Women and Children Suffer the Most

The saying goes: Old men make war; young men fight them. However, it is not just young men who pay a price. Lucinda Marshall, founder of Feminist Peace Network, has written an article for Common Dreams, giving us a glimpse of what price our warring nation and leaders extract from the women and children of the world. The Bush administration bandies about the popular buzz words of the day: sovereignty, democracy, freedom, and liberation, as if these words are all that matter. Meanwhile, women and children account for almost 80% of the casualties of war as well as 80% of the 40 million people in the world who are now refugees from their homes, writes Marshall. Those who use military force also create unspeakable torment and pain for women who are often part of the spoils of war. "Their deaths are considered collateral damage, and their bodies are frequently used as battlegrounds and as commodities that can be traded."

"Women and girls are not just killed. They are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated, and humiliated. Custom, culture, and religion have built an image of women as bearing the 'honour' of their communities. Disparaging a woman's sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have become a means by which to terrorize, demean, and 'defeat' entire communities, as well as to punish, intimidate, and humiliate women," according to Irene Khan of Amnesty International. Sexual violence has left hundreds of thousands of women raped, brutalized, impregnated, and infected with HIV/AIDS. And hundreds of thousands of women are trafficked annually for forced labor and sexual slavery. And lest we think that the US is not involved in this, much of this trafficking is to service western troops in brothels near military bases. Even women in our own military are abused and assaulted while serving on active duty. The perpetrators are rarely punished.

Children are also the victims of our wars. In the last 10 years, two million of our children have been killed in wars and conflicts. 4.5 million children have been disabled, and 12 million have been left homeless. Today there are 300,000 child soldiers, including many girls who are forced to "service" the troops.

Environmental damage is an accepted weapon of war. We leave behind depleted uranium and napalm. This causes cancer and birth defects. Iraq is suffering a soaring rate of illness. We are also endangering our own soldiers, exposing them to the effects of these chemicals. They face higher cancer and disease rates and pass birth defects on to their offspring.

We are polluting our water, land, and air by careless disposal of military toxins. Perchlorate, a rocket fuel, for example, is getting into our groundwater. This affects our drinking water and our food, as well as the breastmilk of nursing mothers. Perchlorate may also impact reproductive health.

Next, the economic price of war. War-making comes at the expense of funding for programs that benefit our lives and our planet. Bush can get all the money he wants out of Congress for the "War." But that means less and less money for our domestic needs. At airports, women are groped in order to board airplanes, but there is no worry about funds for prevention of domestic violence or affordable housing and decent jobs. Abroad, reconstruction funds we are supposedly sending to Afghanistan and Iraq are reportedly not being spent on helping people in those countries. Most of the money, about 97%, goes for more death and destruction.

All these things are happening in the most cavalier manner one can imagine. Bush and his military-industrial-corporate machine are usurping our lives in the name of empire, while vehemently denying it every step of the way, and the Congress seems incapable of standing up to them. What is their problem? Their own political aspirations? What is it?

The real terror is not terrorists of foreign extraction. It is our own leaders in Washington. They are terrorists, too. Why can't more people see this? If we believe the made-up world Bush is living in, we are doomed. Bush creates his own realities to serve his goals, and we cower in fear, not able to check behind the curtain to find the truth. I hope in the New Year we can get a grip and speak truth to power before it is truly too late. There is such a thing as too late.