What?
I am not sure I understand the question. I don’t think the South Koreans can reasonably be accused of using their civilians as hostages, just because there was a village around this military base.
What I am saying is that the idea that ‘any attack using weapons that cannot be exactly targeted is a war crime’ is problematic. In the context of a just war, using the kinds of missiles the NK used is not necessarily a war crime. Sometimes, even the sort of collateral damage that it can be argued is involved in this attack might be justifiable.
It goes to what has been mentioned previously about WWII attacks. Bombing was not precise in that war, in a number of instances, but that is partly because of the limitations of targeting. I think the US and the West in general is sort of spoiled by the appearance of precision munitions as were used in the first Gulf War, where the allies could target factories and so forth very precisely - almost to the point of aiming at one particular part of a factory, rather than “hit and hope” as was the case in WWII.
Sometimes it is necessary to use the weapons you have, even if it means that you cannot be sure of sparing civilian targets.
If it is the case that military action that endangers civilians is not justifiable, then most military action is not justifiable. And that does not seem to me a reasonable conclusion. War is sometimes justified.
Does that make it any clearer?
Regards,
Shodan
Well, this particular bombing certainly was not necessary.
No, certainly not. If you include wars of aggression under the heading of war crimes, then the attack was certainly a war crime. I was thinking more about if the NK attacks were in the context of a just war.
If you just mean that NK is in the wrong in this, obviously I agree, no matter if this particular attack was a crime or not.
Regards,
Shodan
Right. This whole thread is kind of pointless if we just take it as read that the attack itself was a war crime. Finn discussed specific attributes of the attack which he thinks make it a war crime, though, which is different.
I wasn’t responding to Finn Again, I only identified him as being on my ignore list because you brought up one of his posts in moderating me (but not evil captor). I was responding to Evil Captor who brought up the issue of whether or not there was provocation. Are we now supposed to refrain from replying to statements like “Is there anyone outside North Korea who doesn’t think it was an unprovoked attack?”
BTW, why was I moderated for responding on point to a question that Evil Captor asked?
No one said your were responding to Finn.
There are three separate issues, two related and one not related.
The first issue–unrelated to the others: Evil Captor’s question and your response were off topic. No one was out of line, but I wanted to make sure that this thread did not get hijacked back into the same personal feud that destroyed the previous thread, so I quoted the two posters who had addressed the issue that was a potential hijack and noted that their efforts would be better spent in a separate thread, either a new one on the topic or the ongoing one in the Pit. I mentioned Finn’s comment in passing, but I did not base my intervention on his comment, simply noting that I happened to agree with the OP on this particular point.
The second issue was that you publicly announced a poster on your Ignore list, which is a violation of the rules, so your attention was called to the rule and you were directed to refrain from repeating that behavior, (at which point you wandered over to ATMB and explicitly flouted the rule).
The third issue, related to the second, is more of a philosophical one: Generally–or, at least, very often–the OP of a thread sets the tone and provides a significant amount of the information and argument around which a thread turns. Posting to a thread in which one has deliberately prevented oneself from seeing that material exposes one to posting arguments that have been refuted, attacking presumed positions that the OP does not actually hold, or even arguing as though the OP has an invalid point when the OP is, in fact, in agreement with one on that point. Since all off those situations would seem to be more than a bit embarrassing–as though one did not actually understand the thread–I find it puzzling that one would choose to expose oneself in that manner.
To be clear, however, there is no rule against participating in a thread in which the OP is on one’s Ignore list, just as there is no rule against myriad other ways to embarrass oneself.
[ /Modding ]
I know this thread is pretty much done, but I’d like to provide a quote from the WSJ article that only belatedly was properly linked.
[
](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704693104575638301304069066.html)
Just so we’re all on the same page.