Ravaged Innocents : Children of War

There are many millions of innocent children who observe wars as non-participating civilians ...simple, inoffensive "bystanders" who lose their families, friends and lives just by being in a war zone. They endure starvation, disease, dehydration, exposure and the blinding depression of nothing-hood. Then there are the pitiful, uninvolved, despised "war-children" who suffer, with their mothers, simply for being considered the products of "illicit" mating between occupying forces and then forsaken, indigenous mothers. Many are in lonely, exposed, desolate, denied places from where they wander through dangerous worlds seeking their old homes and families. But the most spectacular victims are the "child soldiers" who fight and die in violent combat. They do so just like adults do, but more quickly because they are amateurs. They are most prolific in the "third world" but they can also be found in central Europe, Great Britain, the US and even Ireland. Most of us just don't feel strongly enough about their suffering to stop them buying arms and death and starving and dying of disease. We leave all that to the great philanthropic missions of the world but we must learn to love these children as well and give, rather than talk about them.