Regardless of their future prospects for being drafted, children are not members of the armed services and therefore are not legitimate military targets.

Even in a country without conscription, every one is a potential soldier unless they are for some reason explicitly prohibited from joining the military.

So, no.

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"Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
-Joseph Welch

There come serious problems when someone desides that they are going to act on "what ifs" and "possibilities" especially when it involves killing and mass destruction.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Theoretically and ideally, no.

BUT, war has changed in that uniforms and easily identifiable distinctions between soldiers and civilians aren't as cut-and-dried as they used to be. (Example: Vietnam) If it's the case where anyone could be, has been, and is willing to fight in combat, but not technically be part of the Army, then things get problematic. It's not like you check IDs before you shoot someone.

Overall, I think the era of the "honorable" war is over.

__________________
Memo to DC:
Quit screwing around and get it done, I don't care whose idea it was.
Right and wrong are obvious, as are ethics.
Do what we've hired you to do and lead.
Shut up and fix things. Now.

If there ever was such a thing, i certainly agree that there is no longer such events - well to the extent that the war itself may not be honourable, but one party's role could be - if you are attacked for instance.

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Viva Fidel

"If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism"

"North Americans don't understand... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity"

Well, insofar as the combatants being readily identifiable. In WW1 and 2, there was a certain understanding between soldiers, almost fraternal, and it was far more clear than now who was actually fighting.

Now, there are many countries, notably in Africa, where you'll see seven year olds with AK-47s, and "armies" don't really exist. Do you kill that seven year old? Does that child really realize what he's doing? Could you capture him as a POW? Do the Geneva conventions even address this?

From what I have heard, Iraq is like Vietnam in the sense that you can't trust anything. That's what I mean by war being fundamentally different, now.

__________________
Memo to DC:
Quit screwing around and get it done, I don't care whose idea it was.
Right and wrong are obvious, as are ethics.
Do what we've hired you to do and lead.
Shut up and fix things. Now.

But that is because this is no longer a war, it is an occupation. remember when the war first started and was actually a war? We swept across the dessert and fought against Saddam's army, then it was an actual war and things weren't so "hazy." That's the difference between a war and an occupation.

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

what if the army you are to be conscripted into kills the children of your opposition?

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I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
~~Socrates

My Pep Talk For Lefties and Lurkers

personally, just to make myself perfectly clear on this topic...

I'm in favor of Mandatory Military Service For ALL...

everyone goes... the ONLY exception are those with severe disabilities... if you can type, you can serve in some capacity here at home which will free up one more able bodied person for overseas duty...

everyone goes...

__________________
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
~~Socrates

My Pep Talk For Lefties and Lurkers

why?

if someone from another country killed your brother, mother, father, sister, son, daughter or wife... would you just forget about it after time had passed?

__________________
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
~~Socrates

My Pep Talk For Lefties and Lurkers