I don't want to agree....as what you have stated is so dreadful....but I can only agree...this is a different life to that that we knew previously. Children, young children, are targets, and they will be utilized accordingly...

Children have always been targets.

Within living memory two bombs, one dropped on each of two japanese cities killed a reported 129000 people. In Dresden, a determined, sustained effort involving 3900 tonnes of high explosive killed 25000. But these were ok because it was a recognised conflict.

More recently destruction of a middle eastern country's infrastructure and governmental system has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands. But that's ok because we thought, incorrectly as it happens, that removal of dictators would be a good thing and if we could claim that they had WMD then that was even better. We didn't even bother to count the dead.

Today we see further slaughter in another middle eastern country because regime change seemed again to be a good thing and support and recognition of a rag tag bunch of thugs in opposition to a recognised dictator demonstrated that we had learned nothing.

All of these episodes involved the wholesale slaughter of innocent children. We should be thankful that they happened in far away places, and we should hope that survivors learn to forgive and forget.

Yes but the point being made above is that specifically children were being targeted, not as you are describe at length part of a larger general population. Your soap box seems to be getting higher month on month.

Wasn't the London Blitz closer to home? You forgot to mention that one, and the twin towers too.

It doesn't matter who does the killing and it doesn't matter whether children were the only targets, the issue is that children were killed in spite of the fact that it was known that they were there and this was not considered important, or perhaps it was.

As for the box, I think I have Wrights Coal Tar Soap stamped on the side.

I didn't forget to mention it, I deliberately didn't because it was on a different scale. I could have mentioned the holocaust and perhaps I should.

If my child were killed, all that would matter to me was who was responsible and I'm not sure I could forgive and I certainly would never forget.

You would make a great politician, nothing like changing the subject up for debate- we were discussing that the children were being used as weapons, they weren't targeting children in Turkey, they used a child as a weapon to kill a large group of people- people, not just children. Abhorrent in any civilised society.
Did Wrights make such large boxes of soap?

Turkish wedding blast: Nearly half the dead under 14 - CNN.com

"Gaziantep, Turkey (CNN)The Turkish government is now backtracking on its initial claim that the attacker who bombed the Kurdish wedding celebration in southern Turkey on Saturday night was a young teenager."

ISIS may not have used a child as a weapon. What is clear is that 22 of the dead were under the age of 14.

Yep, article noted... Good old reliable Turkey Government again...
Again, this part of the thread was discussing using children as weapons, not as very sad but concident fatal victims along with other members of the general public in atrocities that have occurred in the past and currently throughout the whole world

Using a similar CNN source, this could have been as bad, looks like a child to me...

Iraq stops would-be child bomber for ISIS - CNN.com

I've not been very clear, but what I'm trying to get across, apparently very badly, is that children are used as weapons simply by killing them, and it has always been thus. They become the shrapnel in a blunderbus that targets the will to resist.

I think where you went wrong was when Millie said "this" was different and commented about children being targeted and utilised accordingly, following on from Shard and Magnum comments about using brainwashed kids, you responded with "Children have always been targets" whereas it seemed fairly obvious that the difference was kids being used to deliver the attacks.

What next a mother pushing a bomb laden pram among a market crowd, only in case someone looks inside it she really does have her baby in it?

The worst thing is you wouldn't put it past them.

I'm not sure that we can make such fine distinctions where children are concerned.

IF ISIS has used children to deliver bombs, aren't these children as much victims as the child targets themselves? I would argue that they are all targets in this disgusting conflict.

Well of course they are also victims, although they wouldn't see it that way, nor would those encouraging them.

So that's a pretty relevant distinction for a start.

But being delivery method of death and destruction as opposed to being a passive target only is a pretty major distinction wouldn't you think?

You're all arguing finer nuances of the same point.

Yes, it lowers the depravity to greater perceived depths when children are used as weapons, or as weapon delivery systems. Yes, it's appalling that this may (or may not)have been the case in the recent ISIS attack in Turkey. No, this is not a new thing: children have been coerced and threatened into battle for generations, particularly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa where child soldiers are still a frighteningly real phenomenon. "Take up this gun or we will rape your sisters and kill your family" is a somewhat unsurmountable threat to a ten-year-old.

Of course, our Western sensibilities don't process this very well. To us, it seems overwhelmingly barbaric - to the point that the US authorities refused to countenance that Omar Khadr, for example, might have been better treated as a child victim rather than an "enemy combatant." Nobody - least of all the Western powers under whose watch a great deal of this has ballooned - is blameless.

I'm still thinking it's quite different though. At least with a gun the intention is to shoot your enemy and hope to save yourself rather than get blown up with them.

The experts in security all emphasize how difficult it is to stop the suicide style attack compared to one where the attacker hopes to get away.

Also, coercion of the type described is quite different to influencing/persuading/encouraging. I don't suppose a child of 10 will be particularly influenced by the promise of virgins waiting for him but making his Muslim brothers proud and stuff like that, making him want to do it (however ill equipped he may be to make a decision like that) is different isn't it?

That's what I thought Millie was getting at.