Child Soldiers in Tigray: The Shameless Hypocrisy, Moral Depravity and Intellectual Bankruptcy of the Biden Administration
The TPLF has perfected the use of battlefield casualties and damage to tar, feather and demonize the Ethiopian government as killers of innocent civilians, women and children.
The TPLF is using a cynical strategy to deploy children as combatant soldiers while they are alive and commodify them as media assets when they are killed.
The TPLF is doing it all with the blessings of the unholy trinity of Blinken, Biden and Rice!
Read more below…
African/African American kid’s lives don’t matter!
“Proud dad and pop”, “dad” and “mom” are the words and phrases used by President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden’s Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice (a/k/a THE DUCHESS OF DARKNESS) to describe themselves in their public relations efforts.
They want to project an image of caring, kinder and gentler parents who equate their parental responsibilities on the same level as their state responsibilities.
I do not doubt Biden, Blinken and Rice care much about the lives and welfare of their children.
The question is whether they give a rat’s behind about black children in America and in Africa.
Do African American children in America and African children in Africa matter to Blinken, Biden and Rice?
There is no doubt or question in my mind that African American and African children’s lives don’t matter to Biden, Blinken and Rice!
Of course, they will babble the obligatory ad hollow litany about racism and discrimination. Their words speak louder than their actions.
The facts speak for themselves.
Among all groups in the U.S., the poverty rate in 2021 is the highest for Black children which increased by 2.8 percentage points, from 26.4 percent to 29.2 percent.
A study that was released on July 15, 2021, reported, “Black youth are more than four times as likely to be detained or committed in juvenile facilities as their white peers.”
From juvenile hall, these children begin their woeful journey to the big house.
If they are lucky, they will be out on parole after some years and since they cannot get employment with a criminal record, they will turn to the only business available, drug dealing, in the hood to support themselves.
Soon enough, they will be arrested, their parole revoked and represented by overworked and overstretched public defenders who talk to them for just a few minutes, they almost invariably plead out to lesser charges and are returned to prison and the vicious cycle begins again.
Then they often come face-to-face with the so-called three strikes law and they are lost forever from American civil society.
I know because I represented so many of them and watched them disappear over the event horizon of the American black hole prison system.
The pipeline from school to prison, from the neighbohood to prison never stops.
The life of the black child in America is wasted in the criminal justice system because a black child’s life does not matter.
Needless to say, the Biden administration is not doing a doggone thing to help black children economically or socially because black children’s lives do not matter to them.
That is just a fact!
Needless to ask, do African children’s lives matter to Biden, Blinken and Rice?
The crocodile tears of Biden, Blinken and Rice for Tigray
For the past eight months, Rice and Blinken have been tweeting and shedding crocodile tears about alleged “atrocities” and “human rights violations” in Tigray region of Ethiopia.
They have been damning and demonizing the Ethiopian Government for alleged crimes ranging from denying humanitarian access to the region to using famine as a weapon of war.
On February 27, 2021, Blinken tweeted:
The United States is gravely concerned by reports of atrocities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. We strongly condemn the killings, forced removals, sexual violence, and other violations of human rights. The international community must work together to prevent further atrocities.
Today, there are photographs, not just hearsay reports, of child soldiers, being marched into combat and used as human shields by the TPLF and Blinken is silent.
On November 18, 2020, Susan Rice retweeted Blinken’s tweet,
Deeply concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia, reports of targeted ethnic violence, and the risk to regional peace and security. The TPLF and Ethiopian authorities should take urgent steps to end the conflict, enable humanitarian access, and protect civilians.
Today, there are photographs, not just hearsay reports, of child soldiers, being marched into combat and used as human shields by the TPLF and Rice is silent.
On November 24, 2020, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor tweeted,
I’m deeply concerned about the risk of violence against civilians, including potential war crimes, in the fighting around Mekelle in Ethiopia. Civilians must be protected and humanitarian access must be opened. Both sides should immediately begin dialogue facilitated by the AU.
Today, there are photographs, not just hearsay reports, of child soldiers, being marched into combat and used as human shields by the TPLF and Sullivan is silent.
On July 13, 2021, Blinken “told reporters that the U.S. review into whether to call events in Tigray crimes against humanity, war crimes or genocide was ongoing.”
But Blinken did not say a doggone thing about the large number of child soldiers the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is using to commit acts of terrorism and as human shields in combat zones.
It is a conspiracy of silence; a white wall of silence.
