More on child soldiers.

• Position: Readers Forum

I wholeheartedly disagree with the conclusions drawn at the Marine Corps CETO meeting about child soldiers (December 2002, p.18). The article states that commanders often give kids addictive drugs to weaken their inhibition, that U.S. forces should use non-lethal weapons and psychological operations to convince child soldiers to stop fighting. What good is psychological warfare on anyone in a drug-induced stare? Or trained from birth to hate U.S. citizens? The CETO folks have forgotten the lessons we learned in Vietnam: if a U.S. soldier is shot and killed by a weapon, it makes no difference if the weapon operator is 14 or 41. The soldier is still just as wounded or dead.

You can't just take the weapon out of these children's hands, pat them on the head and tell them to go home and play. They'll come back to blow the hand off of the soldier who...