Crime and punishment and ISIS kids

[Syzygy321]

Recently a teenager in Virginia was sentenced to 11 years for aiding terrorism. He ran a website that told followers how to get contributions to ISIS, and helped another teen run off to Syria.

Increasingly, western countries are faced with meting out punishment (or reintegration) to child terrorists and terror supporters.

I have less sympathy for this teen than for most iSIS kids, because he stayed safely behind his computer and manipulated others - which strikes me as a far darker and less forgivable thing than running off to Syria oneself.

For the teens who do leave western nations to join ISIS: what's the proper response if they return, or are caught sneaking off? Are they terrorists or victims? Throw the book at them or give them therapy?

Why I empathize with some ISiS kids who run away: I think - if you strip away the veneer - what they are doing is so normal-teen-development stuff. Romanticism, idealism, desire to fight a noble fight, to break free of parents and convention. Those are the same teen dreams that have made kids run away - since time immemorial - to sea or to Hollywood or off to war or off to Reno with a 28 year old Lothario. (And while they *should* pay attention to the beheadings and raping etc and be morally repelled, I think kids find it easy to romanticize a cause and block out unpleasant corollaries. Adults do it too, but I'm not willing to forgive them for it.)

Also, it's pretty easy for savvy adults to manipulate kids by playing to those teenage desires.

And lastly, these kids (the Muslim-born ones) really are taught in home and mosque that fighting and dying for God is noble and gets you to heaven; that enemies of Islam should be battled; that the medieval caliphate was a wondrous ideal era; that today's Muslims are oppressed all over the world and need defending, etc. Those aren't ISIS opinions; they are common and mainstream. So I find it hard to blame those few kids who, starting from those principles, are then wooed from afar into terrorist sympathies.

Of course, one can make a great case for heavy-handed punishment, too. It deters copycats; keeps ISIS kids out of circulation for a long time so they don't infect others; makes parents take the threat of radicalization seriously.

I'm torn. Thoughts?

[EL34x4]

1. Go fight for ISIS, lose your citizenship.

Turns out ISIS sucks and you want to come back home? Tough shit.

[hifiguy]

2. An excellent idea.

And if they sneak back in deport them back to Syria. The consequences of most teenage stupidity do not result in the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.

[EL34x4]

4. It's legal, too

Fight for a foreign army and you can lose your citizenship. Says so right on your passport.

[hifiguy]

5. Yep. Make it so, Number One!

[smirkymonkey]

7. I would have to agree.

This isn't going out and getting drunk and crashing dad's car. This is something for which the consequences should be much more serious. They are signing up for murder. I don't care how old they are.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

3. Fifty years ago they would have been running off to be "revolutionaries"

In Europe stupid kids were running off to join various rag-tag communist terrorist groups. Of-course the disillusioned "revolutionary" making their way back probably weren't inclined to beheadings.

Returning jihadists probably need to be held in a psychiatric facility while their state of mind and overseas activities are investigated.

[d_r]

6. I saw a video

A report from inside Islamic state. I have as so sad about how the children were indoctrinated.