Of course, Blinken, Biden and Rice have long turned a blind eye, deaf ears and muted lips to the flagrant atrocities and human rights violations committed by the TPLF.
When the TPLF committed the Mai Cadra Massacres in November 2020 and Amnesty International reported it to the world, Blinken, Biden and Rice did not say a word.
When the TPLF launched revenge killings of individuals seen as collaborators with the interim Tigray government, not a word was uttered by Blinken, Biden or Rice.
When the TPLF destroyed bridges that could be used to expedite delivery of humanitarian aid to the suffering people of Tigray, Blinken, Biden and Rice kept their silence.
When it comes to the TPLF, Biden, Blinken and Rice administration follow the example of the three wise monkeys: “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil about the TPLF.”
Yet, on July 1, 2021, Blinken accused Turkey and 14 other countries for providing “operational, equipment, and financial support” to an armed militia groups that recruit child soldiers.
Blinken, in his imperious way, also lectured Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari “to improve the education of the armed forces on the laws and policy against the unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers.”
TPLF and child soldiers
The TPLF has integrated child soldiers as part of its former regional police, militia and security forces.
The strategy to use child soldiers as part of a”people’s war” was first announced by TPLF terrorist leader Debretsion Gebremeskel.
The children are compulsorily recruited into service in combat roles.
They are also used as human shields in combat situations.
The U.S. condemns the Ethiopian Government for alleged war crimes but remains silent in the face of photographic evidence of recruitment and deployment of child soldiers, a certified war crime, by the TPLF.
The TPLF is Ethiopia’s equivalent of Nigeria’s Boko Haram.
The Ethiopian Government has outlawed the TPLF as a terrorist organization.
The TPLF is listed in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and the Terror Research and Analysis Consortium (TRAC).
Until June 15, 2014, in the U.S., the “TPLF qualified as a Tier III terrorist organization under INA section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III).
The fact that terrorist groups forcibly recruit child soldiers in Africa or elsewhere is not new.
Boko Haram in Nigeria routinely and forcibly inducts boys and girls into its frontline force to commit suicide attacks.
al-Shabaab in Somalia continues to recruit children into in its ranks to commit terrorism.
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) mobilizes children as “cubs” to fight for the so-called Caliphate.
The U.S. has officially condemned these groups.
What is new is the fact that the United States Government is today openly and shamelessly supporting the TPLF, a terrorist organization by its own determination until June 2014, to commit war crimes by recruiting child soldiers!
The TPLF’s rationale for using child soldiers is similar to other terrorist groups except in one regard.
Like other terror groups, the TPLF forcibly recruits (kidnaps) children into its terrorist ranks because they are relatively easy to train to shoot, easier to manipulate and trick, cheaper to feed and harder to detect as combatants.
The TPLF exception in the use of child soldiers is the fact that they also use child combat casualties as grist for their global media campaigns.
The TPLF has perfected the use of battlefield casualties and damage to tar, feather and demonize the Ethiopian government as killers of innocent civilians, women and children.
The TPLF uses a cynical strategy of deploying children as combatant soldiers while they are alive and commodify them as media assets when they are killed.
The TPLF is doing it all with the blessings of the unholy trinity of Blinken, Biden and Rice!
The Biden administration’s flagrant contempt for American law
It is against U.S. law to engage in the recruitment and use of child soldiers. 18 U.S. Code § 2442 provides:
Whoever knowingly (1) recruits, enlists, or conscripts a person to serve while such person is under 15 years of age in an armed force or group; or (2)uses a person under 15 years of age to participate actively in hostilities shall be not more than 20 years and if a death of any person results, for any term of years or for life.
Yet, the Biden administration, by not condemning and fingering the TPLF for war crimes, undermines the letter and sprit of § 2442 and is in fact giving tacit approval to the TPLF to continue this heinous practice.
U.S. efforts to eradicate the war crime of child soldiers internationally are supposedly guided by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008.
Section 403 of the Act mandates:
United States diplomatic missions in countries in which the use of child soldiers is an issue, whether or not such use is supported or sanctioned by the governments of such countries, should include in their mission program plans a strategy to achieve the goals offering ongoing psychological services to help such children to recover from the trauma suffered during their forced military involvement, relearn how to interact with others in nonviolent ways, facilitate reconciliation and provide educational and vocational assistance”, among others.
The U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia has remained deaf-mute on its mandate to develop a protective and rehabilitative strategy for TPLF child soldier victims.
