No, it is not. In this case it is collateral damage, and while ample criticism can be made of such mislabeling it as indiscriminate killing is simply false.
The War of Jenkin’s Ear, conducted entirely by warships of the respective antagonists. When may we expect an abject retraction and a blubbering apology? Or, alternatively, we may simply agree that its rather a silly question, a hypothetical offered to make someone look foolish and unrealistic.
Um…that’s a really bad example. Just from memory I seem to recall that this became part of a larger war of succession in the 40’s (that’s 1740’s obviously) of one of the major European powers (ETA: On preview, Mr Moto says Austria, and here is a Wiki article on the war).
Also, IIRC, there were several battles that involved naval actions in harbors or ports, so, at a guess, at least SOME civilians were killed. And this doesn’t even count any privateer type actions, or commerce raiding by either side…which, again, would most likely involve at least some civilians.
From the Wiki article:
While they aren’t naming specific civilian casualties, one can read between the lines here…if you are using naval forces to bombard port cities, or doing amphibious assaults on enemy towns, then odds are that some unfortunate civie is going to be in the way of a cannon ball or musket shot.
Got a cite for that? Seems like you are focusing on one action in the larger war, which lasted several years and was spread all over British and Spanish colonies.
A retraction for asking a question? I don’t think so…
Nope. I’m trying to understand the parameters being set down. If he wants to say that no wars are justified, that’s fine and that’s a debatable position. But he doesn’t seem to saying that, and so he seems to be setting too high a standard for this particular war.
Also, Robert Jenkins (whose ear was cut off thus giving the war its curious name) was a British merchant captain, not a member of the Royal Navy. And since his ear was severed, this counts as a civilian casualty all by itself.
You think ‘man, no one will know what the hell the War of Jenkin’s Ear is’, so you try and post something really quick on it (having read about it in a fiction novel years before), only to find some 'doper has beaten you to the punch!
Sez who? You? The term collateral damage has a very specific meaning in military terms:
I think the problem here (besides the fact that you are letting your rhetoric get away from you), is that you don’t seem to understand what the word ‘indiscriminate’ means…or to understand the process by which the US military determines what is or is not a valid target, or how they arrive at this determination. While you might (probably would) not agree with how they make these determinations, or how they weigh the possibility of civilian casualties against the mission objectives, it is completely incorrect to use the term ‘indiscriminate’ in this context.
To paraphrase the immortal words of Inigo Montoya: I dinna thin’ that word means what you thin’ it means, kimo sabe.
No, collateral damage is military doublespeak for “the unfortunate and/or accidental killing of civilians”.
Indiscriminate killing is wiping everyone out without regret or a care. We don’t do that. We do realize that there are going to be some civilians killed, particularly in a combat effort like this one where often combatants and innocents cannot always be easily distinguished from one another because of their appearance, and because the Taliban are smart…staying in the midst of their civilian population works in their favor politically and militarily.
Well, good, we have this wretched thing precisely defined. The parameters of linguistic perfection are expanded. The innocent still die, but now we can put exactly the right phrase in place to describe it.
Happily,we have hard-headed and realistic men to advise that such is the way, it can’t be helped, darn shame about that. We never seem to run out of hard-headed and realistic men.
Here’s an example from the war in Iraq: ‘US soldiers started to shoot us, one by one’ from the Guardian on 21 May 2004. A wedding was being celebrated in the village of Mukaradeeb, near the Syrian border.
These are what the military call ‘collateral damage’. Multiply this by the hundreds, as it is most certainly not an isolated incident. It is nothing but indiscriminate killing of civilians. There’s nothing unfortunate or accidental about it.
These are isolated incidents, which is what makes them newsworthy in the first place. They are not the norm. They happen far too often, but again: war is never fully precise, people and intelligence are never perfect. These things happen in wars, which is why no wars are “good” wars. Necessity isn’t always “good”. Collateral damage is literally unavoidable 100% of the time. I wish it weren’t so, but wish in one hand…it’s the nature of the thing.
I don’t like civilians dying any more than anyone else does but to suggest the the US military as a matter of operating procedure deliberately targets civilians on purpose is simply not true. Not today it isn’t.
