Every Little Boy's Dream Role
We're now informed that al-Qaeda in Iraq is busy training children as gunmen and kidnappers. Evidently a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda base in an enclave north of Baghdad brought the existence of five videos to light. The videos show boys as young as nine wearing balaclava masks and bravely holding pistols, machine-guns and even rocket launchers during what appears to be a training session.Dear to the hearts of boys everywhere. What male child wouldn't give his eye-teeth for just such a divine opportunity to display his acumen in handling weaponry, his fighting abilities, his discerning eye, accurately aiming toward the enemy? This is childhood's dream incarnate. Don't all boys emulate what they see and hear? In the West, usually on television and films; in the Middle East by casually observing what goes on around them.
So children are now more seriously being groomed to take up a serious combat role. The same, evidently, for any young people, particularly female, who happen to be developmentally delayed. Well, the achievement of mental, social, emotional maturity, the ability to synthesize information, make informed, well-rounded judgement calls is not reserved for adults, after all.
Some of these pictures represented by the videos show children wearing suicide-bomb vests. The children are taught to practise kidnapping scenarios, holding a pistol to the base of the kidnapee's skull, pinning hands behind. They become practised in halting a vehicle, hauling out occupants. And also how to stage an armed assault on a village home, brandishing weapons.
The fact is, some adults appear to be delayed in their abilities to mature, in any event, preferring to eschew the responsibilities that normally accrue to intellectual and social maturity, for with that comes a sense of social justice and actionable humanitarian impulses. For it would appear also that implicated are tribal families where adults train their children.
Fair to say that those in arrested adolescence, incapable of mustering the requisite mental balancing act against unbridled emotions led by aggrieved tribalism can present as useful fodder for self-sacrifice. They don't, however, present as a limitless supply. Their appreciated zeal in approaching martyrdom, seeing the agreeableness of dispatching other human beings in the process is invaluable, but numbers limited.
Such acts of selfless submission to a religiously-motivated duty need not necessarily be confined to witless sub-humans of chronological suitability. The pool of such psychopathic and easily-seduced personalities is not endless. The sharper-minded jihadists plan to assault and murder others who affront their piously self-serving agenda, but they do not themselves plan to commit to the ultimate personal sacrifice.
Hence the ongoing search for likely new recruits. When ready and willing bodies do not conveniently present in the numbers required, they are logically solicited elsewhere. And male children and young females elicit far less suspicion than their older counterparts. Enabling them entry and freedom denied others in desired target areas.
The grim horror of a child or a mentally tardy child or adult conscripted into jihad, knowingly as a childishly enthusiastic candidate, or unknowingly as a willing-to-be-helpful individual of mentally challenged capacity disgusts most normal people. But the savants who recruit for and act on behalf of Islamist jihad have no such moral scruples and consider those reactions an indication of political, religious and social effetism.
Of course we believe, as human beings, it is the abusers of childhood and mental infirmities who are those with the true mental handicaps. And to battle these brutal deficiencies in adult jihadists - dedicated to their purpose of delivering death where they may to achieve their greater purpose of achieving terror to the degree that their enemies will be overcome with fear - represents a heroic undertaking.
But one for which there is no substitute. Barbaric anti-humanism is what the targets of jihad are faced with. Jihadists keep hoping the Western defenders will tire of vigilance and defence long before jihadist blood-lust is sated.
Labels: Middle East, Terrorism, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, February 07, 2008
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