Althouse: "The details of the worsening violence against children are unspeakable, but we must speak of them."

June 23, 2015

"The details of the worsening violence against children are unspeakable, but we must speak of them."

"As many as 129 children from Unity State were killed during only three weeks in May. Survivors report that boys have been castrated and left to bleed to death … Girls as young as 8 have been gang raped and murdered … Children have been tied together before their attackers slit their throats ... Others have been thrown into burning buildings. Children are also being aggressively recruited into armed groups of both sides on an alarming scale – an estimated 13,000 children forced to participate in a conflict not of their making. Imagine the psychological and physical effects on these children – not only of the violence inflicted on them but also the violence they are forced to inflict on others."

From "the Statement by UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake on brutal violence against children in South Sudan," via The New York Times, "As South Sudan Crisis Worsens, 'There Is No More Country.'"

60 comments:

kcom said...: Whatever. We're not the world's policeman.

Is that the right answer?; 6/23/15, 8:02 AM
Robert Cook said...: Well, we're not, (the world's policeman). The military actions we take are not meant to protect others but to insure our own dominance of resources and regions elsewhere that we covet, and to establish our dominance. This is entirely typical of empires.

In this case, it would be appropriate for the UN to take concerted action. Will it?; 6/23/15, 8:10 AM
Carol said...: Don't even think about "fixing" this unless we want to import the problem to the US.; 6/23/15, 8:13 AM
Anonymous said...: Don't see much from O'bama's Female Diplomats on "Responsibility to Protect" ever since our successful liberation of Libya...; 6/23/15, 8:17 AM
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...: If all cultures are not equally worthy of emulation, then maybe some are exceptional after all.; 6/23/15, 8:18 AM
Anonymous said...: Whenever Cookie and I get the urge to "Responsibility to Protect" we just watch "Blackhawk Down" That cures my itch...; 6/23/15, 8:19 AM
damikesc said...: Robert, given the UN and its track record, they will make it worse. They tend to partake in sex slavery with their peace keepers.; 6/23/15, 8:19 AM
prairie wind said...: I won't be sure until I see the hashtag.; 6/23/15, 8:25 AM
Jaq said...: In this case, it would be appropriate for the UN to take concerted action. Will it?

Oh, you mean like they did in Libya? How'd that work out?

No. We have two options, do something or look the other way.

Since if we "do something," the political will to finish the job will soon be sapped away and our boys will have died for nothing while Cookie pisses on their graves, the only real option is to look the other way while honest to goodness "nation building" goes on.

This is how it is done. It is how the US was built, how China was probably built. Does anybody really believe that China, for example, sprung fully formed from a vast collection of tribes in the region and spontaneously recognized a single "emperor"?

No, China, like probably every other nation we consider great, was formed through conquest by the strongest tribes, whose advantages then snowballed into a "nation."; 6/23/15, 8:28 AM
Jaq said...: If Bill Clinton had watched Rambo III, we could have stayed out of Afghanistan.

Mousa: This is Afghanistan... Alexander the Great try to conquer this country... then Genghis Khan, then the British. Now Russia. But Afghan people fight hard, they never be defeated. Ancient enemy make prayer about these people... you wish to hear?
Rambo: Um-hum.
Mousa: Very good. It says, 'May God deliver us from the venom of the Cobra, teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan.' Understand what this means?
Rambo: That you guys don't take any shit?
Mousa: Yes... something like this.; 6/23/15, 8:32 AM
Michael K said...: Yes, the "culture is no different from ours. It may even be superior as I'll bet there are few women raped on college campuses.; 6/23/15, 8:34 AM
Curious George said...: tim in vermont said...

This is how it is done. It is how the US was built, how China was probably built. Does anybody really believe that China, for example, sprung fully formed from a vast collection of tribes in the region and spontaneously recognized a single "emperor"?

No, China, like probably every other nation we consider great, was formed through conquest by the strongest tribes, whose advantages then snowballed into a "nation."

