Child soldiers

I haven’t the slightest idea what should be done about child soldiers. Clearly, the worst of it is going on in Africa, and sometimes it seems like the more affluent places try to help Africa, the less it works. Not for any reason except for the assholes in charge, who until they are out of the way, will always be standing between the people who need help. And these are the people who take money and food for the intended recipients. People’s charity is wasted, and they just end up helping the last people they wish they were helping.

Why is this problem important? It’s obvious to anyone who isn’t a sociopath that if 250,000 children are being used as cannon fodder in twenty different countries, it’s a problem. We’re supposed to care when we hear about horrible things happening to people, especially children. It’s in our nature. However, it’s a long way from caring to doing something about it. I haven’t done anything about it, because I don’t know what to do, and because my silly life is a great distraction.

It feels vaguely pertinent that I was watching “Oliver!” earlier today. That’s a shiny version of a book about horrible poverty, and the Charles Dickens grimness is lightened by musical numbers. Still, the theme is one little boy, innocent (to say nothing of the other boys in Fagin’s gang, who have already lost their innocence) who is being pulled back and forth and being exploited by adults. Some of whom were exploited in their own lives, when they were young.
Regardless of political difference and argument, people should feel that there is something fearfully wrong with that. With Dickens days it was poverty, and with these current conflicts in Africa, it’s poverty and warfare. But most of all it’s people who can justify the horrors that they do to other people – smaller, weaker people, who should be protected by them, or at the very least, left alone and in peace.