From suicide bombers in the Middle East to drone operators in the United States, youth-on-youth violence has become epidemic.
The Children’s Crusade
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child soldiers
Kids Are Paying the Price for Yemen’s War
The deliberate targeting of schools has become a flashpoint in the war between Yemen’s rebels and a Saudi-led coalition.
The “Responsibility to Protect” Is Buried in Iraq
After the war in Iraq, is it feasible to invoke the Responsibility to Protect doctrine to protect civilians from ISIS?
Nowhere to be Home
When I was in the army, I thought the guerillas were trying to break my country, to destroy my country—this is how I used to think. Not now, now I’m not the same. I don’t know why people join the military. As for myself, I was forced to be a soldier. If I had stayed with my family, I would not have been a soldier. I think the army takes children because they need to strengthen their forces, increase the number of soldiers. I think there is a reward for each soldier who catches a child. Any time a soldier recruits someone to join the force, they get a lot of money. Older soldiers told me that if they recruit someone, then they can quit the army.
An Open Letter to President Obama, Or Change I believed in
Dear President Obama,
You’re not the man I thought you were.
Most progressives have no problem finding flaws with your first years as President to criticize you about, whether it’s the whittling down of the healthcare bill, decision to ramp up military operations in Afghanistan, failure to close Guantanamo, or deal effectively with Climate Change at Copenhagen.
For me however, it is the moments in which you have an opportunity to make a clear decision, with profound moral implications, and yet choose to act in a way that makes me ashamed to call you my President…
Is Obama a Turkey or an Eagle?
In 1784 Benjamin Franklin played the tongue-in-cheek naturalist and castigated the decision by the Congress of the Confederation to adopt the bald eagle as the symbol of the United States. The bald eagle, Franklin wrote, lives by “Sharping & Robbing,” watching a “diligent” hawk fishing, and then stealing its hard-earned booty. Rejecting this lazy thief, Franklin preferred that the national honor be borne by the proud but prudent (“tho’ a little vain & silly”) wild turkey.
Dance and Child Soldiers
Children in Sierra Leone. Photo Credit: David Alan Harris.