You need a crash course in US history.; 6/23/15, 8:43 AM
William said...: We're all against the murder and torture of children, and it's especially evil to use other children as the executioners and torturers. This is not a morally ambiguous issue like abortion or gay marriage. This is about as evil as human beings can be. Nonetheless, it doesn't seem to generate much outrage or publicity. Why is there no Sudanese Steve Biko to suffer nobly and prick the conscience of the world?; 6/23/15, 8:49 AM
Jaq said...: You need a crash course in US history

Why? Details are certainly different. What do you think happened during the Sullivan Campaign? Sure, we used Gatling guns, took advantage of small pox, starvation by killing off the buffalo as official policy, whatever. But if you think that the creation of the US was a spontaneous spread of Kumbayah, then I have a feeling that it is you who needs the "crash course."; 6/23/15, 8:53 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: By the end of the second sentence I knew they were talking about some place in Africa. Some problems are American and European problems. Some problems are Asian problems. Some problems are Islamic problems. And when you are talking about the mass slaughter of other people's children, it always seems to be an Africa problem.; 6/23/15, 8:57 AM
Tank said...: What percentage of Americans could point to Sudan on a map?

Hint: Put Tank in the can not category.

I guess we could help them by granting them refugee status and moving 500,000 of them to ... Chevy Chase? Malibu? Portland? Martha's Vineyard?

Who wants 500,000 Sudanese?

I'm voting for Martha's Vineyard.; 6/23/15, 8:57 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Gatling guns weren't invented in 1779, tim in vermont. Geez.; 6/23/15, 8:59 AM
Jaq said...: Yeah, Terry, that sentence was a little malformed. I added the Sullivan Campaign thing in late and didn't rewrite the rest of the comment. I thought that the buffalo hunting thing would clear things up, but I guess not. You have my deepest apologies for my grievous error.

But don't we have to raze Sullivan's Monument? Isn't it a obelisk dedicated to the approbation of genocide?; 6/23/15, 9:03 AM
Anonymous said...: Who wants 500,000 Sudanese?

The Viet Boat people worked out pretty well, but of course most weren't you know, uh Boat People, the were mostly middle class, educated, Catholic, military, our friends, and on the losing side.

The Somali's we sent to Minnesota? Not so good. They are Jihadi's, local and returnees...; 6/23/15, 9:04 AM
MacMacConnell said...: The Pope should be happy, these children won't grow up to destroy the earth. Never need electricity or air conditioning.; 6/23/15, 9:05 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Good one, Tank! All political refugees must be settled in zip codes where the average house value > $500k. That ought to change a few minds about the wonderful ethnic mix that America is becoming.
Let's call it "The Merciful Homestead Act." Now, who could be against that?; 6/23/15, 9:06 AM
Jaq said...: We should also level all of the various Buffalo Bill's Gravesites scattered throughout the American West, since he was and instrument of a genocidal policy.; 6/23/15, 9:07 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: We were at war, tim in Vermont. People two hundred years from today will condemn you for eating 2,500 calories/day when people are starving to death in this world.
Animal.; 6/23/15, 9:09 AM
Anonymous said...: Tank said...
What percentage of Americans could point to Sudan on a map?

But, but you've seen the movie :)

"Khartoum" Charlton Heston against the Jihadi's. What was old is new again...

PS: Think "headwaters of the Nile" if you want to place it on a map.

PPS: It wasn't America's support for Israeli's that set them off in 1881 either.

PPPS: location of DarFur, that great Clinton success story /sarc; 6/23/15, 9:11 AM
Known Unknown said...: UN to take concerted action.

Oxymoron alert.; 6/23/15, 9:11 AM
Paco Wové said...: "it would be appropriate for the UN to take concerted action"

Like many others, I await with eager anticipation the unveiling of what R. Cook defines as "concerted UN action".; 6/23/15, 9:13 AM
Bobber Fleck said...: In this case, it would be appropriate for the UN to take concerted action. Will it?

Perhaps a sternly worked letter under the stamp of the UN President? President Obama could help draft it, assuming the repeated use of "I", "my" and "me" is acceptable.; 6/23/15, 9:24 AM
Jaq said...: We were at war, tim in Vermont.

Maybe you misunderstood my comment. I said "This is how nations are built." I don't apologize for human nature. I am pretty sure that every great nation, with the possible exception of Tibet, and look what that has gotten them, was formed in the same way.

The Iroquois started in the Southwest and conquered their way across the US until they finally took over the northeast. This is confirmed both by their lore and by archaeologists. They met their match in Sullivan. They were not the descendants of the first humans to tread on that soil following the last ice age.

