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Antikapitalista -> RE: Support (international) terrorism – why not? (9/27/2011 10:45:52 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: StrangerThan
There's always collateral damage, especially when those conduct war hide among civilians. To my knowledge, no war has ever been fought that didn't induce innocent deaths. Then again, if you're a fighter, who is putting your family more at risk? The drone you worry about, or you for going home after the fighting?
What you're implying is that the military intentionally targets innocent civilians, and while I'm sure someone can dig up a case where it happened, that is by far not the case. Terrorists do.
Well, yes, it is formally about targeting. But merely formally, de jure. But read about the well-known cases to learn how it can be twisted and perverted...
As for the drones – the U.S. armed forces perpetrate war crimes when they send a drone to bomb a house in which an alleged "target" is located, if there are other civilians instead of sending soldiers there for the fear that they may get killed. The law is clear: a commander must send his or her soldiers there even if they may get killed.
I am speaking in very brief terms, but the essence is there.
Look, an acquaintance of mine (a pretty arrogant one, by he way, because he says that he teaches it, so he thinks he has a patent on knowledge, even if he is patently wrong – but he is said to be somewhat of an authority, so perhaps at least somehow relevant) usually has a rather novel approach, based mostly on „body count“, and he claims it is a humanitarian approach.
Actually, it is not so crazy, there are traces of such reasoning in the Nuremberg Trials.
And this is actually the basis of my reasoning.
From the humanitarian point of view, I find it rather silly to distinguish between a soldier (a combatant) and a civilian. In fact, given the existence of conscription, I find making such differences quite repugnant.
Things changed a lot during the French Revolution of 1789 (sorry, I do know how to name it properly in English, but I hope that you know what I mean) and in its immediate aftermath, when the armies of feudal powers of Europe attacked the French republic, so its National Convention came up with "levée en masse"—again, sorry, I do not know the English for it—and mass conscription was born.
Thus, every able-bodied man (an woman, in some countries) must serve in the armed forces, by law. They have no choice.
I do not think that those very same young people (that some of you have been mourning over) would like to go to war and be injured or even killed, really.
But it carried an effective self-regulating effect against warmongers in democratic countries. Such as when the United States of Aggression waged war in Vietnam. There were widespread protests which forced the U.S. government to withdraw its armed forces and stop the war.
But with modern savagery, with professional soldiers bombing cities from at least 4.5 km above international law, bombing civilian buildings or facilities (which is a war crime) under the twisted pretext of "dual-use", while in the remaining cases arrogantly stating that it was some "unintentional error" or "technical failure"... when things look like an armed-to-the-teeth Schutzstaffel commando cornering a helpless Jew in a ghetto...
... then I do see a lot of vindication to strike a much more powerful enemy at the enemy's weakest point.
Be it the case of U.S. drones over Yemen, Afghanistan,... or whatever.
The logic is thus simple: by sending "shock and awe" through the warring nation, they will be made to stop the war. That was roughly the reasoning and vindication (or even exculpation?) behind the atomic bombings of Japanese cities, cited at least at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
In today's world, most citizens in those countries "don't fucking care" about it, while serving as little Eichmanns and quietly feeding their war machine. Thus, terrorism is simply an instrument to "make them fucking care"!
Note that this is framed and aimed precisely at the rants about the "cowardice of a (technically) weaker opponent" and whatnot. A nation having only clubs will never attack a nuclear superpower, obviously. It has always been the other way round.
(EDIT: Especially when those nations deliberately try to avoid citizen casualties by hiring mercenaries from all over the world, such as those Blackwater thugs.)
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