I get your point, but, unfortunately, I think the vast majority of children would only vote the way their parent's are voting. When you're literally dependent on someone else to feed you, cloth you, and provide a shelter over your head - you don't have a whole lot of options to go against your parent's wishes. Add in that most kids are equally as uninformed, or drink knowledge from some of the most brainrot cesspools of the internet, and you're not really getting the most informed voter on the other side.

I want to believe that a child voter would dramatically change the political landscape for better, but I'm far too jaded and cynical after seeing this current circus to believe it.

Yeah, I think IEDs were the big issue that was scaring the American soldiers. But, that doesn't necessarily mean that the US planners were caught off guard. It might just mean that they thought that an occasional light vehicle taken out by an IED was an acceptable loss.

The number of acceptable losses according to military planners is always going to be much higher than the number of acceptable losses according to the people getting killed. Often the power rests with the planners and the soldiers just have to grumble and accept it. It's interesting that in this case the soldiers were able to make their case so effectively that the military started putting armour on light vehicles, something that's very rarely done.

Again, who decides what's "adequate" when it comes to body armour?