Giving candies to the Iraqi children

The pictures of the (white) American soldiers giving candy to appreciative young European (white) children during and after the Second World War is one of the favorite images of Americans for their soldiers in war.

And that's not surprising. It's benign, it shows the soldiers as acting more like social workers than warriors, there is no blood and guts in the picture.

And there is some reality to the image. My Austrian mother-in-law has fond memories of getting chocolate candy from the American soldiers at the end of the war. Western Europe, at least, was a place where shared cultural meanings of such an act were positive. And since there was essentially no armed resistance in occupied Germany and Austria, it presented minimal danger to the soldiers.

I remember reading an account, though, (I believe it was in Francis Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake) of a US soldier in Vietnam tossing some candy to a group of school kids who went scrambling to pick it up. Their teacher was furious about it, because in her eyes it was like reducing the kids to beggars. While the GI presumably thought he was just being a good guy.

I've thought about that story occasionally during the Iraq War when some story would come up about soldiers interacting with kids. For propaganda purposes back home, showing the "good news" and all, those are desirable stories. But I've often wondered whether the soldiers were showing the best judgment in what they were doing.

Today I came across something via Pat Lang's blog that addresses this issue.

It's a paper by an Australian counterterroism expert, written in the form of advice to company commanders in Iraq, Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen (March 2006).

Point 19 is "Engage the women, beware the children". Yeah, when I first saw that I also thought, I wonder how American GI's will process "engage the women". But his advice seems to be sensible, to employ female counterinsurgents and build cooperative social networks by winning the trust of "neutral or friendly" women in the area. And what he says about kids also rings true:

Conversely, though, stop your people fraternizing with local children. Your troops are homesick; they want to drop their guard with the kids. But children are sharp-eyed, lacking in empathy, and willing to commit atrocities their elders would shrink from. The insurgents are watching: they will notice a growing friendship between one of your people and a local child, and either harm the child as punishment, or use them against you. Similarly, stop people throwing candies or presents to children. It attracts them to our vehicles, creates crowds the enemy can exploit, and leads to children being run over. Harden your heart and keep the children at arm's length. (my emphasis)

FOX News fans may find those stories about GI's giving out candy to the grateful kiddies to be heartwarming. But in the situation in Iraq, it could wind up getting the soldier and the kid killed. Norman Rockwell paintings shouldn't include car bombs.

| +Save/Share | |