If this doesnt blow your mind your not human. US soilder killing a 10 yr old in self

Great Debates
61

From the linked article:

It seems clear to me that the idea was that the child was retrieving the ordnance to make it available for an adult fighter to then use against the coalition forces. Not that the child was going to kneel, aim, and fire.

Further, nothing in the linked article suggested that the RPG was anything other than a ready-to-fire grenade-loaded-in-launcher. Got a cite for your contention that it was just a loose grenade?

It’s immaterial in any event; for all the soldiers knew, the kids’ uncle was in the alleyway with an empty launcher on standby.

-AmbushBug

62

You don’t give 10 year olds much credit. Or at least not Iraqi 10 year olds. How complex do you think it would be? I may be corrected by some military types here, but I don’t think there would be more than 5 or so steps to loading and firing one. These weapons are known for their simplicity. I bet it’s a lot easier than making Optimus Prime into a truck.

63

DTC, I should point out that you seem to be mistaking ‘ammunition for a RPG’ with an RPG. IIRC, these beasts tend to be unitary, and in fact, many are single-use.

I admit, the wording is ambigous in the article, but “sprinting for safety with an RPG in his arms” seems to suggest the launcher.

So. Person going for a gun.

64

Funny, i read that one of the top priorities was to dicriminate targets and avoid as much civilian damage as possible. This doesnt seem to coincide with “the infantry is just a guy who points and shoots so what do you expect” concept. Even soldiers have to have some form of responsibility for thier actions. They are required to have some form of morality. To simplify a soldiers duty down to “pointing and shooting” is doing a disservice to the reason why he is there. Im not even saying that what this soldier did was immoral or anything but i disagree with your cut and dry position.

65

Here is my position on shooting a child in this situation. The military had detemined that we would not strike military targets near civilain structures. So if a tank was parked next to a preschool or a mosque it was off limits.EVEN though that tank was just as capable of killing you if not more so than an RPG. IMO that child should have been treated as a preschool. Yes, a danger but one that could be avoided by retreating or going around just as we did with EVERY OTHER piece of military equiptment near sensitive areas. A child is simply off limits and FAR more important than a church which is essentially a pile of bricks. This was NOT an immediate self defence issue and that child should have been treated like a howitzer next to a preschool.

66

You don’t get it at all. Lee loved the military life. He loved the uniforms, the marches, the grand sights, and the brotherhood. He recognized, however, that war is first and foremost violent and vicious combat. He was basically saying that if war wasn’t as horrible on the surface, it would lead to much, much more horros below that.

I have a similar opinion about modern war. I find a primal joy in the selective application of technology, traingin, and plannign to execute an incredibly complex and yet graceful compaign. And I, too, admit it is far best for war to be so terrible, else we would do it so much more.

[quoteThe military had detemined that we would not strike military targets near civilain structures.[/quote]

Not true; we came up with weapons to allow us to do just that.

Regardless, your idea is foolishness. Kids can and have killed before. The Nazi’s used them extensively, and got a quite a lot of them killed. That kid was stupid and on the wrong side at the wrong time, yes. BUt he was also an enemy combatant. He chose it, not us. He wanted to grab a high powered weapon right after we sht the guy who’d had it. He made the choice, and his death is not on our hands. If children are going to try and be soldiers, then they must be treated as such.

67

He wasn’t grabbing a “spare grenade”. RPGs are single units that are meant to be used once. They don’t reload, they don’t have ammo and a launcher. They are a single unit - if you pick up an RPG, you’re picking up a ready-to-fire weapon.

They’re not grenades or grenade launchers in the sense you’d think. The term “grenade” applied to them probably came from an English translation of the Russian translation of the German “granate”, which literally translates to grenade (I believe), but in practice, referred to all sorts of launched projectiles, such as tank rounds.

In any case, they’re a single use HEAT (high explosive antitank) warhead propelled by a rocket. Their designed function is to kill vehicles - upon contact with a hard surface, a shaped charge turns the point of contact into plasma which is then propelled inward into the target. The first “RPG” was the German panzerfaust 30, and very little has changed in the basic design.

