12-22-06, 10:05 a.m.

There's a song from the legendary 1960 musical, 'Bye, Bye Birdie,' titled 'Kids,' which laments the peculiar behaviors of kids. It famously ponders, 'Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way? What's the matter with kids today?'

Those telling words were the lyrical musings of adults. And logically so, for the questionable behaviors of kids are a never ending bemusement for adults. Kids are silly. They lack the logic and moral framework from which to make reasoned decisions and act in civil respectable ways. They lack the character building acquired through the process of aging.

But how do the young gain knowledge? Upon what and whom do they model adulthood?

Unfortunately, this is a terrible time for such deliberation. Mature behavior hasn't been modeled much at all this week. Consider the antics of Donald Trump, whose attacks on Rosie O'Donnell should embarrass anyone over the age of twenty-one. Trump proves categorically that financial success can build towers, but it can't build character. He proves that a high school senior can be more adult than a sixty-year-old senior who employs pejoratives like 'fat ass,' and 'low IQ' to character assassinate his opponent.

Donald Trump has had every opportunity to mature. He was a son of privilege with a career through nepotism. But at the age of sixty he acts more juvenile than men forty years his junior. Trump has had sixty years to gather wisdom, aging in the comfort of his capitalist empire. He was never sent to war. He was never thrown into danger or deployed to a horror which made him a killer. But he plays an assassin nonetheless, waging war through nasty names and high priced lawyers.

Waging war may be an ego-game for old man Trump, but it's a harsh reality for many much younger. For those who are serving in Afganistan and Iraq, war is not a game. It's a nightmare. A travesty where young men and women who were not raised to kill are unnecessarily turned into killers. Not one parent whose child goes to war ever raised that child to kill. But in the grips of George W. Bush and his neocon pre-meditated war-games, loving young men and women have become the opposites of how they were raised. Under the dictates of the sixty-year-old Commander-In-Chief, young men and women have become fighting machines. A vocation most wouldn't have chosen had they been privileged like Donald Trump and George Bush.

Take for example the cases of Marines Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, (26), Sgt. Sanick De La Cruz, (24), Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, (22), and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, (25). All face charges of unpremeditated murder in the Iraqi village of Haditha. All were involved in an incident where twenty-four unarmed innocent Iraqis were killed. Sergeant Wuterich is charged with killing six people, two adults and four children. Three of the children were four, six and eleven years old.

Lance Corporal Tatum is charged with negligent homicide in the deaths of four people, including an elderly man in a wheelchair. Lance Corporal Sharratt was charged with three counts of murder. In addition to being charged in six murders, Sergeant Wuterich is also charged with the murders of a taxi driver and four college students, as was Sergeant De La Cruz.

Most likely not one of these young men, or the four Marine Officers also charged in the case, would have ever faced murder charges had they not gone off to war. But now, driven by the stresses and unnatural circumstances of war, all are charged with murder. All face years in confinement. All face lifetimes of guilt. Lives lost. Goals not met. Personal missions unaccomplished.

Their families feel betrayed by the military. They recognize that their loved ones weren't meant to murder. They know that had they remained at home they would likely have lived 'normal' lives, untainted by criminal acts. Their sons weren't capable of killing children. Their sons didn't kill unarmed innocent people. Yet, as a result of this war, there are charges that they did. Whether those charges are true will be known upon completion of the trial. But regardless of the outcome, it is already a fact that the murdered Iraqis and the accused Marines are casualties of war.

While all this real suffering is taking place, Mr. Trump plays his assassin game with his high priced lawyers in his opulent empire, and Mr. Bush plays his assassin game from his big White House in his ruling empire. Interesting, isn't it, how Mr. Trump publicly derides Mr. Bush when in reality they're two peas in an egregiously pernicious pod. They both love to go in for the kill. Trump with his ego and his attorneys. Bush with his ego and his soldiers.

One final thought... for the last two Presidential elections Donald Trump has floated the idea of entering the race. What a travesty that would be! Donald Trump is as vindictive as Bush. Equally self-indulgent. Equally thickheaded and equally thin-skinned. Fortunately Trump doesn't stand a chance. The bizarre level of juvenility of this Rosie episode puts an end to any Trump Presidential aspirations. The sound bytes from the past two days will haunt him for the rest of his life. Rightly so.

Now, enough of these sixty-year-old children. There are more important subjects at hand. Like bringing our troops home from Iraq before more catastrophes like Haditha occur. Or Mahmoudiya, where soldiers have already been convicted of raping and murdering a fourteen year old girl, and killing the rest of her family. It's time to bring the troops home. It's time to impeach and imprison George Bush. And it's time to ignore that silly old man Donald Trump.



-Linda Milazzo is a Los Angeles based writer, educator and activist. Her writing has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines and domestic and international journals. She's a member of CodePink Women For Peace and Progressive Democrats of America.

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