Children and armed conflict

"The UN just released its annual report on “Children and Armed Conflict.” A number of states, as well as non-state actors, are highlighted in this report as engaged in the serious abuse of children in the course of an armed conflict. And, a number of the perpetrators are being aided and abetted by U.S. military aid, and have been for years. Moreover, some of the conflicts resulting in the worst abuse of children were in fact unleashed by military interventions of the United States.  However, you would not know any of this from the coverage given to this report by Western media sources. Thus, the almost-invariable headline about this report focuses upon Syria, such as CNN’s headline, “U.N. report: Syrian children tortured, used as human shields.” Of course, the details in the UN Report about the abuse of children by Syrian government forces is shocking and quite worthy of press coverage and condemnation.  At the same time, the systematic abuse of children by forces the U.S. is funding — and in some cases by U.S. and NATO forces themselves — would seem even more relevant to the citizens of the U.S. who should be knowledgeable about how their tax dollars are being used, and indeed ill-used, around the world. Possibly, the view of the media, in keeping with that of the U.S. government, is that U.S.-sponsored abuses should remain unknown to the American people lest they challenge these abuses. Therefore, as Noam Chomsky recently opined, our government and media naturally tend to focus on “Somebody Else’s Atrocities.”"