Is there a moral limit to collateral damage inflicted in self defense?

Great Debates
1

Israel has bombed an apartment building in Qana, Lebanon, killing 54 civilians, including 37 children. Late reports from Israeli military sources claim that Israel was responding to Katyusha rockets fired from near that location.

Is there any moral limit to the collateral damage inflicted when a country is responding to a military attack? If 50 is not wrong, is 500?

Will this strategy of defense make Israel more secure, or less? Does destroying a rocket launcher weaken Hezbollah, or does it make them stronger by galvanizing support for their cause from moderates in the Arab world who previously did not sympathize with them?

If Hezbollah is deliberately launching rockets near civilian shelters, do they hope that it will deter Israel from retaliating, or are they counting on it, to foment public outrage and garner support? Isn’t Israel playing right into their hands by destroying the source of a rocket attack at the expense of of the lives dozens of women and children?

I support the right of a country to defend itself, but there must be a line somewhere, beyond which the wanton loss of innocent life is not justified. If it has not already crossed it, Israel is perilously close to this line, and beyond it, she will find the world losing patience, and sympathy for future rocket victims in Haifa.

2

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Israel has bombed an apartment building in Qana, Lebanon, killing 54 civilians, including 37 children. Late reports from Israeli military sources claim that Israel was responding to Katyusha rockets fired from near that location.
[/QUOTE]

I read this earlier this morning and felt a bit sick. I wondered if anyone would start a thread on it or if it would just go into one of the myriad threads already going on about this subject.

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Is there any moral limit to the collateral damage inflicted when a country is responding to a military attack? If 50 is not wrong, is 500?
[/QUOTE]

I think the key is whether or not its ‘collateral damage’ or whether its deliberate, wrt innocent civilian casualties. If its accidental, then I don’t see the difference between 50 and 500…both, while horrifying are essentially the same from a moral perspective. Turned around, if its deliberate then even one is at the moral limit…IMHO.

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Will this strategy of defense make Israel more secure, or less? Does destroying a rocket launcher weaken Hezbollah, or does it make them stronger by galvanizing support for their cause from moderates in the Arab world who previously did not sympathize with them?
[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure if it will make them more or less secure in the long run. I THINK that attempting to take out Hezbollah is seen as their only real long term solution atm. If they can cripple HB, drive them off the southern border, then they can, perhaps, buy a few years of peace while HB rebuilds its assets. And perhaps in a few years something will change.

As to taking out this rocket launcher, of course it will weaken HB…and it will also prevent HB from blasting rockets into Israel. I don’t think taking out the rocket launcher (and crew, and ordanance) are what will galvanize support of even moderates in the Arab world though. Even assuming they weren’t galvanized from day one, its incidents like this one that does the trick…as HB knows full well.

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
If Hezbollah is deliberately launching rockets near civilian shelters, do they hope that it will deter Israel from retaliating, or are they counting on it, to foment public outrage and garner support? Isn’t Israel playing right into their hands by destroying the source of a rocket attack at the expense of of the lives dozens of women and children?
[/QUOTE]

Well, of course they do. Only a maniac, or someone who calculates things in different terms than innocent civilian lives, would put such a launcher next to a building full of fucking children. :mad: Are they playing into HB hands? Of course. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they shouldn’t do what they have been doing though. After all, who’s REAL moral responsibility is this incident? The ones who parked a military asset next to a building full of children, in the hopes that Israel WOULD fuck up (it was bound to happen…and probably will again), or the ones who were trying to hit that launcher (an obvious threat and military target) and fucked up?

I’m sure this is an unpopular position both on this board and in the wider world…and its not one I come too comfortably. However, should Israel or any other nation let itself become hostage to groups of folks who willingly use human shields, to cowardly allow them to attack them from cover, and then when the inevitable mistake happens, hide behind their shock and dismay that a bunch of children and civilians were killed? At the root, who is REALLY to blame for such incidents?

