Woo Hoo!!! America is better than terrorists!!! What a victory!!! We can do no wrong as long as we can claim our enemies are worse than we are!!!
Hey, you asked about terrorists saying it’s America’s fault they kill civilians; I say we can call 'em on their bluff: if they genuinely want to reduce collateral damage while aiming for our military targets, then we’re perfectly willing to label military targets for them – and yet they keep aiming right at our civilians anyway.
Can they call us on our bluff? No, because we’re not bluffing. We offer the other side chances to minimize civilian casualties, and they refuse; they don’t offer us those chances even though we’d accept.
Huzza wha? Terrorists don’t want to reduce collateral damage, they want to increase it. They want to increase the terror, hence the name.
And we’re back to the idea that just being better than the terrorists is all that we need to do. It doesn’t become OK to kill civilians simply because the bad guys are really, really bad.
Exactly. That’s why I thought your point made little sense:
We hit civilians because we’re trying to hit legitimate military targets. They hit civilians because they’re trying to hit civilians. If they gave us the chance to aim for military personnel without killing a single civilian, we’d gladly take it; we give them the chance to aim at military personnel and they say, Huzza wha? No, see, the whole point here is to hit civilians; we genuinely want to hit civilians; we are, in fact, aiming for the civilians.
No, it’s not “all” we need to do – but that’s misleading. Look, imagine you have the chance to kill twenty enemies with an attack that kills one civilian, or an attack that kills three civilians, or an attack that kills nine civilians. And imagine too that the other side would pick the one that kills nine civilians.
All else being equal, should we choose the attack that kills three civilians? No – and it’s no defense to say “but we’re being better than the terrorists,” because that’s not all we need to do; we can do better, we can opt for the attack that kills only one civilian – and that attack, we can defend.
No, of course not; again, if we can kill those twenty “bad guys” without killing multiple civilians, then it’s not OK to kill multiple civilians regardless of whether “the bad guys are really, really bad.” If we can do it without killing a single innocent civilian, then it’s not OK to kill a single innocent civilian.
Once again, my point was specifically about absolving the US of all responsibility for civilians being killed by blaming someone else for their actions. It wasn’t about who is the target, it was about being responsible for your own actions.
We agree. And, as I’ve said repeatedly, I remain unconvinced that the drone attack program meets any of these standards of the acceptability of civilian deaths. Also I find the idea that the US is not to be blamed for killing children by drone attack because the Pakistan government is bad to be shameful.
But that’s the problem; to me, that “who is the target” question reflects whether you’re “being responsible for your own actions.”
I’m arguing that, so long as we’re perfectly willing to identify legitimate targets for 'em, they can’t blame us for making 'em kill civilians instead – and that we can blame 'em for making us kill civilians, if we’d in fact be perfectly willing to spare every civilian once legitimate targets were obligingly identified for us.
I apologize if I missed it: please, spell out an alternative course of action lets us kill just as many “really, really bad” guys with less loss of life.
To me, there isn’t much of a legitimate difference between “we knew our bombs would kill 1000 civilians” and “we meant to kill 1000 civilians”. Whatever rationalization you want to make for it, the action still results in the death of 1000 civilians and you knew it would happen. Saying “well, we’d love it if they didn’t die, but …” doesn’t really cut it for me.
I realize I haven’t made the entire argument in this thread, being the third, fourth, maybe fifth thread on this, so it makes sense if you missed it. My point is that the drone attacks may not be killing “really, really bad guys” (only 2% of those killed by drone attacks are "high value targets), the number of innocents killed may not be as low as the government would like you to think, and the costs of the drone attacks (5% of those killed in drone attacks are children) may be outweighed by the benefit received. If this means we put off killing someone we suspect is a terrorist until there are less civilians, or we limit our drone attacks to only high value targets, I’m all for that.
I spell it out in more detail in this prior thread.
Very good post.
Posting that about “someone” in general or “someone” who is a user of the board or “someone” who is participating in the thread? There seems to be a lack of clear guidelines here.