Be assured, if that post were intelligible a mightly confluence of prose and poetry would wash it from the sight of the righteous.
Right. I’ll let the colonel know we should switch back to dropping 500-pound bombs out of our airplanes, rather than continuing to drop burlap sacks full of puppies and kittens. And also, that we should give that “Anthrax” thing another shot, because we gain hundreds of thousands of bacillus anthracis lives each time a human dies. What a ratio!
Seriously, though: destroying military targets like ordnance factories is fair game. If you can hit them when nobody is there, that’s better. On the one hand, you’re not killing their bomb-making experts, which is marginally less effective. On the other hand, you’re not killing hundreds of factory workers.
If there’s an anti-aircraft gun on top of a hospital, the ideal attack would be to knock it off the top of the hospital. You’re probably going to lose people in the top two floors of the hospital doing this, but tough shit – the enemy put them in harm’s way, and is responsible for their deaths.
If someone’s running around armed after dusk in no uniform near my troops, he’s a grease-stain. I’ll end him and ask permission later. I don’t want anyone in my command risking our lives to see whether someone is hostile or just deeply stupid.
Your attempt to introduce “agressor and victim” categories in this debate is absolutely uncalled for. OP is trying to define some rules of warfare within relatively sane bounds. Of course, once the naked act of agression is admitted, no rules abide anymore. Agressor will not respect any rules and victim is perfectly justified to do likewise. For example, if you consider Operation Iraqi Freedom an act of agression, then resisting Iraqis would be perfectly justified to hunt Americans all over the globe and cut their heads off. The problem arises that anybody can claim a “victim of agression” status. AlQ suicides on 9-11 firmly believed they are avenging somebody for something US has done. Thus we enter into twisted realm of crimes, religion, politics and insanity, where no debate is possible.
Our civilians, our soldiers, their civilians, their soldiers simply because I think this is the priority that would lead to the fastest conclusion of the war, in our favor of course, which I presume is the primary objective.
Let see if we can find some common ground. Stranger things have happened! 
If a civilian voted for the guy who took a country to war, are they responsible for that guy being in power, and therefore responsible for the country going to war? I’d say yes.
And I agree.
You could even make a case that it is morally more justifiable to strike at civilians who support a war than conscientious objectors. So if the US and Allied forces in WWII could somehow preferentially target Nazi civilians, that would better than attacks that killed neutral civilians. Or if al Queda could target Republicans only.
But the al-Queda case doesn’t work so well because, [list=A][li]al-Queda and other terrorists tend to strike preferentially at the innocent, and [*]I am assuming always that the side under discussion is waging a just war.[/list] And I deny that al-Queda is fighting for a just end. [/li]
Regards,
Shodan
I think I’d argue that it’s just as just to strike at civilians who support a war as it is to strike at the soldiers who are fighting it.
Now, I’ll grant that it’s hard to separate the pro-war civilians from the anti-war civilians, but if we look at a war like WWII, the pw civilians (US) greatly outnumbered the aw civilians. I feel that the civilians then are justifiable targets if anyone is a justifiable target.
It simply chaps my hide when people seem to think that they can support programs or policies or presidents and then should be protected from the consequences because they didn’t end up in the military. I don’t have as much sympathy for soldiers (volunteer) as I should. I want to start smacking them upside the head and demanding to know exactly what they expected. But it seems that civilians are in exactly the same place, morality-wise.
Now, as for why I hold myself responsible for things that George Bush does against my will? Well, I haven’t left the country. I’m still accepting the benefits of living here. I haven’t put my money where my mouth is. So long as I continue to sit here and say that it’s not bad enough for me to get off my butt and leave, then I’m responsible for what happens.
What happens to the country happens to the whole country, for good or ill. I don’t get to act like it’s not my problem just because I was agin it.
I would still like to retain the distinction between civilians and soldiers.
It has to do (IMO) with degree of involvement and responsibility. If someone smacks you in the mouth, and I can’t do anything about it, I bear little or no responsiblity for it. If someone smacks you, and I see it, but don’t care and don’t interfere, I bear some responsibility for not intervening. If someone smacks you and I see it, and heartily approve of it (I don’t and wouldn’t ) and the only thing that stops me from joining in is some kind of circumstance (I am too old, too scared of you, whatever), then I bear more blame. But in none of these cases do I bear as much blame as the one who smacked you.
Same thing. If you voted for Kerry because you disapprove of the way Bush is prosecuting the war on terror, you aren’t really very much responsible for Bush’s foreign policy. Particularly not if you are working against Bush, protesting and marching, and so forth. If you didn’t vote, you bear somewhat more responsibility. If you voted for Bush, you have done as much as any civilian can to support the war on terror. Thus you bear much more responsiblity than a Kerry supporter.
But you are still not as legitimate a target as a soldier or sailor would be. They are the ones smacking faces in the WoT. The blame (and the credit) is still theirs in a way it can’t be for you or me.
Naturally, you are correct that you cannot rule yourself out as a target even if you are a disapproving civilian. It might be necessary to kill you if you are working in a war industry, or as “collateral damage” if you are too near a military target. Or maybe even because shit happens, and people aren’t perfect and sometimes in the course of waging the best war, something is going to go wrong. Individual cases can certainly be condemned and should be minimized. But there is never going to be a perfect war, where no innocent person gets hurt.
Regards,
Shodan
You’re in a bar and a guy walks up to you and smacks your face. You’d be angry with the guy.
You discover that he has a gun on him and will die if he doesn’t smack you. You might still be angry at him, but he’s not the cause of the face smackin’ action. Sure, he would rather smack you than die, but the people standing behind him don’t have even that excuse.
