Clearly killing civilians is acceptable so long as you were aiming at some form of non-civilian in their midst, but is there a limit to the number of dead civilians that it is acceptable to kill, in order to get one non-civilian?
Collateral Damage. Let's Talk About Death, Baby
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It depends whether or not they look/talk/pray like me and how much money they have.
Well, can we look at it another way; is the side killing the most civilians the good guy, or the bad guy?
Actually it is never acceptable, sometimes impossible to avoid but never acceptable. At least in a modern limited war standpoint.
By staging attacks from areas populated with civilians, the targets have already declared them expendable. Who are we to second guess the decree of the righteous freedom fighter?
Who said anything about where these people are? Stop trying to justify it and just answer a simple question. It's an abstract principle, not related to any particular military action. If we cannot establish a principle then no justification can possibly be valid.
In other words, "They? They who?"
In other words, "They? They who?"
If you hide amongst civilians while attacking others, you have declared the lives of those civilians as expendable and their death is on your hands.
Errm... can we go back to the point where I said this is a prinicple? Forget about who or where, this is not about any particular conflict, it is about the principle involved, OK?
In an age when we go to war and call it a police action or go to war without declaring war and go to war with so many rules that the soldier can't really fight I have to ask why we even bother. It has proven to be quite ineffective yet still costly in lives. Would it save lives if we prevented any military action without a declaration of war. And not just some namby pamby war but absolute burn your cities salt your fields type war. Citizens would be less likely to allow it to happen and countries would be less likely to actually provoke anything.
donno... ask these people...
And that is total nonsense anyway. For example:
George Bush is the commander-in-chief of the US military, would Saddam Hussien have been justified in wreaking nuclear destruction upon the entire USA in order to get him?
(Obviously assuming it were ever possible).
They aren't merely civilians if you choose to arm them or otherwise intentionally make them targets.
If I read that right you are assuming that a country's citizens have the power to stop "provocation" or attack. I'm sure you can think of several examples where that was not the case.
So, let's say that I'm a target for a some military action; they've decreed that I'm some form of combatant. Any time I'm in the area of civilians then I've made them a target? Which is kind of interesting as I'm not targetting anyone, the military force out to get me is deciding what the targets are.
In order to kill me they need only kill me. They make a decision that they will kill others whilst killing me, no one forces them to do so. One well-placed bullet would do the job. There is no need for anything else, it is a decision made only by the attacker.
there is only one sucessful kind of war...
Total War.
Total War.
Ask this guy who's been there/done that...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022801881_pf.html
Anything beyond 7:1 is unacceptable IMO.
No it is a established clear pattern that the civilians are used as human shields/bombs/etc - it is a part of their culture. They stage their offensives from civilian sites purposely and they make the choice to involve their civilian population to fit their agenda.
LEOs have unavoidable collateral damage when dealing with criminals - high speed pursuits/nuts with guns(at work/school/malls)/bombers/etc its the same situation - the criminals made the choice to put civilians at risk and they are also rightly assume a majority of the blame.
Do you also rest the blame solely on LEOs for those tragedies too?
i think it's always acceptable to kill as many dead civilians as necessary.
yes, i'm an anti-zombite.
For the hard of reading - I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT ANY PARTICULAR CONFLICT, I'M TALKING ABOUT IN PRINCIPLE.
So there is no 'their culture' involved. OK? Now, back to the question.
Necessary for what?
Clearly it depends what's at stake. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "acceptable" at the time.
you mangle engrish, i mangle you thread.
Only because the US won. Had the Japanese detonated a nuclear weapon on Los Angeles a week before being overwhelmed (and yes, it's hypothetical) then I'm pretty sure it would have been viewed as an atrocity. (Though had been Las Vegas things may have been different.)
Because Japan was the aggressor, it was justified. Had nothing to do with who won.
ok, i'll at least offer up one worthy post to one of the most intractable problems of war.
i hope you'll find it reasonable to factor in at least these variables:
- how badly do you need to get the target (assigned value)
- how frequently do you have the opportunity to kill the target
- what's the price by not killing
- where is the target of opportunity? (free-fire zone or out-of-theater)
- political fallout for missed opportunity
- is anyone else willing/able to do the work?
- are the civilians complicit in harboring, or unknowing?
- how easily are the civilians shaped into combatants? (are we bombing a nightclub full of sympathizers, or an orphanage?)
- how public would the death be (i.e., can it be used as propaganda against us later?)
that's should cover about 7% of the variables necessary for the heuristic.
i hope you'll find it reasonable to factor in at least these variables:
- how badly do you need to get the target (assigned value)
- how frequently do you have the opportunity to kill the target
- what's the price by not killing
- where is the target of opportunity? (free-fire zone or out-of-theater)
- political fallout for missed opportunity
- is anyone else willing/able to do the work?
- are the civilians complicit in harboring, or unknowing?
- how easily are the civilians shaped into combatants? (are we bombing a nightclub full of sympathizers, or an orphanage?)
- how public would the death be (i.e., can it be used as propaganda against us later?)
that's should cover about 7% of the variables necessary for the heuristic.
Good point, national referundum and everyone who votes yes gets a charred baby sent to them.
total war, total victory.
total victory, peace.
negotiated war, no victory.
no victory, no peace.
There is still a great deal of debate today about the effectiveness of the bombing. Reports from German citizens who lived through allied bombing are (un)remarkably similar to those of British citizens who lived through German bombing of British cities. They all conclude that it hardened resolve and united the nation.
Reality and priniciple are rarely, if ever, aligned.
I guess I could wait a long time for anyone to come up with it but the most significant factors are clearly cost to the party who is doing the targetting, in terms of personnel, perception and dollars. Pretty much all else is smoke.
all but certain that britian was less than 90 days from surrender under the bombing.
90 days.
saved by the russian front.
If no trigger got pulled until the risk was certifiably zero that would be fantastic and sure makes a lot of sense.
However, what is logical to you is not logical to others. Sending a suicide bomber to blow up a bus full of non-combatants to make a point is logical to someone. Dropping a smart bomb and blowing up a building to kill the guy sending the suicide bomber killing him and his 22 kids seems logical to someone else.
Then you get into the whole Hitler debate or for argument's sake Dubya. Would you kill Dubya and his immediate family to stop the Iraq War? What about Dubya, his immediate family and 100 elementary students? All of DC? You make decisions for each of those.... now what decisions does Haniyeh make? Or Zawahiri? Or Osama?
The reality is that attackers assign values to targets. Then taking that value, combined with resources, time, risk to non-combatants, risk to own forces, potential fallout and a bunch of other crap somebody makes a decision on whether to pull the trigger. How each of those is weighted is certainly driven by culture.
And how do you define non-combatant?
Which in itself was a direct consequence of the German decision to stop bombing airfields and factories and to bomb civilian areas instead.