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Wednesday, May 04, 2011

When do the Rules Apply?

This is Steven Petrick posting.

Whenever I hear about the use of "child soldiers", my immediate gut response is that the adult leaders are to be killed with no chance of parole.

Making children into "soldiers" (which they are not really as the training mostly consists of handing them a weapon and telling them in essence to kill or be killed) is fine if you are a warlord, but it is not a way to build a country. The majority of them will be so warped from their experiences that they may never be able to recover mentally or morally. The result is a crowd of unrepentant murderers little better (and in a lot of ways worse) than wild animals. They learn that all they want in life can be gained from the barrel of a gun, whether it is someone's food or a woman that is not interested in them or just to be let alone to laze away the day before they use the gun to acquire one of the previous.

But, again, when do the rules apply?

It is one thing when a warlord unleashes child soldiers to appoint himself dictator (or President for Life), or simply "everything locally is mine and anyone that comes in here must pay me for the privilege".

But if the Hutus are killing all Tutsis, men, women, and children, do you not hand a 12-year-old child a weapon to defend himself and your group from an otherwise overwhelming attack? If the kid does not fight, we all die. We risk all I have said before, and yes I know there are some who would choose "we all die rather than I make this immoral choice, my morality means more to me than my own life and the lives of others."

Why does this come up now?

Two reasons basically.

One is the recent movie "Battle: LA" where the aliens were killing everyone (it was implied even babes in strollers, but as can be expected in Hollywood MOST times this was not explicitly shown . . . but the last "Aliens versus Predators" definitely showed a Predator in a hospital creche).

The other is recent world events (and not so recent as drawn from the Rwandan incident).

When the choices are death or survival, are there really any civilian non-combatants? You may want to protect your medical personnel, but if the bad guys will not pay any attention to the Red Cross (or Red Crescent), they will need to be ready to fight as well.

And that may lead to decisions about arming the children.

So, when do the rules apply?

I would not voluntarily allow children to fight in a conflict under normal conditions. It is how I have been trained and socialized all through my life.

But I am always aware that sometimes the rules may no longer apply.