To me, civilians are the ones standing behind the face slappers. How many wars have been entered into at the request of the soldiers? The soldiers are pawns, and the king isn’t the president. It’s the people.
Wild tangent: What’s interesting is the difference in level of offense in an enemy killing a soldier and an enemy killing a police officer.
In both cases, the ones in uniform are there to protect civilians. They’re there because they chose to be (exception made for the draft), and are trained and armed.
In one case, they are the expected target and it’s “fair.” In the other, they are an unacceptable target. I don’t understand that.
I don’t think your analogy quite holds.
The guy who smacks me doesn’t consent to the action. Forcing him to smack me at gunpoint is like forcing a conscientious objector to pull a trigger with the threat of death.
A better analogy would be a group of people who agree that my face needs smacking, and one guy volunteers to do it (or they elect the biggest guy).
I think it has to do with the mission of the police.
The duty of a soldier is to fight gallantly, and kill efficiently. The duty of the police officer is to preserve public order. Certainly the cop will kill if he needs to, but that is not his first choice of action.
The soldier, on the other hand, is obligated to shoot any enemies he sees (subject to the orders of his superiors and the tactical situation, of course). Police don’t operate on the same kind of “shoot on sight” presumptions. Soldiers therefore present a much more direct threat to the enemy than a policeman is.
That’s why we have a military - to kill people and break things. And once a soldier is set to work, that’s what he does. A police officer who responds to his job by shooting everyone in gang colors is not going to last long on the police force. Neither would a soldier who responded to a battlefield situation by reading the enemy his Miranda rights.
The organization of the police force is certainly paramilitary, but the mission is not comparable.
Not quite the same.
Regards,
Shodan
Perhaps you have, but your post looks like you didn’t understand it. I am asking questions, not offering justifications for anything. I hope to come to some sort of consensus and then move into a different phase of discussion where we apply these rules to actual on-the-ground decisions. They could be historical, Hiroshima/Hamburg, or current. But the idea is to come up with reasonable and rational guidelines for the unreasonable and irrational thing that humans do to each other from time to time that we call war. War is hell. We are forced, in time of war, to make decisions we hoped we never would. Given the goal of a sustainable peace at the close of the conflict(I hope we can all agree this is the goal?), what should be the rules of engagement with regards to the value of the lives of the groups involved.
The kind of floating definitons and re-defining of the value of lives or individual freedoms of those affected by a war that you list in your post is actually the opposite of what I’m trying to get at here. I am arguing for overarching standards by which the military policies of various actors, regardless of their “side”, in the conflict can be judged. If the consensus comes out, like it did in the Geneva conventions, in favor of protecting civilians even at the cost of national troops, then so be it. Let that be a baseline by which actions and policies can be judged. Floating definitions and rationalizations have done a lot of damage in times of conflict. This isn’t a movie. It isn’t over with the signing of a treaty or the surrender/death of one “side”. We all have to live together in the post-war timeframe. I think a strong and upfront policy on what the rules of war will be makes it simpler to have the world, and the citizens on both sides, understand that the lesser of evils is being chosen because we want peace after the conflict ends and we want the residual hatred and emnity to be as low as possible.
Enjoy,
Steven
Easy one for me. You listed them in the right order, but left one out.
The priority of waging warfare should be protect
Our civilians first,
Neutrals second,
Our soldiers third,
Enemy civilians 4th,
Enemy military last.
Tell you the truth; I have no idea what you’re saying here.
Next you will come with Real words, yes?
To rephrase what I’ve been mangling so badly, I think that the reason wars get dragged out the way they do is that civilians sit on their asses and send someone else to die for them. Civilians are off-limits in most people’s minds, so what’s the risk of being at war? If I, especially as a woman, can sit here and blithely support a war because I’m not at risk, what impetus do I have for getting the damned thing stopped?
This isn’t true of everyone, obviously. After all, I am a woman and I am against war. But one of my reasons is that I wouldn’t trust myself to be for a war, knowing as I do that I’d be playing dice with someone else’s life.
And, of course, now I realize that I’m talking like that episode of Star Trek with the computer generated casualties. I’ll stop now. 
Well we have 2 main sides:
Our side
and
The enemy
Each side has a:
military which destroys people and things
and
civilians which create people and things.
In order to ‘win’ you must have your military be able to destroy enemy people and things while denying your enemy that ability.
Now how that happens depends on you and your enemy, you will need to attack their military or civilian population as a primary target with the other being the secondary. As for what you need to defend (military or civilian), it again depends on the circumstances and what you need more of (creative or destructive ability).
Sometimes I think the Art of War should be taught in public schools.
How can the US claim to be victims of aggression in the invasion of Iraq?
No, right thinking people everywhere celebrate every dead US solidier and deplore any injury to iraqis.
Strange. I’d say right-thinking people everywhere deplore any injury to others and strenuously wish it didn’t happen. To do otherwise, on either side, is to be a ghoul.
You are mostly correct. I apologise I went too far. I regret not returning earlier and pre-empting your post.
Regrettably you are not entirely correct, given that the realistic choices are between poor options, the best outcome is merely the less-bad.
This post is the most ignorant, hateful and FALSE thing I’ve read in a while.
One would think that a post like this, in which celebrating the death of a person is considered ‘the right thing to do’, makes one realize that there are many, many disturbed people in this world.
It also makes one think of the rules on the SDMB:
"You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use the SDMB to post any material that you know or should know is false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy, or violative of U.S. law."
On the contrary, it is a legitimate and debatable point. One, however which on reflection I do not hold.