Civilian Casualties in War: a moral dilemma!

[Dierk Haasis]

War

 

[Roger Lambert]

Roger, you are aware that many countries - like Germany and Israel - have a draft army?

Yes, I am aware. Yet surely these armies are comprised mainly of men "who accepted the risks of war and get paid to fight it. They work for the government."

As to surgical warfare: It's non-existent. It has always been a myth, never ever was a war fought without non-fighting casualities - and it never will be.

I'm not so sure about this, as there have been surgical strikes that were successful. And I am not talking about bombs, I am talking aboutassassinations, or commando raids. What our Pentagon commonly describes as "surgical" is a tragic joke.

Part of my position on this whole topic is that who and how we are fighting has changed dramatically over the past twenty years or so.

Modern field warfare has become so sophisticated that most ground or air battles only last minutes, not years. I think the average lifespan of a tank in a sophisticated war is about three minutes! Same basic scale for a fighter plane.

But this is actual field war. Most of what we have seen the last 20 years has not been field war, but bloody occupations. Occupations are basically unwinnable. This is not really war.

And who we fight has changed. Very seldom, if ever, will we have cause to target an enemy wearing a uniform. When is the last time this actually happened? The Korean war?

Our targets in the future will be terrorists groups such as Al Queda, and if we are foolish enough to be caught in another occupation, resistance fighters.

And aginst these groups, the concept of absolute surgical decapitation is pretty valid. Commandos rush a room and shoot everybody. End of story.

They are, if we like it or not, strategic. My original reply, and this one, particularly targets the myth that war can be fought surgically, without civilians being victimised. We have to face reality to change it, not the other way round [and this, BTW, is a very open criticism of Junior's world view]. From this follows that violence is a last resort, not peace and negotiations.

Agreed - violence should be a last resort, peace the ultimate solution.

Appeasement lead to WW2, Israel negotiates since before 1948, they still try to go the peaceful road [to spell it out: with the result that some religious brainwashed losers use themselves as weapons against Israeli women and children]. North Korea, a real threat for a change, doesn't care at all if the other 191 (or 202 or 242 depending on what nations/countries you recognise) find their attitude a bit ... lacking.

Yes, and let us not forget the idea of violence as a last resort against tyranny. I have great fears about what is happening here, in the U.S., right now. I pray it never comes to that. But Bush has suspended habeas corpus, and Hallibuton is building hundreds of concentration camps in the U.S. as we speak.

This may be a misunderstanding initiated by my ambigous use of 'ultimate'. I meant 'last' with the undertone of 'it should then not be done half-heartedly'. My mistake.

I agree with your sentiment.

 

[Dierk Haasis]

Outing myself here: I agree with your assessment of hit teams. And this is even more problematic than the original question posed by Asher as Spielberg brilliantly showed recently. He skirted the issue of the quality of intelligence but the moral implications were better delineated than in any political discussion or artistic depiction.

Unfortunately intelligence agencies are not mpervious to political pressure, tainting even good intelligence [I don't need to spell that out, do I?]. Taking up the example above, Shin 'Beth did a great job on Eichmann but botched up most (if not all) of the retaliation for Black September's attack. Other agencies in other countries - democratic ones! - simply filed away the facts for some fantasy. Not very reassuring ...


PS: Until I read your reply I thought I was the only one contemplating the next President of the US of A will [sic] again be a Bush - Junior to be exact, not Jeb. I find that ever more probable.