nuclear arsenals when Iraq in 2003 was invaded, attacked and occupied–a nation that never assaulted the US, with an administration committing war crimes.  
It is impossible for anyone to know the ongoing death count of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki holocausts as well as present day genocide. Women in battlefield cities are compelled to bury their infants with no help since many have lost their husbands and sons during agonizing aggression.
A corporate power-hungry federal government tested Agent Orange herbicide (drums marked with orange paint for poison), first on American indigenous people on reservations. Their ancestors on sovereign lands were originally attacked through biological, genocidal warfare–the first of its kind in America–blankets from smallpox hospitals given as gifts–intentional extermination.            In Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia Agent Orange also causes abnormalities and diseases from the Vietnamese War. Millions of gallons of this surplus herbicide were clandestinely buried in South Korea at military bases that in the aftermath of war continue to pollute water with little children dying the first from lethal poisons .
            Nuclear waste accumulated ever since WWII is stored on American Indian reservation lands at Hanford, Washington, world's first plutonium reactor site and oldest, largest nuclear dump. At this base it is leaking hydrogen that is in danger of blowing up, what also affects Oregon and the Columbia River.
Reckless, irresponsible military bases are also causing this worldwide contamination–caustic, hazardous fuels toxic war contaminants. Not even the army knows how many US abandoned bases are scattered over the planet.  But some people have estimated 5000 of these occupation posts reflect political, imperial foot-holds–foreign military muscle overseas. A crawl went across TV screens prior to September 11, 2001–a threat of catastrophe to America's most important strategic cities if bases were not removed from Islam's most holy lands–Saudi Arabia. This warning was completely ignored. Would the Feds permit foreign military bases causing birth deformities on US soil?
            Post-war commercial pesticides and herbicides, originally resulting from Nazi development of war nerve gases, increase Parkinson disease in general, with soldiers having brain trauma blows from war, also at risk. The alarming rise of Lou Gehrig nerve disease among soldiers is great concern, too.
            All these war offenses are indefensible, but the absolute worst ones come from birth-deforming, retarding agents that are now causing a world pandemic as illegal munitions handed by combat soldiers are going from parent to child.  These chemical, radiological killers are not only genetically causing genocide in foreign nations but the US is killing its own soldiers through weapons of massive devastation–a tidal wave of backlash grotesque deformities and retardation affecting all future generations. With everyone owning loaded guns, the school shooting madness will only get worst as deranged people pull out their guns and shooting at more than those texting in movie theaters,
            When US-led troops attacked and occupied Fallujah, Iraq this town was bombarded twice with illegal chemical warfare–white sulfur, napalm, depleted uranium, and munitions full of lead and mercury, all of which cause grotesque birth defects–war babies born without brains and eyes, as well as faceless, brainless two-headed infants, missing legs and arms, and organs formed outside of the uterus in a world pandemic from outlawed weapons. Bob Dylan wrote in his song Masters of Wars:

"You've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled, fear to bring children into the world, for threatening my baby unborn and unnamed, you ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins."

This whole scenario is a dreadful miscarriage of justice. Ironically, more females than males are born among combat parents intensely exposed to horrendous toxicants that cause altered genes and mutations. War turkeys, unless kept on a short leash, will eventually cause their own extinction as well as the rest of the world. Jill Stein, physician and US candidate for president warned that war "mercury is killing our children." Another presidential candidate, Cynthia McKinney, chided America for having more to offer than bombs and military technology.  She called for eliminating many military bases where dangerous oil contamination exudes from industrial dumped waste and rusty war gear poisoning soil, drinking water, and milk given children. 
Women are up in arms over despicable war contamination causing unnatural world disasters.  The Dixie Chicks were persecuted for singing anti-war songs.  Code Pink activists are women against war. Medea Benjamin spoke out and graphically demonstrated with "bloody" hands the realistic picture of aggression before Congress. child-deforming, youth-killing wars. As a protestor of war she was manhandled and ended up with a broken arm in Turkey in 2014.
 "First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt said, “I cannot believe that war is the best solution.” Ann Frank in her "Diary looked to the heavens for cruelty to stop and peace to return again. Actor Jessica Lange is "hopeful that our children and children's children will not be of a warring nature," a call for a change from military solutions to diplomatic ones. 
With tongue in cheek Mark Twain's satirical war prayer mocks pious aggression for emboldening foreign women and children to suffer and die in agonizing war–a real eye-opener of human lust to attack and occupy other nations.  The Canadian War Child program supports war orphans who have lost their parents, another tragedy of war. Activist Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in Iraq said, "I don't want to put any more children in the hands of warriors and their war machines." Meanwhile, accumulative rockets' red flares continue to burst into sacred wind and air.
Today Lady Liberty symbolically hangs her head in shame.  Land and sea mines continue to kill children in explosions lurking in wars' aftermaths, all in the name of a deity and safety. 
Listen to wisdom of dark-complexioned prophets from Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa–Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Mohammed, Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama–peacemakers who do no harm.  Nelson Mandela wrote "education [for youths] is the most powerful weapon to change the world." Mother Teresa from Macedonia said, "Children of the world are the most precious gifts." Amma of India with her universal "hug," especially for children who are never hugged, has more power than weaponry since love conquers all.  Not one of these courageous humanitarians carried ammunition, not even a pebble for a slingshot.
And listen to the sad memory of a young American combat veteran:

“A hundred teen-age boys picked out of mud, zipped into plastic bags and air-mailed home to Mom. . . ditches full of screaming children . . . land once green and graceful . . . charred and gutted–not even a bird would sing there again. . . . "

–courtesy of poet Philip Appleman, American Humanist award winner; served in US Army Air Corps and US. Merchant Marine Corps, author of The Twelfth Year of War