The Questions No One Seems to be Asking

Today

 

In 10 years?

The United States has a terrible record of acting first, thinking second and discovering horrific unintended consequences of bad decisions, sometimes years and years after the initial misstep. Vietnam… or…. Like when we armed the Mujahidin against the USSR who were battling in Afghanistan in the 1980s. After the Soviets pulled out and the communist empire unraveled, those same Mujahidin (well-armed and trained by our CIA) turned their weapons and training on The Great Satan: the United States. Under the protective umbrella of the local governing Taliban, these Mujahidin began a new effort, calling themselves al Qaeda, mounted a brazen attack against the Twin Towers in NYC and the Pentagon in Virginia. 9/11/01. We called it “blow-back.”

When we toppled Sunni dictator, Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s 60% majority Shiite population promptly affiliated with the 90%+ Shiite majority in Iran… and as we tried to ignore this new configuration and pretend with our ally, Iraq clearly supported the Iranian Shiite theocracy in its anti-US policies. Abandoned Sunnis, finding no representation in either Shiite-led Damascus or Baghdad, turned to a new voice to fight for their interests: the ultra-right-wing Sunni extremists who called themselves ISIS. We know what happened there. We face similar issues as we supply Saudi Arabia with the means to bomb innocents in Yemen or Israel with weapons and satellite intelligence against Palestinians. Why do terrorists obsess about killing Americans? Take a wild guess. We should call that “blow-back” too.

Our perpetual obsession, particularly from 1950 through the 1980s, to defeat “communism” resulted in some rather strong continuing waves of simmer anti-Americanism, particularly in Central and South America. Don’t think that the failing governments in Venezuela or Bolivia, for example, have forgotten the covert and less-than-covert CIA and US military efforts to topple left-leaning governments.  Strong anti-Americanism still forms the backbone of policies that get politicians elected all over Latin America. All those efforts at détente pushed by the Clinton and Obama administrations, even by George W Bush, have spun back to negative under our current efforts.

I ask what we have actually gained, other than photo ops and aggrandizing a brutal North Korean tyrant, from shutting Cuba back down, pulling out of the Iran nuclear containment accord and watching a US president step into North Korean territory for the first time. But I ask a much bigger question, right here in our own back yard, when I look at the sardine-packed children detainees, separated from their parents, sleeping on dirt or concrete floors, lacking clean running water, sanitary toilets, hot meals and even toothbrushes. Those aluminum “blankets” seem to say it all.

Healthcare officials have made no secret of the longer-term damage, physical and psychological, done to these young lives. We can feel sorry for them, we can appropriate funds to give them a better experience within their total incarceration, but it may be too late to undo everything from their version of post-traumatic stress disorder, embellished by developmental issues inherent in a parentless environment, to a growing seething anger of what has happened to them… and wondering if they will ever see their parents again. Pass me the bologna sandwich please.

Do we really believe that the scars were are searing into their minds and bodies will heal and just go away? Or are we witnessing the birth of future violent antisocial behavior, a belief that “someday I will make them pay” vengeance, or perhaps down and dirty terrorism against the United States and American targets. Are we watching future sicarios (cartel assassins), dealers and gangsters in their earliest training grounds? 

We might be making children with nascent anti-social indicia such as hyper-aggression worse, but we also just may be interfering with allowing otherwise “normal” imprisoned children to develop, to acquire more cognitive, linguistic, and regulatory skills, which would enable them to cope with developmental challenges and outgrow many normal problem behaviors. Will they ever be able to find productive lives? At least they are learning English… but… how will they use that language skill against those inflicting such pain on their young lives?

Exactly why is this good for the United States? What’s in it for most of us? What benefits do we derive by incenting thousands of young minds to hate us and carry an unwavering hatred of the United States as a core value into adulthood? Children who grow up with deep anger and nothing left to lose? How many of “us” will be killed, injured, our livelihoods decimated, homes and buildings lost, addicts created, cartels fueled with new hated-filled, super-angry soldiers, armed with guns easily bought inside a gun-crazy America? We certainly need to call that “blow-back.” 

              I’m Peter Dekom, and I am watching insane and brutal, deeply unamerican cruelty towards even children burn hatred into their minds… a hatred that will someday soon come back to haunt us all… with retaliatory violence.