My only point is that this is how nations world wide have been traditionally built. ISIS is doing "nation building" now. What George W. Bush proposed as "nation building" was laughably inadequate, though I didn't really realize it at the time.; 6/23/15, 9:25 AM
kcom said...: As if the U.N. is the bastion of altruism. If you can't keep torturing dictators off the human rights council you probably can't run a humanitarian mission in a concerted way. Instead, you pay off a bunch of less powerful countries to send ill-disciplined soldiers who are poorly supervised and call the problem solved. Next!; 6/23/15, 9:31 AM
Jaq said...: BTW, I am directly descended from two different soldiers under General Sullivan. Both were given farms from Indian lands for their service. I don't hate them.; 6/23/15, 9:31 AM
rhhardin said...: Maybe we can sell them Confederate flags.; 6/23/15, 9:38 AM
buwaya said...: I've been collecting material on the guerilla war in the Philippines 1942-45. A lot of these are written by the American participants, or ghostwritten for them, as the higher leadership of the guerillas was often American. I highly recommend this stuff, it is chock full of high adventure and drama. Norling, Ramsey, Lapham, Fertig (wonderful book), etc. and many, many more. But quite a lot is by Filipinos. Yay Panlilio is a much overlooked American ethnic feminist heroine, if one is looking for such, and she wrote her own book after returning to the US. That's a far better work, by someone worth emulating, than the dreadful Joy Luck Club.
Anyway, the atrocities in this Sudanese war are not new at all, and were typical of both sides, and nearly all accounts deal with the American/Filipino leaders justifications for the horrors perpetrated by their own side.
Cushman had 12 year old Igorot soldiers, some of Kanlaons men would process collaborators or rival guerillas bodies by dicing them as an example, Ramsey employed a cold blooded 15 year old executioner, rape en-masse was SOP by the Japanese, etc. in a very long catalogue. Peer too closely into any such war and you will find this sort of thing on a massive scale.; 6/23/15, 9:42 AM
buwaya said...: That's Walter Cushing not Cushman.; 6/23/15, 9:43 AM
buwaya said...: For that matter Francis Parkman deals with mutual atrocities on the frontier in some detail in some of his works. To be scalped alive and left to die was a common fate.; 6/23/15, 9:49 AM
rhhardin said...: The advance of justice can be identified by how many people it crushes into submission, like the gay bakery and Confederate flag.

It's all about feelings of course, but you need crushing to make them real.

Who knows what Althouse will feel next. Justice will march on.; 6/23/15, 9:51 AM
rhhardin said...: An alternative lifestyle is: don't do any crushing.

This would be a principle, in fact a libertarian one and one that underlies the Constitution.

If you want behavior, make it attractive to everybody, or at least not unattractive to any.

This goes under tolerance and indifference a lot.; 6/23/15, 9:53 AM
Jaq said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/23/15, 9:58 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Actually, Robert Cook, what is remarkable is the very limited way in which the U.S. has used it's military in the last 70 years. Unprecedented when compared to other dominant nations in the past.; 6/23/15, 10:10 AM
hombre said...: Cook: "In this case, it would be appropriate for the UN to take concerted action. Will it?"

There are two possible answers:

1. No, because most of the havoc is being wrought by Muslims and that's okay with the UN; or,
2. Yes, and UN troops will begin shortly to bargain relief items for sex with female refugees of all ages.; 6/23/15, 10:17 AM
Michael McNeil said...: What percentage of Americans could point to Sudan on a map?

Hint: Put Tank in the can not category.

I guess we could help them by granting them refugee status and moving 500,000 of them to ... Chevy Chase? Malibu? Portland? Martha's Vineyard?

Who wants 500,000 Sudanese?

They are not Sudanese, for one thing, but “South Sudanese.” Even if you could find it on a map, the nation that we knew as Sudan has changed drastically in recent years. The Islamic (northern) part, centered around Khartoum (that perpetrated all the atrocities in Darfur, also Islamic and northern), is now all that is known as “Sudan” — while South Sudan (non-Islamic: i.e. Christian and animist), as a result of an overwhelming referendum vote, has (since 2011) split off to become a separate country. Note re someone's earlier expressed fear of jihadists: South Sudan is overwhelmingly non-Muslim; that's why it's now an independent nation.; 6/23/15, 10:20 AM
MacMacConnell said...: buwaya puti
My father spent many months with Filipino guerilla fighters during WWII, he said they were so brutal, even to their own, that he threatened to turn himself in to the Japs. His P-38 was hit over Manilla while filming the enemy.; 6/23/15, 10:23 AM
Anonymous said...: Tank: I guess we could help them by granting them refugee status and moving 500,000 of them to ... Chevy Chase? Malibu? Portland? Martha's Vineyard?