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
I support the right of a country to defend itself, but there must be a line somewhere, beyond which the wanton loss of innocent life is not justified. If it has not already crossed it, Israel is perilously close to this line, and beyond it, she will find the world losing patience, and sympathy for future rocket victims in Haifa.
[/QUOTE]

The line, IMHO, is crossed when a nation does not even attempt to take precautions, but instead resorts to arbitrary measure. Had Israel, instead of using a precision bomb that missed its target, carpetbombed the entire city block where they suspected the missile launcher was, they they would have crossed that line. The fact that they used a very expensive percision guided bomb says two things. First of all, they KNEW the launcher was there…you target such a weapon directly on the launcher. Secondly, Israel was making a good faith effort to TRY and keep civilian casualties down, instead of resorting to cheaper but more arbitrary means.

YMMV…

-XT

3

[QUOTE=xtisme]

I think the key is whether or not its ‘collateral damage’ or whether its deliberate, wrt innocent civilian casualties. If its accidental, then I don’t see the difference between 50 and 500…both, while horrifying are essentially the same from a moral perspective. Turned around, if its deliberate then even one is at the moral limit…IMHO.
[/quote]

I don’t think it’s as simple as that. For instance, what if there’s actually a military target, but at the same time a complete disregard for civilian losses providing the military goal is achieved? The civilian deaths certainly aren’t just “accidental” in this case. “Collateral damage” doesn’t mean anything , since taking extremes, it could be used equally for wounding a civilian while while taking out an entire ennemy division and for razing a whole city to the ground because an ennemy is suspected to be present somewhere in it.

Why do you take as granted that Israel’s statements on this issue (or similar ones) are truthful and/or complete? We’ve evidences that children were killed. Maybe I missed something, but I’ve not been shown evidences that a launcher was put next to the building.

4

[QUOTE=xtisme]
I don’t see the difference between 50 and 500…both, while horrifying are essentially the same from a moral perspective.
[/QUOTE]
When deciding whether or not to strike a target, you have to balance your potential gain against possible civilian losses. The US does this in Iraq:

It’s immoral not to make that calculation, and the result depends on the number of likely civilian casualties.
Did the Israeli’s do their calculations? Who or what were they after that could balance the civilian deaths? I’ve heard some vague stories about a lot of Hezbollah missiles coming from that village, but did the Israelis have actionable intelligence that they were stored in the basement of that particular building, or that all the rocketeers lived there? Or was the raid instead a consequence of reckless disregard for civilians, or worse, a policy of collective punishment?
There’s not enough information to tell yet.

5

[QUOTE=xtisme]
I’m sure this is an unpopular position both on this board and in the wider world…and its not one I come too comfortably. However, should Israel or any other nation let itself become hostage to groups of folks who willingly use human shields, to cowardly allow them to attack them from cover, and then when the inevitable mistake happens, hide behind their shock and dismay that a bunch of children and civilians were killed? At the root, who is REALLY to blame for such incidents?
[/quote]

I think this is a tough question, but in the end the answer comes down to “both”. When I punched my little brother because he drove me batty with taunts, my parents didn’t buy my protest of “He started it,” even though it is absolute truth to say that my brother’s taunts caused me to hit him. After all, if he hadn’t taunted me, I wouldn’t have hit him. In truth, both parties are responsible. Certainly, the party that “started it” may well have a responsibility that mitigates the responding party’s responsibility to some substantial extent. If I’m acting in legitimate self-defense, and I injure an innocent party in what is truly an unpredictable accident, we’re not going to hang very much responsibility on me at all. Say I shoot at a physical assailant, and the bullet ricochets off a lamppost and strikes a pedestrian well out of my line of fire. Responsibility almost entirely the assailant’s. But what if I fire at the assailant with a full-auto assault rifle while a procession of schoolchildren are walking directly behind him? The predictability of the resulting carnage places much more of the responsibility on me, even though I still do have a right to defend myself.

