Child soldiers in America?

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I think it's a great idea.
There should be a mental aptitude and practical skills test passed among the youth of America at a certain age along with a physical fitness test. Those who pass should be free to go, and those who fail should be required to serve in a specialized corps of child warriors. Not only would this serve the practical purpose of rendering enemy forces incompetent and confused, but it would also help to root out the stupid and weak among American children, allowing only the strong and clever to survive.
It would also help harden the survivors to the realities of life: you wouldn't believe how tough some children in this nation think they have it, when in reality they haven't seen tough. They've never had to live as a child in Somalia or Rwanda. They've never been subjected to a mortar or had a leg amputated. People piss and pout and think that having been called "bad names" in elementary school is some kind of horrible form of harrassment, and people get sued and lose their jobs over relatively minor things like voting a child out of their class because the other students can't stand their inappropriate antics. I can tell you right now that things would be extremely different if that child knew he would have been required to sit up straight and pay attention or else put his life on the line.

Sadly, would we really want children indoctrinated by whomever would run that army?

It's one thing when a society needs every person doing their part and it's a necessity (like in many 3rd world nations), but in 1st world nations, the military can be a dangerous source of indoctrination of the culture.

Think of the proposed Obama Corps he wants kids in.

Child soldiers are hardly a neccessity, so much as a cynical attempt by an ill-disciplined military to indoctrinate and corrupt the easily corruptible to their way of thinking, whilst creating a completely loyal and completely expendable source of manpower. Rarely is it a matter of society calling on every member to help. Children are the soft underbelly of any society, and can easily be trained as ersatz secret police (informing on friends and family with callous disregard), and an almost guaranteed source of loyalists for any cause you care to mention. Its a pretty standard practice in sub-saharan africa, and child soldiers are some of the most terrifying troops to face because they are completely immoral and totally unpredictable.. but they are not a neccessity, and certainly not excusable.

So those who might make competent soldiers don't get conscripted, but only those who are not bright enough or not fit enough?


Don't see how it would do that unless you interpret reluctance to kill children as a sign of incompetence and confusion.


Do you mean because you never send the strong and clever into battle? Then how can they be an effective fighting force? Or do you believe that the strong and clever are more likely to survive wars? That is not true: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16297-intelligent-soldiers-most-likely-to-die-in-battle.html


There is the alternative of trying to arrange the realities of life not so that those who are well off suffer more, but so that those who are badly off suffer less. Just a thought.


There are countries where you can live as you seem to want to. Somalia and Sudan come to mind, but there are others. Do you live in one of those countries? No, I see it's Florida. Full of soft-headed liberals who believe that there should be a constitution that protects a set of rights that people have. I think you should leave this place. It's not good for you. Too soft.

Incidentally, have you ever read or listened to an interview with a former child soldier? I have, and I didn't get the impression that the experience was good for them or for the countries they live in.

I certainly would.


I can't believe you just implied that cultural indoctrination is a bad thing.



Unfortunately I think you might be basing your opinions too heavily on sensationalist conspiracy theories. Even from what I've seen on the some of the web sites that suggest the idea of a volunteer corps under Obama, it is not specifically an "Obama Corps," and the quotes they cite don't make it sound that different from other youth organizations like the boy scouts.
Now, I would love it if there were some kind of early training program as a gateway for children to enter work in the public sector that were actually effective, but that seems unlikely. I especially do believe that there should be a junior military training program to help produce a youth corps of American soldiers, but unfortunately I think this is very unlikely, especially under Obama, who has to more careful since any other president in history to protect his reputation with all the hate-mongering from political enemies.

The idea is for children who have proven themselves to be failures, or those who are undisciplined or misbehave to be given a second chance to prove themselves in a better way, and to root out those who don't deserve to live to the age of majority.


Reluctance to kill children is a sign of incompetence and confusion. Reluctance to kill children is a sign of cowardice and weakness.


Adults would be their officers and would lay out their orders, and if a child soldier proved him or herself more competent than thought they would be promoted, and if they survived past a certain age could even be promoted to officer level themselves, allowing them to build a more effective fighting force. Those under the officers would obviously be disposable, but I believe I've already explained effectiveness in terms of the psychological effects of such a plan.


