<em>Children at War</em>

I was assigned Children at War by P.W. Singer for a class in October and did not expect to get into it. Yeah, poor little kids, fighting wars in Africa. Life sucks. How many of us are capable of reacting much differently? Our ability to care about problems in Africa is greatly surpassed by our ignorance of the continent.

Therefore, I was rather surprised at an engaging account of how children are forced into these conflicts, what it does to them, and the difficulties in stemming the tide. I was immediately drawn in when Singer discussed the technological aspects of child soldiers.

Historically, children were considered off limits in combat because they were our future and they could not operate weapons. Kids with clubs? Kids with bows? Swords? Muskets even? AK-47s? Yeah. Out of all of those, it was the automatic weapon that allowed kids to become soldiers. They can use guns.

Kids also have the advantage of not requiring money to fight. You want to draft adults into your militia? It is far easy to convince/coerce/force kids to fight for your cause than other adults. They are cheap. In areas with a lot of child soldiers, they are also plentiful. If they weren't, those areas wouldn't be known for child soldiers... This is circular logic, but true.

Many of the children have only known difficulty. They have suffered incredible pain and may not have any family. If they do have family, once they have been involved with a militia, they may be ashamed to return to the family because they have participated in atrocities. Despite the fact that they were forced or tricked into it, we all know how easy it is to make children blame themselves for actions that they should not be held responsible for (because there are countless movies that dwell on it, not because I am a sicko).

The problem itself is circular. Recently, I seem to remember reading that the Bush Administration has loosened restrictions on immigration for those who participated in such atrocities when they were forced to do it. This is difficult to ascertain, but we cannot refuse refuge to those who have been forced to commit atrocities.

This is a step forward, but the U.S. hasn't even started baby steps toward solving this problem. While the U.S. likes to claim it gives more foreign aid than any other government, it gives less as a percentage of GDP (measure of economic productivity) than any other industrialized country. Even then, the "aid" that we give is designed to benefit us as well. 70% of U.S. aid is spent on U.S. goods and services. Hardly the altruistic leader of the world.

The book was an eye opener. If you want to understand this problem, check it out. As with many problems, the solution often lies with education and development. The solutions are there, but it mostly means we have to act less selfishly and have compassion for others.