This would indeed matter if we were attempting to objectively ascertain Israel’s degree of responsibility for these deaths. Of course, we’d also need to have accurate information about how good Israel’s intelligence was regarding the precise location of the launcher, whether they knew the building was full of children, etc. I will not go so far as to say that Israel doesn’t care about Lebanese civilian casualties, but I think we can all agree that they’d be a lot more careful if Hizbollah was launching rockets from the suburbs of Tel Aviv. (Not saying they SHOULD treat Lebanese civilians as equivalent to Israelis, just saying that there’s indisputably a degree of effort in “minimizing civilian casualties” that they’re not going to. Whether or not they should be, I make no comment.)

The thing is, I don’t think any of this matters from the perspective of the OP’s question pertaining to whether this will hurt Israel wrt galvanizing the support for Hizbollah in the Arab world. Those pictures of dead children will be seen as solid evidence that the Israelis are inhuman monsters and Hizbollah are heros for opposing them in much of the Arab world, even if it turns out that the IDF had observers right next to the building who saw the rockets launched from it, and saw no sign of inhabitants using sophisticated infra-red scanning techniques immediately prior to the attack. That Hizbollah knows that their potential supporters will blame this on Israel, and quite possibly intentionally drew the IDF fire on those kids to get precisely that result makes them inhuman monsters themselves, but it doesn’t change the fact that this particular attack is probably going to destroy any chance that the Lebanese in general might blame Hizbollah for the carnage rather than Israel. The Israelis really have shot themselves in the foot, I believe, and the objective truth about where the responsibility lies is largely irrelevant to the question. Subjective seemings in this case matter more than the objective truth.

6

[QUOTE=clairobscur]
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. For instance, what if there’s actually a military target, but at the same time a complete disregard for civilian losses providing the military goal is achieved? The civilian deaths certainly aren’t just “accidental” in this case. “Collateral damage” doesn’t mean anything , since taking extremes, it could be used equally for wounding a civilian while while taking out an entire ennemy division and for razing a whole city to the ground because an ennemy is suspected to be present somewhere in it.
[/QUOTE]

But then it wouldn’t meet the criteria I set then…right? Also, I don’t see any evidence that Israel has a ‘complete disreguard for civilian losses’…in fact, I’d have to say what evidence I’ve seen its quite the opposite. Why would they use a percision bomb for instance instead of, say, cluster munitions? Cluster munitions would probably work just as well, and be cheaper…but would certainly have the potential of inflicting more civilian casualties. Just the civilian death count alone, after weeks of fighting in and around civilians (where HB seemingly likes to fight) should tell you that. If indeed Israel had a complete disreguard for Lebanese civilian casualties then the death toll would be in the thousands…maybe tens of thousands.

[QUOTE=clairobscur]
Why do you take as granted that Israel’s statements on this issue (or similar ones) are truthful and/or complete? We’ve evidences that children were killed. Maybe I missed something, but I’ve not been shown evidences that a launcher was put next to the building.
[/QUOTE]

Well, two reasons really. First off, I trust Israel more than I trust most (all?) of the arab states that surround it when it comes to news of this kind. Why? The other nations in the region are prone (to say the least) to exaggerations and ranting…especially when Israel is concerned. Remember when US troops were basically rolling through Baghdad and Saddamns minons were saying that they had repulsed us at the border? Remember the various exaggerations of victory in the Iran/Iraq war?

The second reason is simply that its all the information we have right now, so I’m provisionally going with it until and unless some better, CREDIBLE information to the contrary is put forth.

As to your assertion that a launcher wasn’t (or may not have been) there…my own ‘evidence’ is simply the use of a percision guided bomb. You’ve seen how they work as well as I have. A laser is placed on the target and (in theory) the bomb steers itself to said target. Why in gods name would Israel fire such an expensive weapon if they DIDN’T have visual contact with a launcher (or other military target)…unless you are asserting they deliberately targetted that building with children in it thinking it was an HB facility. In which case, why didn’t they just say so…after all, they said so when they DID target what they thought was a HB headquarters last week.

Thats all I gots. What have YOU got that says they are lieing?