Who wants 500,000 Sudanese?

I'm voting for Martha's Vineyard.

Somewhere, even as we comment, a State Department minion and a more-compassionate-than-thou Church Lady are surely conspiring together to do just that. (Well, with a slight change in your recommended destinations, of course.); 6/23/15, 10:29 AM
Skeptical Voter said...: Seeing as how Michelle Obama and Barack Obama are descended from Africans in various degree, and since so many young Sudanese males are being castrated and left to bleed to death, I'm waiting for a photo of Queen Moochelle with a hashtag photo.

After all she did one for #Save Our Girls.

How about one for #Save Our Boy's Nuts?

Okay, cheap shot aside, there's really not a heck of a lot that can be done here. You've got violent Muslims doing a bit of ethnic/religious cleansing--and the targets do rise up on occasion and get back some of their own. Obama's kindergarten teacher technique of "Okay kids stop fighting and be nice." isn't going to work. As for the UN--what a joke. Most Third World countries really don't want to welcome the blue helmeted sexual predators.; 6/23/15, 10:35 AM
cubanbob said...: Robert Cook said...

Well, we're not, (the world's policeman). The military actions we take are not meant to protect others but to insure our own dominance of resources and regions elsewhere that we covet, and to establish our dominance. This is entirely typical of empires.

In this case, it would be appropriate for the UN to take concerted action. Will it?
6/23/15, 8:10 AM

Are you volunteering to join the UN Army?; 6/23/15, 10:43 AM
Sammy Finkelman said...: The Obama Administration has given up doing anything about Sudan, even though murderr campaign are going on (because they want Sudan's help against al Qaeda and ISIS, and Obama can only ask for one thing at a time) and about South Sudan (becaus ethat would admit failure); 6/23/15, 10:50 AM
William said...: Pardon some psychopathic killers. Give them Confederate flags and license to travel to Sudan to participate in the festivities there. I guarantee by the end of the year there will be mass protests against the atrocities and widespread support for nation building in the South Sudan......; 6/23/15, 11:08 AM
JAORE said...: UN Action = rape of locals.

Just a swell idea.

Like so many things a wonderful concept a completely disastrous implementation.; 6/23/15, 11:38 AM
lgv said...: Someone call George Clooney. It wasn't supposed to happen on his watch.; 6/23/15, 11:54 AM
n.n said...: William:

Send in the natural-born killers. Women who have killed two or more human lives in their care. Send in the selective-child supporters to manage logistics.; 6/23/15, 12:07 PM
mccullough said...: Either fight or surf. Speaking out is worthless; 6/23/15, 12:23 PM
hombre said...: It may be that both sides are recruiting children, but most reports are that it is the Sudanese Army and their allies who are commiting the atrocities against children. Why do you suppose the UN doesn't say so?; 6/23/15, 12:45 PM
Etienne said...: This is exactly why nuclear weapons were created. There are no innocent people in the target zone. They must all die in order to save the world.

We have 2400 on alert this morning. One ICBM (six warheads) can do the job.; 6/23/15, 12:51 PM
Jaq said...: Either fight or surf

Charlie don't surf!

Apocalypse Now had this figured out though. Kurtz had it right.

"I know he goes to far sometimes! He's the first to admit it!"; 6/23/15, 1:21 PM
buwaya said...: Thanks Mac!
Did your father write a memoir ?; 6/23/15, 1:23 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/23/15, 2:01 PM
Franklin said...: "Too much blood and treasure to fix it." - sincerely, Democrats/NYT; 6/23/15, 2:05 PM
Kirk Parker said...: Drill SGT,

Not arguing for or against admitting more South Sudanese, but one thing I can guarantee you is that, if we do, there will be precisely 0.00% Jihadis among them.; 6/23/15, 3:05 PM
Kirk Parker said...: Drill SGT,

You seem not to realize that Sudan was a country so badly divided between its (Muslim) north and (non-Muslim) south that it actually split and became two separate countries.

EMD,

"UN to take concerted concern"

FIFY.; 6/23/15, 3:13 PM
David said...: This has been going on for at least 20 years. Draw your own conclusions about what that means.; 6/23/15, 3:28 PM
James Pawlak said...: At first I thought this referred to Chicago or Baltimore.; 6/23/15, 4:48 PM