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I am not one who tends to write of any president’s child, but in this case I feel the need to address Jenna Bush’s book “Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope," which tells the story of a single mother infected with HIV. As a UNICEF intern she is doing so in order to bring attention to this health crisis and I will applaud her for doing so given her past behavior. One wonders if she is learning what the world is like independent of her father’s beliefs. If that is the case, I say, good for her. As we all know the use of condoms is the best way to stop the transmission of HIV and AIDS. One wonders if Jenna Bush through her internship has promoted the use of this birth control measure. If so, the religious evangelicals will not like it since their message is one of abstinence. In some parts of the world when it comes to sex children are raped. Not that rape has anything to do with sex since it is an act of violence, but it still applies. You will read about that later on in this piece.
According to this article Bush’s Other Losing War: AIDS you will read that the Bush policy restrictions “are shifting funds away from science-based sex education to "abstinence-only" sex-ed programs. A March 2006 Government Accountability Office report showed that restrictions on AIDS prevention funding in the original legislation for the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief—restrictions imposed by the Republicans at the demand of the anti-condom Christian Right—were undermining AIDS education and prevention.” There is something equally horrifying and something that I do hope that Jenna Bush can address with her father. It concerns the Congolese children who are being used as sex slaves so you will see; abstinence is not an option for these children. In fact, I would like to know where the religious right within this country is to help these children. It makes my blood boil knowing that children as young as three years old are being used as sex slaves and without condoms, but gun barrels shoved up their vaginas as a form of torture. Where is the hope that Jenna Bush speaks of for these children? I became aware of these children through an article written by Jan Goodwin for The Nation Magazine. Her piece “Silence=Rape” made me want to cry out and ask where is their liberation as President Bush stated he wished to do for the Iraqi people. If there were ever a war that I could get behind it would be to come to the aid of these innocent children. That would be truly a moral and just war. It would be about saving children and not killing them as we have done in Iraq. In my piece, The Congo: The Hidden Terror That is Not Our Top Priority, I want you to pay close attention to this passage as it pertains to AIDS, “The Bush administration sold us all a bill of goods when it came to Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, yet there is a provable weapon of mass destruction in the Congo as you read this, “In the Congo, rape is a cheaper weapon of war than bullets. Experts estimate that some 60 percent of all combatants in the DRC are infected with HIV/AIDS.” In the case of HIV/AIDS, it is not a weapon that kills instantly but does so over a great amount of time and if the victim has no access to medications most likely wished they died instantly. Well that is occurring in the Congo.” Please sit with that a while as Jenna Bush speaks of hope for her single mother. This is happening to innocent children and the world remains silent. Wouldn’t you call this terrorism, yet it does not register on what we say is the war on terror. Perhaps if we committed ourselves as a nation to help children like this it would go a long way to repair our image within the world community. As we speak of the surge in troops that have started heading to Iraq this is what Jan Goodwin wrote, “UN officers admit they have nowhere near the numbers they need to be effective,” This is where I do feel that Jenna Bush should have a conversation with her father if he truly believes in leaving no child behind. The plight of these children is not our top priority as one reads the accounts coming from Van Woudenberg, the Congo specialist for Human Rights Watch. At one point he approached our U.S. Mission and State Department to bring forth his concerns for these children and the bile in my throat rose when I initially read it. Woudenberg stated that he “tried to raise the issue with the US Mission to the UN in New York, and they told me fairly point-blank that they were aware rape was going on in the Congo, and it was just not high on their priorities…I had a similar response from the US State Department." Are you feeling the rage yet? I know that I did when I initially read it and it is still occurring today. We have had wall-to-wall coverage on non-stories such as the Anna Nicole Smith death, Britney Spears shaving her head as of late and one must hear the cries of Jan Goodwin when she stated of this crisis, “Yet where is the international media coverage? The outrage? The demand for justice?” I too would like to know. I would love to see wall-to-wall coverage of this story so that Americans can know of the plight of these children and their government’s own inactions to lift a finger to help them. They after all need liberation from those that are terrorizing them. When people like Ann Coulter will say of liberals that we are ‘Godless’ people, well this liberal here has been screaming out on behalf of these innocent children. Where is your voice, Ann? This is a real life and death issue. I also want to know where President Bush’s voice is as well. I want to know where the voice of the United States government is in order to help these children. In closing, please address the plight of the Congolese children, Jenna Bush. Please hear the words of Jan Goodwin who wrote, “For the sake of 6-year-old Shashir and tens of thousands of girls and women who have been infected with HIV/AIDS, forcibly impregnated or so badly damaged internally they will never be able to have children, and who are so psychologically traumatized they may never recover” When I did read those words my thoughts were that these children are victims of terror but did not die in an instant as ours did on 9/11. They are the walking and living victims of terrorism. If you can call how they are forced to live truly living. They are truly the walking dead since many will succumb to the pandemic known as AIDS. If this piece has enraged you, then all I ask is that you contact your elected officials in Washington, D.C. asking they do something about this. Author’s note: Please feel free to email me concerning not only this article but the others written by me at this address: xmjmac@optonline.net
http://www.marymacelveen.com I am a writer who currently writes pieces for my own blog http://www.marymacelveen.com I have been published by Buzzflash.com, Legitgov.org, TheLiberalPatriot.org and MikeHersh.com. I was a guest on the Jay Diamond Radio Show on WRKO in Boston and have appeared on CNN. I have done numerous web broadcasts for sites such as RadioLeft.com, TVNewsLies.org and FranklySpeakingRadio.com.
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