-XT

7

[QUOTE=Squink]
When deciding whether or not to strike a target, you have to balance your potential gain against possible civilian losses. The US does this in Iraq:
[/QUOTE]

No one obsesses over this stuff like we do IMHO (including our Euro buddies). And yet…we still fucked up several times and had the same accusations used against us. Even with all the extra layers of decision making going in, even with trying as much as humanly possible (well, IMO we did) to NOT kill civilians with our air strikes, mistakes happened…civilians died. (At this point I breathlessly await Der coming in to explain that the US is really evil, blah blah blah :stuck_out_tongue: ).

[QUOTE=Squink]
It’s immoral not to make that calculation, and the result depends on the number of likely civilian casualties.
[/QUOTE]

I agree. I’ll tell you something else…IMHO the US wouldn’t have made that strike, launcher or no launcher. But…Israel is not the US, and the direct threats to them are not the same as those to us. Our adventure in Iraq was just that…a stupid fucking adventure. Israel though is literally fighting, if not for its very life, at least to attempt to protect its citizens from direct threat. It sort of changes the calculations a bit…especially when we look back over the history of this thing.

[QUOTE=Squink]
Did the Israeli’s do their calculations? Who or what were they after that could balance the civilian deaths? I’ve heard some vague stories about a lot of Hezbollah missiles coming from that village, but did the Israelis have actionable intelligence that they were stored in the basement of that particular building, or that all the rocketeers lived there? Or was the raid instead a consequence of reckless disregard for civilians, or worse, a policy of collective punishment?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know…and as you said, neither do you. I too will await more info about this, and while I probably won’t be AS critical as some if they in fact didn’t go through hoops in authorizing the attack on this launcher, I’ll still be fairly critical and want the US to make it clear that our continued support hinges on Israel tightening up its process.

-XT

8

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Israel has bombed an apartment building in Qana, Lebanon, killing 54 civilians, including 37 children. Late reports from Israeli military sources claim that Israel was responding to Katyusha rockets fired from near that location.
[/QUOTE]

That’s a joke compared to what the Allies did to Dresden. Once a war starts and you know your side is in the right, almost anything starts to look acceptable.

9

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
I think this is a tough question, but in the end the answer comes down to “both”. When I punched my little brother because he drove me batty with taunts, my parents didn’t buy my protest of “He started it,” even though it is absolute truth to say that my brother’s taunts caused me to hit him. After all, if he hadn’t taunted me, I wouldn’t have hit him. In truth, both parties are responsible. Certainly, the party that “started it” may well have a responsibility that mitigates the responding party’s responsibility to some substantial extent. If I’m acting in legitimate self-defense, and I injure an innocent party in what is truly an unpredictable accident, we’re not going to hang very much responsibility on me at all. Say I shoot at a physical assailant, and the bullet ricochets off a lamppost and strikes a pedestrian well out of my line of fire. Responsibility almost entirely the assailant’s. But what if I fire at the assailant with a full-auto assault rifle while a procession of schoolchildren are walking directly behind him? The predictability of the resulting carnage places much more of the responsibility on me, even though I still do have a right to defend myself.
[/QUOTE]

I disagree to a certain extent with you here. I don’t think its ‘who started it’ necessarily, but the actions of the parties once it started. For one thing, determining ‘who started’ this lashup would be difficult…we could go round and round chasing our tails on that one. Oh, certainly HB started THIS round (and Hamas started the trouble in Gaza)…but the roots of the struggle go back to the very beginnings of Israel (even before the country was created by the UN in fact).

I agree with you about the full-auto thing verse a good faith attempt to take down the assailant with a single shot. In fact, I believe that the evidence I’ve read thus far points to Israel doing this…at least in this case. If new evidence turns up I’ll be forced to a painful re-evaluation of my position. Won’t be the first time…

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
This would indeed matter if we were attempting to objectively ascertain Israel’s degree of responsibility for these deaths. Of course, we’d also need to have accurate information about how good Israel’s intelligence was regarding the precise location of the launcher, whether they knew the building was full of children, etc.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, we need more information wrt what Israel knew, and how they authorized this strike.

