-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Do It for the Children Sometimes It Takes a Child to Raze a Village The night of the living dead. By Ralph Peters, a former U.S. Army officer and the author of "Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?" (Stackpole, 1999). Last week a minor terrorist raid in Thailand made headlines. Twelve-year-old twins, armed, dangerous and photogenic, with Che Guevara haircuts and cigars, guided adult tribesman who were convinced the boys had supernatural powers. The cause of the oppressed Karen people of Burma got a passing mention, but the cute kids with guns were the story's hook. Journalists wrote it as a freak event and missed the global story. The child warrior has always been with us. Enshrined in our own culture, from David through Joan of Arc, the underage killer with a cause is presently out of fashion in the West. Elsewhere, he is back with a vengeance. The kid with the Kalashnikov swells the ranks of combatants, forcing hard choices on peacekeeping troops unsure of how to confront these small, yet deadly, adversaries. The world has utterly failed to address this problem. The truth, perceived by Burma's warlords around the world, is that children make splendid killers. Few children have the skill or strength of professional soldiers. But what kids lack in finesse, they make up in savagery. With no sense of mortality--theirs or a victim's--they pull the trigger quickly. War is a game, more habit-forming than any played on a computer screen. Rewards and punishments are quick, vivid and empowering. A child will charge while grown men cower. Some break to bits, but many love their work. Good hearts refuse to be convinced of child barbarity. Educated Americans see children as reflections of their own idealized offspring, regarding the remorseless little butchers who massacre their fellow high-school students as inexplicable aberrations. Our wealth and peace and laws restrain most violent impulses in our young. But where there is no peace or rule of law, where poverty is too kind a word for daily life, violence is tangibly rewarding and psychologically redemptive. The man or boy with the gun takes what he wants, when he wants. Killing is a greater thrill than drugs. The 1990s were a boom decade for child warriors. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, in Colombia, Somalia and Afghanistan, insurgent or ruling forces employed child warriors. Sometimes they make up special shock battalions, while at other times they are integrated in adult units, or used as tools of terror. A cause or faith, crudely understood, may help inspire the child to kill. Elsewhere, children are kidnapped, beaten or raped until they cooperate. Even when conflicts ends, child warriors do not disappear. A 20-year-old who has fought for a decade will not rush to trade his rifle for a schoolbook--even if a schoolbook is available. Like many adult warriors, child killers have no marketable peacetime skills--even if there is a local market. The end of the conflict means the end of the good times. Peace is not a bargain for the warrior of any age, and many turn to crime. We fool ourselves that everyone wants peace and that all killers can be reformed. Redemption is crucial to Western cultural traditions, and we cannot imagine that all these children cannot be saved. Yet some child warriors will never become law-abiding adults. They have been broken in ways that cannot be mended. The best approach is to prevent, with fierce rigor, the use of child soldiers in the first place. Unfortunately, the solutions proposed to date range from the impractical to the silly. Among the most ludicrous is an international initiative to outlaw child warriors, a rule that would only be honored in law-abiding countries where child warriors do not exist. The treaty would ban 17-year-old recruits from the U.S. armed forces, but have no power to take the grenade from the hand of the 11-year-old in a broken state. We do need international conventions, but they must have teeth and should focus on authentic problems. Those who exploit children during conflicts must be treated as international criminals, not courted for convenience as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently did with the rebel leaders in Sierra Leone. Warlords who arm children must live under real threat of apprehension and punishment. While idealists dream, our soldiers fight. Increasingly, peacekeeping missions face child warriors. How do you convince well-educated, well-fed, well-protected, well-meaning activists with no firsthand experience of violence that some of these children with guns will have to be killed in self-defense? The challenge is especially great for the U.S. military. Our soldiers are not trained to fire on children. It is a cultural and institutional taboo. When a soldier makes the correct decision--shooting the kid with his finger on the trigger--the problem compounds. A photographer will be on hand, and no matter what the circumstances, the child's broken form will show up on front pages, and the soldier will be blamed. The burden on our troops will be pernicious. We need a global crusade against the use of children in war, not an occasional headline when the world seems dull. But that crusade cannot idealize killers of any age, even if they look adorable in photographs. Blind faith in the innocence of children will only speed the ruin of that innocence. The Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2000 Transnationalism European Union Threatens Austria NATO and Russia to begin bombing in 5 minutes. THE European Commission was in turmoil yesterday as criticism mounted over the European Union's threats against Austria. Officials were forced to admit that there was no legal basis under EU law to exclude the far-Right Freedom Party of J�rg Haider from the coalition government in Vienna. Having repeatedly said that it would not be appropriate "to meddle in the internal affairs of a member state", the commission is scrambling to find a policy that reconciles the demands of the EU's 14 other member governments - which acted on their own initiative under the prodding of President Chirac - with the limitations of EU law. A commission official said: "We're not seeking to influence the formation of the Austrian government. These policies are designed to shape the programme of the government once it is in power. Then every dot and comma will be scrutinised to see whether its actions are consistent with treaties." Romano Prodi, the commission president, emerged briefly after an emergency meeting yesterday to say - in English, French and Italian - that there was no difference of opinion between Brussels and the member states. He went on to say that the commission was "maintaining its working relations with the Austrian authorities". Mr Prodi is having to walk a tightrope. Any suggestion that the Austrian crisis is disrupting EU business risks sending the euro further down as investors increasingly doubt the political underpinnings of monetary union. It fell to $0.9665 at one stage yesterday. The Amsterdam Treaty permits the EU to suspend the voting rights of any member state in "serious and persistent breach" of human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law. It does not authorise pre-emptive measures to stop the formation of a government that might violate these principles. Ricardo Levi, Mr Prodi's spokesman, said: "Nobody is saying that Austria is a fascist country. "No one can point to any breach of fundamental rights in Austria, and no one can say that the elections in Austria have been anything but democratic." Officials acknowledged that the threat of political sanctions against Austria, which was conveyed by the Portuguese presidency of the EU as if it were a decision by the Council of Ministers, has no constitutional standing. "This was not a council decision," said Mr Levi, meaning that it was merely a collective act by like-minded governments acting outside the institutional structure of the EU, and, as such, did not give the commission the authority to act. As the executive arm of the EU, "guardian of the treaties of European Union", it can respond only when a violation is brought to its attention. Political figures across the ideological spectrum have questioned the unprecedented threats against Austria, saying that they are an over-reaction serving only to radicalise the far Right and carelessly setting the precedent that the EU member governments are subject to the approval of Brussels. Karl Lamers, foreign policy spokesman for the German Christian Democratic Union, said: "It plays into the hands of J�rg Haider. A role in government would offer the chance to break his spell as a Right-wing populist and a media phenomenon." The move by the EU's majority of socialist governments to try to stop a Right-wing party with 28 per cent of the popular vote from participating in office has profound implications. Timothy Kirkhope, the Tory chief whip in the European Parliament, said: "A lot of European governments have coalitions with unsavoury types. Proportional representation causes it to happen. But it doesn't mean that the EU can overrule the right of democratic choice. I don't like fascists, but I don't like communists either, and there are communists in the Italian government. What are we going to do about that?" The London Telegraph, February 2, 2000 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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