Comments on: "Of 10 governments worldwide implicated in the recruitment or use of children as soldiers, nine receive US military assistance."

"Of 10 governments worldwide implicated in the recruitment or use of children as soldiers, nine receive US military assistance."

chunking express — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:22:26 -0800

"Of 10 governments worldwide implicated in the recruitment or use of children as soldiers, nine receive US military assistance."

By: acro

acro — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:28:19 -0800

If you haven't seen it: Werner Herzog's Ballad of the Little Soldier great post

By: yeloson

yeloson — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:42:02 -0800

How very pro-life.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:42:07 -0800

I haven't seen it but it does sound interesting. HRW reports on this sort of thing all the time, but nothing really seems to come of it.

By: leftcoastbob

leftcoastbob — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:44:22 -0800

I had no idea that we (America) were funding so many countries that used child soldiers. One more thing for us to atone for--not only the funding of this, but our collective ignorance of the situation.

By: ahimsakid

ahimsakid — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:01:38 -0800

While I agree that our funding of child soldiers is something the we in the U.S. should atone for, "our collective ignorance of the situation" is due, in large part, not to our choice to be uninformed but to the actions of those who carefully hide the truth. Yes we should all find out more about what is being done in our name . . . but we should also demand that those who muddy the channels of information with their self-serving and jingoistic crap be held to account.

By: bhouston

bhouston — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:11:25 -0800

Great issue to raise awareness of. It would be nice if it appeared in the NYTimes or Washington Post eventually.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:20:50 -0800

I believe that children are our future. Armed children, that is. Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is a first-person account. (I haven't read the book, but his Daily Show interview was very interesting.)

By: acro

acro — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:22:41 -0800

amnesty international

By: adamrice

adamrice — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:43:18 -0800

So what's so bad about that 10th country that we're not giving them military assistance?

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:26:26 -0800

They have legal abortion.

By: zabuni

zabuni — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:52:54 -0800

In the Q and A, it says: WHAT COUNTRIES MAY BE AFFECTED? Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Congo (Democratic Republic of), Cote d'Ivoire, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda. These countries were identified in the 2006 State Department human rights reports as having child soldiers in government forces or government-linked militias. They also receive at least one form of US military assistance. Now, if we go to the map where these countries are listed, we see for Afganistan and Burundi: Afghanistan Insurgent groups, including the Taliban militias and other armed groups, use child soldiers. No numbers are available. Burundi Hundreds of child soldiers serve in the rebel Forces Nationales pour la libération (FNL), an armed rebel group. So, are we going to suspend military funding from whenever any side in any conflict uses child soldiers, even though we aren't funding said child soldiers? Their ban would even include private manufacture and selling of weapons. Child soldiers are a problem, but to insist that no action in a country be made until all sides in a conflict, even those we don't support, stop using children seems to be a misplacement of priorities.

By: bardic

bardic — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:53:44 -0800

And homosexuals I bet.

By: leftcoastbob

leftcoastbob — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:01:00 -0800

Conscripting 8-year-olds is okay but fetuses and stem cells are off limits.

By: meowzilla

meowzilla — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:28:35 -0800

Perhaps we're giving them assistance because they need it so bad, they have to recruit child soldiers? Our aid doesn't consist of child-sized assault rifles, you know. Our aid is intended to help them enough so they can get out of whatever hole their in, and the actions taken while in that hole may include child soldiers. That's like saying: US Gives Military Aid to Warring Countries US Gives Food Aid to Countries with Starving People US Gives Aid to Crumbling Governments I vote we stop funding these horrible regimes. Obviously, the countries, deprived of military aid, will transform into a modern high-tech first world economy.

By: signal

signal — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:23:38 -0800

Perhaps we're giving them assistance because they need it so bad, they have to recruit child soldiers? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. That's the reason.

By: furtive

furtive — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:37:52 -0800

Here's a paragraph ripped from today's cursor.org:

As U.S. Senators introduce a bill to cut off aid to nations using child soldiers, a U.S. military tribunal prepares to formally try a child "enemy combatant" for murder.

By: furtive

furtive — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:38:19 -0800

doh, the child soldiers link is supposed to go to the main link in the post.

By: acro

acro — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:54:08 -0800

meowzilla, are you saying there isn't legitimate criticism of the institutions of globalization (i.e. IMF, World Bank, WTO, USAID)? ^leaving aside the issue of child soldiers for a moment.

By: meowzilla

meowzilla — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:00:25 -0800

I'm not saying that world organizations and countries should be critical of countries that conduct human rights offenses. What I am saying is that these offenses don't disappear by these organizations just saying "Don't do this." If the governments in question are using child soldiers, they probably have their reasons - all the adults are dead, or have left the country, or are actively resisting the government, or whatever. There are rational reasons for their actions, not because they enjoy abusing people. I hope. We hope that by providing aid, that we can put the country into a situation where the government doesn't need to recruit child soldiers. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It if doesn't work, how exactly does withdrawing this aid help at all? And no government official wants to withdraw aid from countries that obviously need it. In this case, the military aid can be justified (not that I am, I don't know the details) by claiming such equipment increases the effectiveness of that military's government, making it less necessary to employ child soldiers. If we ship them real mine-detection equipment, hopefully that foreign government won't have to rely on kids with knives anymore, right?

By: dreamsign

dreamsign — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:53:59 -0800

meowzilla, wouldn't standard practice be to withhold aid until certain baseline ethical standards are met? It sounds like you're guessing that this aid is somehow targeted at eliminating this problem. I see evidence of that. On the contrary, it would be far from the first time trade or strategic unions were fortified with aid while ignoring egregious human rights violations.

By: dreamsign

dreamsign — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:54:18 -0800

argh. I see NO evidence of that.

By: acro

acro — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:38:03 -0800

The problem I have, extended, this logic gives you the NATO Afghan mission -- militarily bringing aid to people, who are then terrorized for having received it. PBS isn't posting it online Until July, but the part of the episode following a Canadian PRT illustrates the gap between desire to 'help' and how this is implemented.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:56:23 -0800

The Perfect Weapon for the Meanest Wars.

By: acro

acro — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:24:36 -0800

from ce' s link

This charade ended with the cold war. Weak states that had been propped up by foreign aid and outside military assistance quickly collapsed. And Eastern bloc countries that had been cranking out Kalashnikovs for the Soviet Army had to find new markets. Africa, with its unpatrolled skies and endless shorelines, its gold mines and diamond mines and free-flowing cash economies, beckoned. The result, Dr. Reno said, was that the political landscape opened up to well-armed opportunists, no longer inconvenienced by state regulations, state security or moral principles. "When there isn't that big barrier anymore," he said, "all these weird things start to happen." Like the use of child soldiers, who are often drawn into these movements, or kept there, with magic and superstition.

Magic and superstition?