11-14-2010, 02:57 PM
(11-14-2010, 02:26 PM)Occhidiangela Wrote: Protesting relative innocence, which appears to be your argument, takes us back to the relative innocence of conscripts, who don't really want to be there ... non starter.
This does not address the core of the argument. A conscript is (somehow) a full member of a state entity. (These days, a citizen.) They participated in the state, and thus, run the risks of being conscripted. Their participation is "voluntary" in the broad sense, if not a specifically narrow one. An analogy would be taxes, which nobody really wants to pay, but they implicitly accept by being a member of the public, and can therefore be held responsible for.
A 15-year-old is not in the same category. They are legally unable to make the decisions that would lead to their implicit acceptance of being a combatant. Whether a 15 year old can practically make such a decision is less clear. I think they probably can, and by that point, their history might be sad, but it is irrelevant, just as a poor upbringing is not an excuse for carjacking. But we can't mix our legal standards - if there was no rule in place to say he was legally competent, then we can't retroactively declare it.
-Jester