Speculative question about war

Tiassa

Tiassa

Let us not launch the boat ...
Valued Senior Member
At what age, and for what reasons, would you send or allow your children to go off to war?

Under what circumstances would you put a rifle or a molotov in a 15 year-old's hand? How about a 12 year-old?

As an American, the question is difficult for me to answer because I'm having a hard time figuring what all would have gone wrong by that point. The Army shattered? The Navy pulverized? The Air Force shot to hell? Every last Marine dead? The National Guard ...? How many of whom marching down Main Street?

At present, I am unable to answer my own question.
 
Simply, I don't see how an adult could send their children. Surely, it should be the adult going to fight to safeguard the lives of their children?
 
phlogistician said:
Simply, I don't see how an adult could send their children. Surely, it should be the adult going to fight to safeguard the lives of their children?
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I agree but at what point does a child become an adult? Most parents have more than one child so sacrificing themselves in battle for one child will put unfair burdens on the rest of them won't it?

good question tiassa, I don't have an answer either.
 
Americans have had boy soldiers in many wars, especially our biggest (civil) one. It is in some circles illustrious to have lied about one's age in order to join the warriors before legal age. Since we have many children conditioned by entertainment to kill, all we need is a more angry nationalism, and/or civil disorder to unleash them. This is to me one of the great American hypocricies, that we look down on the "barbarity" of peoples in much more stressed and hopeless circumstances than our own, hardly considering how we ourselves would behave, even with our supposedly unique "family values" intact, in identical situations. When would American pre-adolescents go toting around infantry weapons? In the identical circumstances in which they do so "out there" in the "3rd World".
 
I would think that your children should choose what they should want to do instead of you telling them what to do after they reach 18 years of age.
 
tiassa,

You mind if I move this to philosophy or Ethics, Morality, & Justice subforums?

the standard age is 18, I can go with that.
 
Sure. I'll take it. I think I had swirling notions of DRC and Sierra Leone and such when I put it here. You know how it goes: international must mean World Events, or something silly like that.

:cool:
 
It's o-kkk with me?! (I couldn't think of a title.)

When would American pre-adolescents go toting around infantry weapons? In the identical circumstances in which they do so "out there" in the "3rd World".
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I've seen it in America outside the third world. Well, okay, in the American South, so to speak. So, yeah, I guess it was the third world. ;)

The tots look so cute with their assault rifles, but they can't aim properly because the white hoods keep falling in their eyes.
 
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Well taking a cue from Liberia I'd have to say that they're ready to fight as soon as they're old enough to operate an AK-47, so probably around 8 years old. One thing I wouldn't do, however is make them take speed or cocaine or any other sort of upper beforehand, it really throws off their aim if they can't stop shaking.
 
I'll be searching for a transcript later. MSNBC--I think--just had a section on the "war camps" in Palestine. 8 year-olds and such. Rather quite interesting.
 
Yah, I just seen that on CNN. About children in war, it is really a modern phenomenon that they haven’t been involved in war. In modern societies children are regarded with much respect, because we understand that collectively they are our future. But in societies that have been largely corrupted by violence/ “backwardness”/ or both, children are merely another asset. Here in the developed world children are seen as the future in the sense that they will go and work, and help us out when we get old. In societies where you have no peaceful future, in which the future is war. It is somewhat understandable (but I am not being an apoplectic here) why children would be geared towards war. Their future is death, war, and poverty. Sadly their indoctrination with violence creates that deadly self-perpetuating violence that has no end.
 
SpuMoose, Undecided pointed out that children NOT going to war is modern.

And sending my child to war. If I lived during war time, the child would be a part of war and the war would be a part of its upbringing. It's just a part of the enivorenment, and obviously they would have to take part in one way or another. By repelling invaders, or running supplies or messages. I don't see much wrong with that.
 
oopse. Oh well, those wacky children and their crusades are entertaining none the less. Sorry, Undecided!
 
"As an American, the question is difficult for me to answer because I'm having a hard time figuring what all would have gone wrong by that point. The Army shattered? The Navy pulverized? The Air Force shot to hell? Every last Marine dead? The National Guard ...? How many of whom marching down Main Street?

At present, I am unable to answer my own question. "

America would resort to it's nuclear arsenal before things got that desperate.
 
tiassa said:
At what age, and for what reasons, would you send or allow your children to go off to war?
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Assuming they are under 18, I’d allow it only if their participation were truly necessary to give an excellent chance of freedom in a defensive war in which better options had failed or won’t work. An example would be the Vietcong children. Although the Vietnamese may have been deluded about their chances for real freedom, including their children in the fight may have turned the tide against the enemy.
 
In seriousness I find it hard to ever justify sending off any literal child into war. I could only imagine approving of something like that in the extremist of situations. . . like if America were invaded by China and they were determined to clear the continent out through genocide and every person who could hold a gun was needed to fight 'em back off. Otherwise I say let someone live until at least 18 before sending them off to die.
 
Allow me to further make it clear that, as somebody who has led men and women in combat, the notion that children would be more of a help than a hindrance is retarded. Hell, some of the 17-18 year old enlistees we get are hard enough to train.

If it ever got to the point where a few prepubescent riflemen were any sort of substantive asset, our professional military would already be in a nonfunctional shambles.
 
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