Is it Time to Re-Think the Concept of the Military?

The United States military has always been guilty of this during war, and this isn't the first time that such excuses have been made. At what point do we have a simultaneously top-down and bottom-up reconstruction of this killing machine called the military?

And for those of you who say "well there's a good reason why they killed those kids"... you can only be crazy or stupid enough to say that because your kids aren't the ones getting blasted while digging up dung out of the ground.

Some Afghan Kids Aren’t Bystanders

The New York Times reported that the dead children’s family members said they had been sent to gather dung, which farmers use for fuel. Taliban fighters were laying the bombs near the children, who were mistakenly killed, they said.

Regardless, it’s one of many times the children have been involved in the war. In a case this year, Afghan National Police in Kandahar province’s Zharay district found two boys, ages 9 and 11, with a male 18-year-old carrying 1-liter soda bottles full of enough potassium chlorate to kill coalition forces on a foot patrol.

“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion “Ced” Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”

There were 316 documented cases of underage recruitment in the war last year, most of them attributed to the Taliban and other armed groups like the Haqqani network, according to a U.N. report released in April. Eleven children, including an 8-year-old girl, were killed in Afghanistan last year carrying out suicide attacks, the report said.