Hi, TEC. It's been discussed but we're talking about the actions of the epitome of love in the bible, so however ridiculous and bloodthirsty humans are doesn't play much of a role... unless (tangent) you consider that they're imitating their gods.
I'm thinking you missed my point, or I didn't make it very well. Children are ours, and they exist in a world that WE created. As the planet is ours. As the animals are ours. Given to us. We abuse them all, and then blame God for the bad things that we, ourselves, have done.
But if you buy the bible, he did in ancienct times.
I'm a bad person to ask about this because I don't believe in war at all... though I realize that there might be times that people cannot stand by and watch the torture and murder of another group of people, or even their own. The Caananites practiced child and human sacrifice, and who knows what else. That's why they were being destroyed. The fact that children died as a result of war is an atrocity of war, and not much different today. But children do pay for their fathers' sins in a communal sense because they inherit the world with the mess we create and leave them.
And we don't have the whole story on those wars, we also should understand enough about the fervor and anger of battle to see where orders and actions could have been without regard to a God of love.
Tammy