"Blood Diamond"

Last night I watched the movie, “Blood Diamond”, a disturbing account of the diamond trade in West Africa. More compelling than the trade, itself, were the child soldiers of Sierra Leone—children forced to wage a war of devastating cruelty against their own people.

Interesting that two days earlier, in our own Detroit, young gunmen shot seven children in front of a public school.

Blood Diamond: On the face of it, Africa in all of its utter chaos. Beyond it, inner America and its own child soldiers, murdering and maiming on a similar scale.

We watch the movie and are appalled at the brutality of the child soldiers of Africa, like something out of the Dark Ages. But do we think our children are any better? They are the same children—the same senselessness, the same callous disregard for human life. The only difference: our children here in the States do it with less coercion.