Should our soldiers sacrificed their lives to..

[SQUEE]

50. In Somalia we were often engaged by young men

12-15 Y.O. boys were driving technicals and manning barricades armed with grenades, RPKs and AKs as well. For a while the warlords there would push younger children (and it has been reported women holding infants) in front of an advance to test our resolve. This is a tactic as old as war, to find a soft spot in your enemys will and exploit it.
Here in the U.S. "militia" types are also holding out the idea that women and children will confer immunity from US Military should their STHF fantasies come true.
It is barbaric to us as a practice, but the only way it stops is to actually engage such tactics consistently and ruthlessly, a threat is not determined by age or sex, we have protocols for these situations that remove judgment calls, sadly they do not remove the sense of responsibility when they are carried out.