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
I will not go so far as to say that Israel doesn’t care about Lebanese civilian casualties, but I think we can all agree that they’d be a lot more careful if Hizbollah was launching rockets from the suburbs of Tel Aviv. (Not saying they SHOULD treat Lebanese civilians as equivalent to Israelis, just saying that there’s indisputably a degree of effort in “minimizing civilian casualties” that they’re not going to. Whether or not they should be, I make no comment.)
[/QUOTE]

Another side that you didn’t mention though is…how much does HB care about Lebanese civilian casualties? From the evidence I’ve seen I’d say…not much. I think they have deliberately set things up so that, eventually something like this WOULD happen…and so they would regain the ‘moral high ground’ so to speak. I think this is a common tactic for MANY groups in the ME in fact…to play on our western notions of the value of human life, and our shock and horror at the infliction of civilian casualties. I don’t think its a weakness in us, by any means…but I do believe that THEY think its a weakness in us.

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
The thing is, I don’t think any of this matters from the perspective of the OP’s question pertaining to whether this will hurt Israel wrt galvanizing the support for Hizbollah in the Arab world. Those pictures of dead children will be seen as solid evidence that the Israelis are inhuman monsters and Hizbollah are heros for opposing them in much of the Arab world, even if it turns out that the IDF had observers right next to the building who saw the rockets launched from it, and saw no sign of inhabitants using sophisticated infra-red scanning techniques immediately prior to the attack. That Hizbollah knows that their potential supporters will blame this on Israel, and quite possibly intentionally drew the IDF fire on those kids to get precisely that result makes them inhuman monsters themselves, but it doesn’t change the fact that this particular attack is probably going to destroy any chance that the Lebanese in general might blame Hizbollah for the carnage rather than Israel. The Israelis really have shot themselves in the foot, I believe, and the objective truth about where the responsibility lies is largely irrelevant to the question. Subjective seemings in this case matter more than the objective truth.
[/QUOTE]

No doubt. Of course, as I have said in other threads, I think no matter WHAT Israel did, it would galvanize the Arab world against them. Hell, they have been in a constant state of galvanization (if thats a word :)) for decades now…fueled and fanned by their own governments, by the radical element there, and by many of their religious leaders. I think this attack was a set up to further fuel that hatred and anger…and it worked. There will now be a huge explosion in the region. But…I think that even without this incident the fires were burning nicely against Israel anyway.

-XT

10

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
That’s a joke compared to what the Allies did to Dresden. Once a war starts and you know your side is in the right, almost anything starts to look acceptable.
[/QUOTE]

:rolleyes: Please…the two are hardly comparable BG.
-XT

11

I don’t think comparisons to WWII are helpful at all. All parties in WWII engaged in large-scale bombing of civilian populations. It was part of the official military doctrine of the day. It isn’t anymore, in no small part because of how ineffective it was then. Moreover, that was a case of total war between nation states, whereas Israel maintains that it’s quarrel isn’t with Lebanon per se, but only Hizbollah. Comparing recent events to Dresden or Tokyo or Hiroshima is about as relevant as comparing them to Tiglath-Pileser III’s invasion and occupation of what is now Lebanon in 738BC.

12

You will recall that all his top ministers were sumerily dismissed…

13

[QUOTE=xtisme]
No doubt. Of course, as I have said in other threads, I think no matter WHAT Israel did, it would galvanize the Arab world against them.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not so sure. Granted, I’m no expert on the area, but the initial Hizbollah attack was blatantly unprovoked, and a short, sharp, highly-focused response might have hurt Hizbollah, not with respect to their specific constituency very much, but certainly with respect to their standing with the non-Muslem factions in Lebanon.

Perhaps I’m being overly optimistic on that count. Whatever. What seems to me indisputable is that the attack on general infrastructure, the seeming indiscriminate bombing of civilians (which I agree with you, isn’t really all that indiscriminate, likely falling into categories of precision bombs occasionally missing tightly-packed targets, bad intel on what targets to hit, or intentional use of civilian shields, but again, that doesn’t matter, what matters is how it plays to the people whose response is at issue), and the disproportionality between attacking one patrol and bombing half a nation for multiple weeks guarantees a negative reaction from the Arab world. It’s one thing to know that anything you do will piss off the neighbours to some extent, since they have a history of complaining about your kids and your pets regardless of the fact that they’re perfectly well behaved. That doesn’t mean that you should go ahead and spray graffiti all over their new car if your long-term interests require you to attempt to live in relative peace with the assholes.

