Quote:

Pariah said:
Why the hell does everyone treat those soldiers' lives like they were the lives of small children!?

They were grown up, responsible people who made their own choices, and one of them was to act as defenders of this country.



Quote:

Jim Jackson said:
Rather cold.
They were all somebody's children. To their parents, trust me, their ages don't diminish the loss.



There does, however, seem to be a trend, be it partisan or otherwise, to infantize soldiers, what with the "sending our sons and daughters to die" rhetoric.

First off, the rhetoric might have had some meaning during Vietnam, when we had a draft. Now, however, its a volunteer military.

Being a volunteer military, a soldier's death is, in some ways, more akin to the death of a firefighter or police officer on duty. Like soldiers, both police and firefighters "sign up" for a dangerous life-threatening job that may kill them.

However, unlike soldiers, we rarely, if ever, refer to them as peoples' "children", despite the fact that, as JJ noted "to their parents...their ages don't diminish the loss."

Given the above, it does seem that the decision to refer to soldiers as "children" might indicate a certain bias in the choice of phrase.