At some point (well, specifically the panzerfaust 100, I believe), they began designing and building these anti-vehicle warheads to have an “antipersonnel collar” on the outside of the shaped charge, both to increase terminal effectiveness in some cases (such as riders on a tank), or to be able to be used as a last-ditch weapon against enemy personel. The latter role has become more prominent recently, it would seem, but it wasn’t the design purpose. It functions well enough, though.

Modern RPGs aren’t effective against modern tanks because tank armor has increased faster than HEAT technology. You can slap heavier armor on a tank with a bigger engine, but RPG technology will always be limited by what someone can carry on their back. They’re still very effective for use against lighter vehicles, and so far, they’ve scored kills on several Bradley IFVs.

Anyway, that was entirely too long an explanation for this thread, but once I get started… well, I hope that clears that up at least a bit.

68

Easy there, Sam.

He wasn’t trying to push an anti-war agenda as far as I can tell. He just said he wanted to see honesty - to show the bad, the costs of war, as well as the good, rather than disproportionately showing happy liberated people, or whatever.

He said he’d like to see: “What we have done is horrible, but to have done nothing would have been worse.”, while implies he acknowledges nothing would’ve lead to worse things, he just seems to advocate being more open and truthful about war, instead of covering up the icky parts.

69

I think the sentiment was that war will always be a destructive thing. It will cost resources, lives, etc. And so it should be avoided. However, he thinks that the actual horrors of the surface of war, beyond the at least somewhat abstract concept of wasted resources, but flayed limbs, dead children, etc. will more help to discourage it.

In other words, war could be less horrible, in the flayed limbs, dead children sort of way, but it’d still be fundamentally destructive to society as a whole, hence, it’s good that it’s very negative on the surface, lest it, a destructive process, by undertaken more often.

70

I must respectfully disagree with you here. A 10 yr old has NO concept of consequences of his own actions. Thats why we call them CHILDREN and not short adults. Thats why we dont imprision nor capital punish them. A 10 year old has no concept that doing what dad tells him to will result in his very permenant death. A 10 year old doesnt even have a full understanding of what death even IS, let alone being held responsible for his actions. Its obviously clear that the parents had very poor judgement but thats WHY we are there. People are in the army and government there all supporting a corrupt regime. So WE need to have better judgement than even the parents of the children. I think that child could be alive today, the regime would have still fallen and nothing militarily would have been lost.

71

I find the excuse that he was taking the RPG to someone else to be an exceedingly weak excuse to kill a little kid. To call the kid an “enemy combatant” is even more ridiculous.

72

jonpluc said:

the bolding emphasis mine to make the following point:

Please, indeed I challenge you, to identify where in my post I stated that an infantryman’s job was just “points and shoots”. I stated that his job is to point his weapon down range and engage the enemy and kill him. Civilians are not enemy, thereby it is a given that his job is not to indiscriminately kill people.

I would like you to identify exactly where your quoted remarks were made by me, and failing to do so (as you will) apologize for attempting to attribute a false quote to me in order to suit your point of view. Bad form jonpluc, at least attempt to adhere to some forms of honesty.
Monty said:

Please show me where in the article it stated they were having “fantasies” about how “cool” it would be to get to kill someone? I think that is reading a GREAT DEAL into the article instead of what it actually said. You may not like it but it is not uncommon within the infantry and other combat forces to, although not wanting war per se, have the desire to be put into the fire and validate their training. By the nature of their mission, and training, that involves killing people (see # 1). It is very different than having “fantasies” of being “cool”.

Finally, Diogenes the Cynic offered the following:

1.) An RPG round can be detonated without the launcher, specifically by throwing the round. The most common round detonates based upon impact with the tip. The “charge” which propels the rocket also activates the detonation device in the tip and can be engaged manually without the launcher.

2.) An RPG round can be carried to an individual with a launcher and later used against coalition forces. Ammo bearers are legitimate targets, regardless of age.

3.) Your premise that 10-year olds are incapable of combat is beyond laughable. We’ve seen them used in this war, we’ve seen them used in almost all past conflicts, and we’ve seen Islamic fundamentalists on the t.v. and newspapers arming children with AK-47s and the like. Although I may agree that the children in question may not be fully aware of the implications of their actions - their actions nonetheless can endanger the lives of a solider and therefore, regretably, may require the actions taken by this soldier.