14

[QUOTE=elucidator]
You will recall that all his top ministers were sumerily dismissed…
[/QUOTE]

I ashur you, those reports were greatly exaggerated.

15

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
I don’t think comparisons to WWII are helpful at all. All parties in WWII engaged in large-scale bombing of civilian populations. It was part of the official military doctrine of the day. It isn’t anymore, in no small part because of how ineffective it was then. Moreover, that was a case of total war between nation states, whereas Israel maintains that it’s quarrel isn’t with Lebanon per se, but only Hizbollah.
[/QUOTE]

:dubious:

Some Dopers in Israel reported that they (The public and the media?) consider the Lebanese government complicit with Hizbollah, so all of Lebanon deserves what is coming to then. I hope though that the Israeli government does see a difference.

16

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
I ashur you, those reports were greatly exaggerated.
[/QUOTE]

You, sir, are a bounder and Akkad!

17

[QUOTE=GIGObuster]
Some Dopers in Israel reported that they (The public and the media?) consider the Lebanese government complicit with Hizbollah, so all of Lebanon deserves what is coming to then. I hope though that the Israeli government does see a difference.
[/QUOTE]

Well, IMHO the Lebanese government IS complicit with Hezbollah. I see no evidence though that Israel is indiscriminately blasting civilians though, despite their supposed attitude.

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
I’m not so sure. Granted, I’m no expert on the area, but the initial Hizbollah attack was blatantly unprovoked, and a short, sharp, highly-focused response might have hurt Hizbollah, not with respect to their specific constituency very much, but certainly with respect to their standing with the non-Muslem factions in Lebanon.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, I recall you stating this position in other threads. I certainly respect you and your position on this and you may well be right. For my part I’m skeptical about it, but conceed that perhaps if Israel was more focused (and was perfect, and didn’t make any mistakes at all, etc etc) then perhaps the Arab World wouldn’t have been AS fired up at Israel as they currently are. Its moot now of course…unfortunately. :frowning:
-XT

18

I think the likely outcome of an attack has to be taken into account for the morality of collateral damage. For example, the atomic bombs used on Japan were likely to end the war, save many soldiers lives, and result in a lasting peace. On the other hand, this is merely another page in the history of the Middle East. Israel will stop its bombing soon enough, Hezbollah will re-arm, and we will be right back where we were before, except minus 500+ Lebanese civilians and minus 30+ Israel civilians.

Israel is basically trading 15 Lebanese civilians for every Israeli one. That’s where the immorality lies.

19

[QUOTE=treis]
Israel is basically trading 15 Lebanese civilians for every Israeli one. That’s where the immorality lies.
[/QUOTE]

Except this is a false analogy…unless you wish to claim that Israel is DELIBERATELY targetting Lebanese civilians in some sort of twisted revenge thing (‘15 Lebanese for every Israeli killed! MUAHAHAHAHA!’ :dubious: ). I note that you haven’t mentioned that HB IS deliberately targetting Israeli civilians in Israel…i.e. their intent when they fire those rockets is to hit and kill civilian targets. The fact that their weapons suck and they can’t achieve that goal in no way excuses their actions…at least not to me. Do they excuse them to you?

-XT

20

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Except this is a false analogy…unless you wish to claim that Israel is DELIBERATELY targetting Lebanese civilians in some sort of twisted revenge thing (‘15 Lebanese for every Israeli killed! MUAHAHAHAHA!’ :dubious: ). I note that you haven’t mentioned that HB IS deliberately targetting Israeli civilians in Israel…i.e. their intent when they fire those rockets is to hit and kill civilian targets. The fact that their weapons suck and they can’t achieve that goal in no way excuses their actions…at least not to me. Do they excuse them to you?

-XT
[/QUOTE]

Why don’t you try this post again without the attitude.