UNICEF says 15,000 child soldiers have fought in the two-year civil war [Katy Migiro/Reuters]
Nick Turse, The Intercept: New Nation. Long War
Hillary Clinton’s State Department Gave South Sudan’s Military a Pass for Its Child Soldiers.
MET A FEW of them in the town of Pibor last year. These battle-tested veterans had just completed two or three years of military service. They told me about the rigors of a soldier’s life, about toting AK-47s, about the circumstances that led them to take up arms. In the United States, not one of these soldiers would have met the age requirements to enlist in the Army. None were older than 16.
Rebel forces in southern Sudan began using child soldiers long before seceding from Sudan in 2011. The United States, on the other hand, passed a law in 2008 that banned providing military assistance to nations that use child soldiers. The law was called the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, or CSPA, but after South Sudan’s independence, the White House issued annual waivers that kept aid flowing to the world’s newest nation despite its use of child soldiers. President Obama stated in 2012 that the waiver that year was in “the national interest of the United States.”
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WNU Editor: The focus of this article is on Hillary Clinton, but it is the White House .... specifically President Obama .... who is the main architect of this policy and its outcome.
2 comments:
Unless your allies are as clean as the wind driven snow, you have no allies?
If you implement such policy do your adversaries have to do the same?
If you implement such a policy do you automatically win or do your chance of winning increase in the short or long term?
I have a solution, but the libs would not like it.
"Unless your allies are as clean as the wind driven snow you have no allies?" Since no one including ourselves are this clean then I think we know the answer to this question.
"If you implement such policy do your adversaries have to do the same." No!! In fact one of the things I've noticed about being an adversary of the United States be it Russia, China, Iran, Syria, the former Iraq government, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or pretty much anyone else who is openly hostile to America means you NEVER have to answer for ANYTHING no matter what. Should you choose to be friendly to America or even duplicitous towards America especially should one choose to be friendly towards America means subjecting oneself to a very large and often hostile microscope. As such, it seems a reasonable course of action for a nation to choose hostility towards the United States in the current environment. Additionally, hostility towards America has been known to lead to concessions from America in an attempt to end the hostility.
If you implement such a policy do you automatically win or do your chances of winning increase the short or long term? Great question. In the short term, it would seem such a policy does not help one's chances and probably undermines their chances especially when one faces utterly ruthlessly adversaries who are far meaner and far more cunning than they are as America does. The world is replete with actors both past, present, and likely future who are far more disreputable, ruthless, and far more cunning than America or it's government have been or ever could be.
As for the long term, it might help to set an example. Perhaps others could be nudged in a similar direction over the long term. Perhaps the Christian biblical teaching "be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" has something like this in mind. Since no serious power has ever attempted such a policy, I'm not sure if this can be answered definitively.
As to whether or not this "automatically" means one would win, the answer to this would have to be a resounding no as history is replete with good people who have lost.
"I have a solution but the libs would not like it." I think I know what the "solution" is and you are probably correct in assessing that the libs would not like it.
With all of this said one should definitely strive to do what is right at all times and should understand that they are not in the same situation others are in nor is anyone including oneself perfect.
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