I'm beginning to develop a case of compassion fatigue. or maybe it is a combination of cynicism contaminated by honesty.

So fifty-six civilians were killed in an attack and more than half of them were children? How many children perished on 9-11? Probably not that many at the WTC, but how many were on the airplanes? How many Israeli children have been targeted deliberately? And please, somebody tell me, why is the loss of a life worse, so so much worse, if it happens to be the life of a child. Are the lives of young adults worth less? Of mid-aged productive workers at the peak of their talents?  Of old people? If you look with the cold glance appropriate to war, the only answer which stands up is that a child’s death affects us because of our own Western sentimentality. And our tendency to project and empathize. When we see a small person hurt and scared, it moves us because we see our own child, we identify with our own childhood. And they look so small, helpless, and innocent. These are my emotional reactions, too. And it is a lingering remnant of the chivalric impulse. It could be the undoing of us all.

But this is not how most people regard children. Not the other cultures of the Third and Fourth Worlds. Not even our own more distant ancestors. Children have always been loved by their own parents, particularly their mothers. But that is not the way the larger societies have seen it. The children are a resource, a resource which can be fairly easily replaced. And the younger they are, the more replaceable, since fewer resources have been invested in raising them. If the infant dies, the mother will have another baby, but if the mother dies, then the infant is bereft and both are lost. Until the advent of modern medicine, it was taken as a given that only about half the children would survive the hazards of a peaceful society -  disease, accidents, beasts of prey, and so forth. In Fourth World hellholes, the survival rate has been typically far less than half.

The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, supposedly the ancestors of the modern Lebanese and Palestinians used to sacrifice large numbers of infants to Moloch and Baal, not because the infants were so precious, but because they were so expendable. You could always have another one. Let me observe in passing that it was the ancient Jews who were first to rebel against sacrifice of their young.

And traditionally, in time of conquest, ancient peoples typically slew the children of a conquered people, along with the warriors. Nubile women and those men who might make good slaves usually were spared, but the warriors who posed an immediate danger, and those so old or so young as to be useless were killed. And of course, killing the young guaranteed that the defeated enemy could not rise again to threaten revenge.

Americans and other Westerners typically no longer  think that way. But many other peoples do. We know what would happen if Israel were to be militarily defeated and overrun. It would much resemble the traditional historic pattern, with Israeli children particularly targeted for elimination. Even now, the Israeli child is regarded as a future Israeli soldier, and better to kill them while they are young and easy. Much as I would regard it as sensible to wipe out a nest of baby rattlesnakes, instead of waiting sportingly till they became full-grown and lethal.

Now look how they regard their children. Have you not seen the photos of the adorable little dears dressed in their mock suicide belts and toddler jihad suits? How cute. Have you not seen their drawings or heard their lessons indoctrinating them from the earliest years to hate the Jews and all other westerners as well? The child’s earliest education is the most formative, that which remains hardest to undo later. If Hezbollah, and Hamas, and the other organizations were to surrender and disband next month, declaring themselves reconciled to Israel and the West, what would be done with the children, trained to an instinctive hatred from the nipple? Even under the best circumstances, will they not grow up to be aspiring suicide bombers, much like pups from a pit bull mill? Or will there be some means to deprogram the lot of them?

We in the West, and I, recoil from the only reasonable response, they should be exterminated. That is beyond our culture, perhaps to our doom. But at the same time, when I hear of muslim children killed at Qana and elsewhere, my sadness is tempered by a realization that they were little Jihadis-in-training.

The Sons Of Baal who revived their ancient ways, and invented this new horrible culture, have much to answer for. The Sins of the fathers shall indeed be visited upon the sons. We may hope it shall not have to be unto the seventh generation.

But wars will continue to happen if we stay our hand when smiting the enemy.

Rurik

Contributed by George Mellinger on July 30, 2006 at 03:05 PM in George Mellinger, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink

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