In a press statement on February 24, 2021, Blinken said,
The United States is committed to a world in which human rights are protected, their defenders are celebrated, and those who commit human rights abuses are held accountable. President Biden is committed to a foreign policy that unites our democratic values with our diplomatic leadership, and one that is centered on the defense of democracy and the protection of human rights.
There is no accountability for the TPLF for committing war crimes by recruiting child soldiers. Human rights protections are applied to the TPLF selectively.
Suffice it to say that for the Biden administration the law and American values can be sacrificed at the altar of hypocrisy and bent out of shape to serve ulterior political objectives.
The Biden administration can condemn and damn 17 countries for alleged use of child soldiers but turns a blind eye to the mountain of photographic evidence of use of child soldiers by the TPLF.
Such is the height of the Biden administration’s hypocrisy.
Prohibition of child soldiers under international law
Article 38 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, requires states to protect children in armed conflicts and “take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years (age 18 under the Protocols) do not take a direct part in hostilities.”
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines “conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities” as war crime. ((ICC Statute, Article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) and (e)(vii)).
On November 19, 2020, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reported, “2.3 million children in Tigray region of Ethiopia need humanitarian assistance.”
On June 14, 2021, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reported, “At least 33,000 children in parts of Tigray, Ethiopia, at imminent risk of death as conflict increases famine threat.”
In July 2021, UNICEF is as silent as the grave on the use of thousands of child soldiers in Tigray!
Can moral monsters protect and defend human rights in Africa?
Long ago, I coined a word “diplocrisy” to describe the policy of the Obama administration in Ethiopia.
Biden, Blinken and Rice like to pontificate about the U.S. as the standard bearer of freedom, human rights, democracy and moral conduct in the international system.
That is, of course, fantasy.
The U.S. has always used a double-standard and moral relativism in its relations with other countries.
The U.S. has supported and continues to support extremely repressive rulers and regimes.
For example, the U.S. bankrolls the regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the tune of billions of dollars every year.
El Sisi came to power in 2013 by executing a military coup against the legitimately elected president Mohammad Morsi.
El Sisi remains in power today having imprisoned at least 60,000 people.
Yet, hardly a day passes without the unholy trinity demonizing Ethiopia for human rights violations.
For the U.S., what is good for the Egyptian goose is not good enough for the Ethiopian gander.
Ethiopians understand the blatant U.S. hypocrisy and double standards.
Don’t get mad at the Biden administration; get even!
The fact of the matter is that Biden, Blinken and Rice know the TPLF is a gang of bloodthirsty terrorist S.O.B. thugs who use child soldiers and commit war crimes.
But these war criminals S.O.B.’s are Biden, Blinken and Rice’s most favored S.O.B.s!
The fact of the matter is that Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy resonates more with the American people than the New World Order foreign policy of Barack Obama and Barack Obama II (a/k/a Joe Biden).
Trump pursued and promoted a foreign policy that emphasized and prioritized bilateral relations over multinational agreements of the international New World Order elites hellbent on dominating the world.
The vast majority of Americans do not want America to be the world policeman or distributor of American tax dollars as aid to “s**t hole countries”.
The vast majority of Americans agree with Trump’s isolationist, non-interventionist, and protectionist foreign policy.
Americans today are asking, “What did we get in return for the 3 trillion dollars we wasted on Afghanistan and Iraq and the tens of thousands of Americans killed?”
Nothing! Not a damn thing!
Unless defeat at the hands of ragtag terrorists is considered a return on investment.
Not to worry.
Sleepy Joe Biden is a one-termer.
In 2022, we shall drive the DemocRATS out of Congress and ensure a Republican takeover.
Truth be told, the DemocRATS have been inimical to the interests of Ethiopia.
Jimmy Carter, a democrat, left Ethiopia high and dry in the mid-1970s when Ethiopia was attacked by Somalia.
Bill Clinton, a democrat, promoted African dictators including TPLF thugmaster Meles Zenawi.
Barack Obama, a democrat went to Ethiopia in July 2015 and declared the TPLF which claimed to have “won” the election in May of that year by 100 percent “democratic.”
Today, Joe Biden, a democrat, has slapped visa sanctions on Ethiopia and threatens to unleash sanctions on Ethiopia like the world has never known.
So, what is the answer?
The answer my Ethiopian friends is this: “DON’T GET MAD. GET EVEN WITH THE DEMOCRATS IN 2022 AND 2024!”
Papa, Dad, Sleepy Joe!
Wake up!
Child soldiers in Tigray are dying at the hands of the TPLF!
Say something! Do something, Joe!
Do something!
