More on child soldiers. (Readers Forum).

I wholeheartedly disagree with the conclusions drawn at the Marine Corps CETO meeting about child soldiers (December 2002, p.18). The article states that commanders often give kids addictive drugs to weaken their inhibition, that U.S. forces should use non-lethal weapons and psychological operations to convince child soldiers to stop fighting. What good is psychological warfare on anyone in a drug-induced stare? Or trained from birth to hate U.S. citizens? The CETO folks have forgotten the lessons we learned in Vietnam: if a U.S. soldier is shot and killed by a weapon, it makes no difference if the weapon operator is 14 or 41. The soldier is still just as wounded or dead.

You can't just take the weapon out of these children's hands, pat them on the head and tell them to go home and play. They'll come back to blow the hand off of the soldier who patted him on the head. We, in the "civilized" societies, frown on the misuse of children. And the hesitation has killed or wounded more than one soldier.

The leaders of child armies know how we feel about children, and will continue to use that knowledge to kill or wound our soldiers. The solution: use non-lethal force when possible to disable the children, then capture and treat them as you would any other POW. Don't make the mistake of treating them as innocents, because they are not. They know what dead is. I guarantee you, the child will take you out when given the opportunity.

Gene Vajgrt

IRVINGTON, ALA.