Children have served as soldiers throughout history. They fought in the American Revolution, the Civil War, and in both world wars. They served as uniformed soldiers, camouflaged insurgents, and even suicide bombers. Indeed, the first U.S. soldier to be killed by hostile fire in the Afghanistan war was shot in ambush by a fourteen-year-old boy.
Does this mean that child soldiers are aggressors? Or are they victims? It is a difficult question with no obvious answer, yet in recent years the acceptable answer among humanitarian organizations and contemporary scholars has been resoundingly the latter. These children are most often seen as especially hideous examples of adult criminal exploitation.
In this provocative book, David M. Rosen argues that this response vastly oversimplifies the child soldier problem. Drawing on three dramatic examples-from Sierra Leone, Palestine, and Eastern Europe during the Holocaust-Rosen vividly illustrates this controversial vi
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No thinking person, no media commentator, no political leader can afford to be without this book-not if they care about the truth and want to understand one of the more awful realities of our time. It will stir you to action on behalf of the world's vulnerable children. -- Phyllis Chesler * author of The New-Anti-Semitism *
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface
1. War and Childhood
2. Fighting for their Lives
3. Fighting for Diamonds
4. Fighting for the Apocalypse
5. The Politics of Age
Notes
Bibliography
Index
