[pluto9]

I'm talking about the men in this article. Both of them were career military officers. It's fair to say that that was their choice.

Certainly there's propaganda that goes into recruiting naive young people in the US, but it's quite a stretch to equate that with child soldiers. I chose to enlist and so did everyone I served with. The vast majority of us do not regret it or feel that we were conned.

[lostlogin]

> Certainly there's propaganda that goes into recruiting naive young people in the US, but it's quite a stretch to equate that with child soldiers.

The US has signed The Convention on the Protection of Children. This agreement defines a child solder as one below the age of 18.

You may not feel conned but it’s not just about you - it’s the places they go, the decisions they make and the population they supposedly protect that should also matter.

[pluto9]

There is little difference in maturity between a 17 year old and an 18 year old, and I would not consider either a child. And 17 year olds cannot be deployed.

But since we're being legalistic, yes, we signed the convention. But we did not ratify it. It is not legally binding on us.

[lostlogin]

> But we did not ratify it. It is not legally binding on us.

Yes, mostly.

“When a state has signed the treaty but not ratified it, it is not yet bound by the treaty's provisions but is already obliged to not act contrary to its purpose.”

[effie]

Why did you enlist, at what age? In retrospective, do you think it made you stronger/more mature? Or was it a money thing?

[pluto9]

I enlisted right out of high school. Did my 4 years and got out.

I think it made me more mature, or at least less naive about certain things...eventually. The experiences were valuable but it took a long time for me to fully reflect on them and extract that value. I was 22 when I got out, barely past being a teenager.

Money wasn't a factor for me. I had 96% of my tuition to a good engineering school paid for by scholarships, which I gave up to enlist. My reasons were a combination of things. I had a lot of friends who enlisted and I felt bad that they were risking their lives and I wasn't. I was also sick of school and saw war as an adventurous alternative, and a way to prove myself as a man. And I genuinely believed in the mission at the time.

I think the influence of money on soldiers going into actual combat is overstated. It's true that there are a lot of people who enlist for a paycheck, vocational training, or as a way to pay for college. But you get to choose your job. I was in the infantry, and pretty much everyone I knew legitimately wanted to fight, which is the only reason to join the infantry. If you're after job security or education benefits, you can be a clerk or a mechanic or a thousand other things that will generally keep you away from enemy fire. There's an idea floating around that the government keeps people poor so it'll have an endless supply of desperate peasants to feed into the meat grinder, but that doesn't hold up in my experience.