Making life easier for everyone would cause a lot of people to go soft, rendering even more young men and women unfit to survive anywhere outside of their own cushy little air-conditioned schools and homes, and it will certainly not prepare them to get a job and seek their fortunes when older, nor will it prepare them to survive if something goes wrong and they need to fend for themselves.


Really? I did. In every picture of or interview with a child soldier they are one thing that most of the fat and incompetent children of the US and EU are not: they are hardened and toughened considerably, more aware of their surroundings and less prone to stumbling through a constant haze of hedonism and uselessness. Sure, there should be time for play, but what is most important is to work and fight first. Only after a person has proven themself truly worthy should they be allowed to taste the comforts of life.

You guys are taking this seriously??

I don't know about you, but I sure am.

Yupa, before attempting to argue with your points in detail, I should point out that child soldiers are against international law.

This sounds like the Spartan agage. Turning the U.S. into Sparta is a very bad idea both practically and in principle. Sparta made Stalinist Russia look positively liberal. And besides, it would not work in the U.S.

ruveyn

That’s a very interesting description of people who spend their R&R time raping their sex slaves, carry out gruesome acts on the live and dead bodies of their enemies for fun, all while living in a drug induced haze. In fact it’s an interesting description of anyone who lives life in a drug induced haze regardless what they do with their time.

Why does this sound familiar?


...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpfvH_U5AhQ[/youtube]

This thread is one of the most obvious demonstrations of why I stopped generally participating in this forum. I accept that it is general courtesy not to personally insult any contributor but this OP suggestion is so obviously inane, stupid vile, immoral, vicious, unreal, and in all ways anti-social and idiotic that my only reaction is a general visceral nausea that it should even be contemplated as worthy of consideration.

You forgot to mention "apparently blind to the historical precedents"

Perhaps it sounds a bit like "conspiracy theory" but there is a major distinction between something like Obama Corps and the Boy Scouts of America.

OC is a POLITICAL entity (no matter who "owns" it, it will run to a politicized agenda) and the proposal is to MANDATE a minimum amount of participation. This is a great opportunity for indoctrination of the young into a political agenda, and extreme forms of government (communism/fascism) likes these kinds of entities for the youth.

BSA is also politicized in that they do have an agenda (as any organization has), but there is no compulsory membership or participation. Kids have to want to join and can leave at any time. It's hard to indoctrinate people when they are free to accept or reject, but mostly walk away without consequence.

If we really need kids in a type of "child army" system, it should be locally run and focused on meeting local needs only. Then, if you mandate participation, but there is no state/national agenda setting, you can't "indoctrinate" the nation's youth to a single agenda unless you find a way to get your people to head up ever local chapter in teh nation.

Well, ok, you want weak and stupid children to be soldiers? I think the idea refutes itself. I mean, it sounds like a group where a major number of them will die in boot camp, and another significant number also will die due to friendly fire. This would create morale problems, defection issues, and so on.

Secondly, most developed nations hardly need an army at this point, and the army they do need must be competent. The days of big trenches and masses of soldiers are mostly over. We currently need soldiers who are unlikely to kill people unnecessarily in an urban environment. Weak and stupid children aren't the soldiers we currently need.

Thirdly, reluctance to kill children is not a sign of incompetence, confusion, cowardice or weakness. At most it is a sign of confusion. Additionally, as time goes on, people will just start shooting at the kids. It isn't as if a tactic like that will win a battle outright. Almost nobody will choose to die in exchange for not shooting a kid.

Fourthly, I am not sure that being a child soldier will really be this *great* job preparation. If anything, it is more likely to lead to psychological disorders and anti-social personality tendencies, as they are thrown into a job where they kill people, taken from their families because they are considered weaker, and have their lives thrown away as expendable by the officers they work with.

Fifthly, I really doubt that this kind of situation will really help these matters so much. Parents of these children will rail against this practice along with other people, causing more civil unrest. Not only that, but the self-esteem seeking also really exists a lot with higher achieving children, as parents often watch over that group very closely as well.

Finally, this kind of action will likely cause other nations to view ours negatively, and possibly even reduce trade with our nation. This will likely significantly hurt our economy.

Because of all of these issues, I don't really see the point.