Except for the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the tragic events of 9/11 that launched the War on Terror, Americans have not had to experience war on a massive scale in their home land.

The Middle East, meanwhile, is a place of constant turmoil where death and destruction occur daily.After an airstrike in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo a few weeks ago, a video surfaced on social media reminding us how innocent children are among the most vulnerable victims of war.In the video, a young Syrian boy sits silently in an ambulance awaiting help. Bloodied, dazed and covered with dust, he wipes blood from the left side of his head, looks at his hand for a second, and then wipes it on his seat.The boy, identified as Omran Daqneesh, was treated and released from the hospital. The doctor who treated him said his injury was light compared with the others wounded in the bombing which destroyed his home. Omran's 10-year-old brother, Ali, who was playing in the street when the bomb struck the neighborhood, was among the dead.The cameraman who took the heart-wrenching video told one reporter that this kind of scene is repeated every day in Aleppo.Syria is now in its fifth year of civil war, and countless lives - like Omran's - are being shattered both physically and emotionally. The Syrian Center for Policy Research estimates the death toll at a staggering 470,000, including 4,500 innocent children caught in the crossfire of war.While Omran is a survivor, there are thousands of youngsters in the Middle East whose chances at life are minimal. Despicably, militants are using the children to replace losses and preserve adult fighters.Dubbed "Cubs of the Caliphate," they are being recruited or forcibly abducted to become suicide bombers by the ISIS warlords.Children have even been seized from schools to re-educate and radicalize children to follow the group's extreme interpretation of Islam.The child bombers often catch security forces off-guard. They have already been used to attack civilians in Israel, Afghanistan and Turkey and military experts fear the child jihadists are being trained to attack civilians across Europe.In the city of Gaziantep in western Turkey just over a week ago, a teen suicide bomber murdered more than 50 guests at a Kurdish wedding party in the southern city of Gaziantep. As many as 22 of the dead were under the age of 14.In terror training camps, jihadi children wearing suicide belts are brainwashed and taught ISIS nursery rhymes. In some instances, young boys have been forced to witness ISIS militants shoot fellow recruits who stopped participating in drills.Child recruits who have escaped from an ISIS base in Raqaa described how they were taught to handle weapons, and how to detonate suicide belts.One recent ISIS video shows a boy battalion of would-be killers made up of young Asian boys, some looking as young as 4 years old, training with AK-47s.Terror tactics involving children are known among lawmakers and human rights organizations.Human Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights, has said that ISIS and other extremist groups "have specifically recruited children through free schooling campaigns that include weapons training and have given them dangerous tasks, including suicide bombing missions."It's one thing to be aware of this atrocity against children, it's another thing to have the resolve and take action to stop it.Col. Richard Kemp, former head of British forces in Afghanistan, said, "There is nothing more despicable than hiding behind human shields of women and children and forcing children to fight for you."This should be a top concern of every leader in the civilized world.By Jim Zbick |

tneditor@tnonline.com