Christopher Pham                                                                                                                                             12/1/12

807                          CHILD SOLDIERS VICTIMS OR PREDATORS? ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY                             ELA

Thesis Statement: Child soldiers are victims, because they are torn from their families and homes, taught to kill and are harrased, psychologically scaring them for life.

                Child soldiers are abducted from their homes and taken from their families at young ages. The article “Armed and Underage” by Jeffrey Gettlemen, has a section that talks about former child soldiers that were recruited into war. Specifically one, former child soldier Ishmaelle Beah, being “Forcibly recruited into Sierra Leone’s army.” The article says that Ishmaelle Beah was only thirteen when he was recruited  Considering almost all children at the age of thirteen, in the united states are still in middle school, thirteen is still a young age. From the article “Children at War” by P.W. Singer, one part of the article talks about a boy who was taken when he was ten years old. “I was 10 years old . They took me with them.” The boy that is talking in the article is not revealing his identity but, if you could imagine it, he was only ten years old. Only being able to think about what he went through physically and psychologically, he must have had been tormented. In the article he also says “They killed my mother and father in front of my eyes.” This would be an example of the separation that child soldiers go through before being recruited into armies.