Toy Soldiers

Who are these young people whose blood flows red on sands a world away? They are the innocents. The boy who cut my lawn, the freckled kid who sold Girl Scout Cookies, the child earning legal entrance into our country. And they are also mothers, fathers and children- just like us and whose greatest difference is simply language.

But who are these teens [thrust harshly into adulthood] to the men who glory in battles and victories? Exercises in power and the profitable spoils of war. They are the abstract. The numbers. They are the not-privileged-children. Named coldly: collateral damage. They are the throw-aways...at least to them, the war mongers, the blood-excited men who play at war. The grown children who callously engage in this gruesome game of "toy soldiers".