Before you twist my words to fit an accusation that I am callous to the death of a child (do it for the children!) let me restate clearly that I believe it is a sad thing that happened. I believe the article did an excellent job of pointing out the grief involved in decisions one must make during war. I feel a great sense of sorrow that a culture puts so little value on their children that they would arm them, allow them into a situation where they can be armed, etc. I wish such a situation did not exist, or that this child would have chose differently and had lived a long life, and that the soldier in question would not now have to live with the pain/grief of his decision as a result. It’s a sad, f–ked up situation that sadly happens in war.

MeanJoe

73

Well i DID quote your whole post so there clearly wasnt any intentional effort to misquote you. Apologies for the improper second quote. Do you consider a young child to be the “enemy” if he picks up a gun off the ground?
Like any other child he should be protected from his bad decision not executed for it.If the kid was going for the red button that would light off a nuke then maybe i would understand. If the child had picked up say a 9mm pistol would it have been ok to shoot him then as well? I just dont think an RPG is a big enough deal to execute a kid over. Yes i know they “CAN” be deadly, however RPGs are scattered ALL over the country and TENS of thousands of rounds of them have been launched with “virtually” no casualties. Yes i know there were a few but when a weapon is clearly ineffective 99.99% of the time in this war i say let the child live.

74

Quick hypothetical. I know it’s a gross exaggeration, but it’s to prove a point.

If, for whatever reason, Iraq’s only tactical nuclear weapon were on that street, and a child went to retrieve it so his parents could activate it, would it be equally immoral to kill the child?

If no, why not? Because his actions, if allowed to take them, could lead to the death of US soldiers. The kid doesn’t deserve to be killed, of course. But shit happens. Not killing him could very well lead to the death of the guy who held his fire, and his squadmates.

It’s an exaggeration, yes, but it’s largely analogous. It’s a difference in degree. That RPG, when recovered, could very well have been used to kill US forces. The kid didn’t deserve to die, but the circumstances sucked.

75

Apology accepted, thank you. :smiley:

To your question, yes I consider him to be a potential enemy if he does pick up a gun, RPG, etc. during a conflict. I say ‘potential’ because I do not believe there are clear-cut black/white definitions that can be applied to this situation. I do not see anything in the account in the article that shows me it was not justified, just highly regrettable and sad. We have seen, most recent example Somalia, that children have picked up weapons/ammunition and returned it to combatants for use against U.S. forces. I wish it wasn’t the case, but the U.S. military has learned those lessons the hard way.

Finally, until you are being, or have been fired upon, by an RPG or 9mm pistol, I really do not think your assumption that it is “clearly ineffective 99.99% of the time” is very fair. I get the hee-bee-jee-bees at the idea of a BB Gun being carelessly pointed at me, let alone a rocket propelled grenade. Since it was not my life, and the life of my friends, on the line I prefer not to judge the degree to which that soldier was threatened.

MeanJoe

76

Let’s make it a bit more familiar for you, Dio. Ever hear of “death by cop?” Same situation. Draw on a cop, the cop shoots you. Go for a gun in a warzone, expect to get shot.

77

SenorBeef, your absolutly right that decisions have to be based on risk threat. If the child was pointing a gun at me i would defend myself. Say im up in that tower with a big machine gun and he picks up a pistol instead of an RPG. He cant hit me but i can hit him. Do you shoot him? As a soldier, you can argue that a 9mm could kill another soldier just as easily as an RPG. But there is no way in hell im going to execute a child that isnt a DIRECT and immediate threat to me for the reasons ive already clearly stated.In the same way that a 9mm pistol isnt a major threat, its been pretty well demonstrated that the RPGs havnt been much of a threat in this war either.<see my last post>

78

A little kid doesn’t know that.

79

I used the term “clearly ineffective” because if you take the number of shots taken vs the number that have actually inflicted injury, there isnt a General on the planet that wouldnt call that ratio clearly ineffective.
And i wouldnt shoot a kid with a BB gun OR and RPG unlkess i was in IMMEDIATE and DIRECT danger, not some nebulous well maybe he could use it on someone else and MAYBE someone else might get hurt. Your DEFINATLY killing a child no maybes about it. In my book a definatly beats a maybe by a long shot.<pardon the pun>

80

Know many 10 year olds shot by police? And where in the article does it say the child “drew” the gun or pointed it in any way? I dont expect a small child to understand the concept of a war zone or any other complicated political/socio events around him.