By Selwyn Duke
We’ve all heard about the tactic of using children as human shields, as practiced by Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and others. The idea is that you place civilians — preferably women and children — at military targets to reduce the chances that your enemy will attack and so that, if he does, he’ll look like a heartless miscreant who targets the least among us. Morally, it’s the least of tactics.
Yet while we Westerners have made the practice illegal under the Geneva Convention, it’s not unknown in the United States — in our political battles. In the 1990s especially, it became common to claim that all and sundry must support a given statist policy “for the children.” As an example, when Republican-backed welfare reform was instituted, Ted Kennedy called it “legislative child abuse.” And when President G.W. Bush threatened to veto an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in 2007, Democrats brought children to a press conference on the matter and later had a 12-year-old SCHIP recipient read a heartstring-tugging Democrat radio address about the program.
The latest use of this tactic was by Texas Governor Rick Perry in the Florida Republican debate when he invoked the welfare of the children to justify his granting in-state tuition benefits to illegal aliens. And while imprudently using the word “heartless” to describe the idea’s opponents didn’t help his presidential fortunes, the tactic certainly helps the cause of illegality. Why, virtually every measure proposed to combat invasion U.S.A. is supposedly off limits because it hurts children, who are innocents and here through no fault of their own.
Read the rest here.
I hate child wielding libtards just as much as you do, Selwyn, but that is one cute kid in the pic that goes with your article. ;0)
Posted by: red state blues | October 22, 2011 at 12:27 AM