5.2.07
The UK sent seventeen year old soldiers to Iraq
15 UK soldiers under 18 years of age were sent to fight in Iraq since 2003, despite the ratification by the UK of the UN protocol on children soldiers, UK defence minsitry admitted yesterday. The admission came as an answer to a question from a Lib Dem in the parliament. The soldiers were 17 years old, among them 4 girls.
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Since March 29th 2006
3 comments:
Poor soldiers ...
Have you read Timothy Findley's The Wars, Sophia?
No Naj. I have a pile of books to read for my work right now but I will try to have a look at this one. I find this really shocking. I mean my son is 17, I can't imagine him in Iraq. And this comes from a country whose leader only opens his mouth to boast about his country,s and the west,s values over the values of the rest of the world...Sickening
As a matter of fact, I remember a lot of child soldiers volunteered to go to war during the Iran Iraq war. there was one 13 years old boy "Hossein Fahmideh" who became the icon of "national resistance" when he thre himself under and Iraqi tank.
The fundamental flaw of our culture, as a global whole, in my opinion, is the honor we give to the act of "fighting". We honor people who "fight" cancer, and when they dies, we announce they lost an x year battle with cancer. We honor our troops, irrespective of the unjust sacrifice we are demanding them to make. Becoming a military man has been traditionally a way of stepping up on the class scale. Even now. And the noblty and royalty has always had a form of military training.
I see the aesthetization of the military the root cause of all peril in the world; and it is not new either.
Think of Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" for example. We hate is so much because the aesthetics of "show of force" crawl under our skin, the rhythm, the harmony, the culture of giving one self up for the greater good.
so perhaps, the blair company can boast about themselves and their dumb ally; in the context of this perverse culture.
Read the Wars, it's small, and it is so touching especially in this day and age. I think every soldier should be made to read it before embarking on any heroic war!
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