That is an answer to your question as to whether there is a context where child soldiers are appropriate. I gave you one where, in my opinion, it is. In that context, anyone who can fight, does.
The critical support part of the post just explained that cheering for the Houthi’s stopping Israel or US boats to Israel doesn’t mean cheering for their child soldiers. When you cheer for the US giving aid to some poor country, let say it’s WW2 and they’re fighting the Nazis, I’m not going to say “ya, but they are super racist and sexist and LGBTQ people have no rights and there is a large pro-Nazi movement in the US right now just that filled up Madison Square Garden and they interned the Japanese…” because while all that stuff is true, I would still say critical support to the US in their fight against the Nazis, because Nazis are bad, even worse now I’d say. It doesn’t mean I support all of the US as an imperial project or all those horrible things that are official US policy, but in this fight or with another specific policy, etc, they’re doing the right thing and we support them in their effort to do that thing.
As for my last paragraph, I wasn’t saying that using child soldiers is good or “acceptable”, but I’m saying the possible context of how that could’ve happened. Just like you don’t say it’s good if a gang member kills a random civilian, but adding context to how gang membership increases in bad neighborhoods through a combination of poverty, systemic racism, white flight, underdevelopment from neoliberal policies, poor education funding, easy to get guns, etc and that can cause these kinds of problems. It doesn’t excuse the individual doing the crime, but it helps show the real problems at the root of the issue, and explains the outside forces that we may have control over that can actually solve the problem from the root, and separates it from the symptoms which we may not have control over.
I also just thought it was an interesting history that I was hoping I could encourage people to look into more, but maybe I did it kind of awkwardly.
Sorry… did you just ‘whatabout’ with a report on the Houthis recruiting child soldiers who then die on the battlefield?
Also, are you suggesting there is a context in which recruiting child soldiers is acceptable?
If some assholes are coming, and they’re going to murder you and then your kid in cold blood, well… here’s your rifle, kid, it’s this or just die.
That is absolutely not what is happening. Read the article.
That is an answer to your question as to whether there is a context where child soldiers are appropriate. I gave you one where, in my opinion, it is. In that context, anyone who can fight, does.
The defense of Stalingrad?
Nah, I was adding context.
The critical support part of the post just explained that cheering for the Houthi’s stopping Israel or US boats to Israel doesn’t mean cheering for their child soldiers. When you cheer for the US giving aid to some poor country, let say it’s WW2 and they’re fighting the Nazis, I’m not going to say “ya, but they are super racist and sexist and LGBTQ people have no rights and there is a large pro-Nazi movement in the US right now just that filled up Madison Square Garden and they interned the Japanese…” because while all that stuff is true, I would still say critical support to the US in their fight against the Nazis, because Nazis are bad, even worse now I’d say. It doesn’t mean I support all of the US as an imperial project or all those horrible things that are official US policy, but in this fight or with another specific policy, etc, they’re doing the right thing and we support them in their effort to do that thing.
As for my last paragraph, I wasn’t saying that using child soldiers is good or “acceptable”, but I’m saying the possible context of how that could’ve happened. Just like you don’t say it’s good if a gang member kills a random civilian, but adding context to how gang membership increases in bad neighborhoods through a combination of poverty, systemic racism, white flight, underdevelopment from neoliberal policies, poor education funding, easy to get guns, etc and that can cause these kinds of problems. It doesn’t excuse the individual doing the crime, but it helps show the real problems at the root of the issue, and explains the outside forces that we may have control over that can actually solve the problem from the root, and separates it from the symptoms which we may not have control over.
I also just thought it was an interesting history that I was hoping I could encourage people to look into more, but maybe I did it kind of awkwardly.