No - it’s about taking responsibility for your actions and not trying to hand wave them away or blame the other guy. As in the afghanistan case of ‘the two bad guys made us slaughter that family by running into the compound’.
No - you chose to respond to two fleeing gunmen by dropping a 2000lb bomb on a compound with the absolute certain knowledge that that action would kill innocent civilians.
In this case I’d say the action was callous, disproportionate, stupid and counter-productive. Two dead gunmen and how many dozen new eager martyrs?
In other cases it might be a regrettable necessity which those who take part have to accept their share of responsibility for the consequences. All sides do it. The savages beheading journalists say we made them do it, we say they forced us to bomb villages. If people weren’t dying it’d be laughable.
Life is a funny thing. It turns out not to be the either/or, black or white thing simplistic point-scoring debaters try and make it.
Well, I suppose the answer to your question is that with great power comes great responsibility. Unfortunately with absolute power comes absolute corruption too, so there you go.
So the question is how do you stay powerful enough to keep the Hitlers and Stalins and Kim’s of the world in check without becoming one?
One preconceived notion in any debate about “collateral damage” is the idea that our smart bombs are silver bullets which always seek out the evildoer we’re targeting. The first problem with this is the technology, although a huge leap compared to the dumb gravity bombs of the past eras, can still malfunction, go astray, and kill innocent people by the score. The second problem – one will which remain even if our bombs were 100% accurate – is that their effectiveness is only as good as our intelligence and understanding of what we’re bombing, which as you may have learned over the past five years is actually quite bad.
A perfect combination of the above two problems is our opening attack on Iraq back in 2003. You remember, right? The images of 2000 pound bombs erupting in downtown Baghdad. Yeah, what you may not know is that it was mostly a [huge failure.](2003 invasion of Iraq - Wikipedia .org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Dora_Farms_strike)
Of course, then there’s the the idea of “Shock and Awe,” which thankfully wasn’t carried out to the full extent of what it could be like in the Gulf War where we bombed civilian infrastructure. But still, why the hell do we need to bomb government run shopping malls? Talk about winning hearts and minds!
Of course I’ll mind. Then again, I’d mind if I got shot while wearing a uniform and attacking an enemy fortification, but I wouldn’t condemn the enemy for shooting me no matter how unhappy it made me. Likewise, if there are soldiers using the house next door as their headquarters, I wouldn’t condemn the enemy for targeting them even if there were civilian casualties. Planting I.E.D.s to take out military convoys or blowing a hole in the U.S.S. Cole, even if it takes out some civilians as well, is far different than specifically targetting civilians in open air markets or cutting the heads off of journalist. I don’t hold them to any higher a standard then I hold us to.
What do my feelings have to do with right and wrong?
To me, the difference lies in 1) the intent of the action, and 2) caution.
The difference between a 500 kg. bomb. aimed at a military target. that goes astray and lands in a crowded market, and a person driving a car packed with 500 kg. explosives into the market is that the suicide bomber intended to kill civilians, and the soldier did not.
The other difference is caution. If we think there are only hostile enemy forces in a house and we don’t bother to be careful and check our intelligence to make sure that is the case, we are culpable.
That said, civilians have died in large numbers in wars throughout history. I suspect, however, that the Iraq War (not the occupation but the war) killed less civilians per soldier than most wars … no cite, but I know that the military went out of their way to avoid civilian casualties. Whether this was for moral or public relations reasons is a subject for debate.
No, they didn’t. They used cluster bombs and napalm; those are not low-civilian casualty weapons. They also have a tendancy to shoot people rather indiscriminately.
This is pretty much a re-wording of the ‘Rules of Knighthood’ from about 500 years earlier, which specified that a Knight could not use a bow & arrow, or javelin, or crossbow, or slingshot, or any weapon that did not remain in his hand. Use of any projectile weapon was an affront to knightly honor, because no one would be able to tell who was responsible for killing their opponent.
IIRC, the Japanese had similar opinions regarding gunpowder weapons.
The thing is, firepower tends to trump “honor”. The simple reason is would you rather be the honorable army under foreign rule or the technologically advanced army dominating the battlefield?
No, the question is did you do absolutely everything you could to avoid the civilian casualties. If you drop bombs in civilian areas, and then say that you did everything you could to avoid civilian casualties, you are lying.
Soldiers can make a judgment call about someone’s status before shooting them. Bombs can not, they kill indiscriminately.
The only way to be 100% certain you avoid civilian casualties is not to attack, period. That is the only way anyone can claim to have “did everything” they could to avoid civilian casualties.
Who do you think makes the decisions to drop a bomb? Anyway, it’s true that soldier’s can make a judgment call, but who is to say they’ll always make the right call? If a group of soldiers on a street are taking fire from an enemy holed up in the second floor of an apartment building would the commander be right or wrong in ordering his men to return fire? Rifle fire might miss, resulting in innocent civilians getting hurt. Even if you send your men in there they might miss their intended target and hit a civilian. Heck, they’re scared, and they might mistake a civilian for the enemy and shoot.
At best, you can only try to avoid civilian casualties. Unless we all agree to fight our wars in parks outside of cities we’re going to have civilian casualties.
Well, thanks for the honesty. Just as a followup, would you say you don’t know because you find the line hard to draw - for example, there are things certainly acceptable, and things certainly not acceptable, but there are things which could be either way - or because you haven’t yet come across a situation you would find non-acceptable?
Agreed. And if you drop a bomb in a civilian area, you are not trying to avoid civilian casualties, and if you say you are, you are lying. That’s all I’ve ever said. You’ve been arguing against a phantom, I’ve never said that no civilian casualties are acceptable, all I’ve ever said is that when you drop bombs, you can’t truthfully say you tried to avoid civilian casualties.
If you train soldiers well, impress upon them very deeply that no civilian casualties are acceptable, provide them with the very best intelligence possible, and always use the minimum amount of force necessary to ensure destruction of the enemy, then you can say that you did everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. Of course even with all these precautions there are still going to be civilian casualties, but at least you can honestly say you tried to avoid them. Dropping a bomb on a civilian compound and then saying you try to avoid civilian casualties is laughably, demonstrably untrue and undermines our goals in the GWOT by providing perfect recruiting propaganda for the enemy.
The first. I agree that there’s a line but I’m not really sure where to put it exactly. I also want to note that I’m not cavalier about “collateral” damage. These are human beings we’re talking about, they may be killed or permanently maimed, and those who survive will bear physical, emotional, or both types of scars for the rest of their lives.