Hence, shoot now, and justify later. Right? Civilians are civilians, except some civilians are fair game and others, especially if they live in the West, are out of bounds. Did I get you right?
Interesting point to note, the Taliban began losing support in Pakistan when they attacked civilians and security personnel outside of FATA and inside Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Islamabad etc. This also why the US has little support in this region of the world, which in turn, increases the number of people "willing" to "welcome" the AQ into their homes, as was put by one enlightened soul above. Both sides are engaged in a battle for the "hearts and minds", by breaking hearts and splattering brains.
No...You interpreted it wrong. As expected.
Have no doubt that
IF the US military was as ruthless in Falluja as we were against Imperial Japan, and Japan capitulated without a single foreign troop in-country, the city would have been leveled without warning, combatant and non-combatant status would have been irrelevant. All you have to do is search through the news archive and see for yourself the amount of self recrimination and public apologies the US military expressed everytime a drone attack failed for any reason, for example. The charge of 'attack against civilians' is deliberately inflammatory and implied that the US military placed non-combatant status as highest criteria, if not the only one, in its adjudication prior to an operation. That is not true.
International Humanitarian Law - Additional Protocol I 1977
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977.
4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
(a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;
Keep in mind that these conventions were codified after WW II. But even so, the desire to distinguish combatants from non-combatants and to place different values on them predated the GCs.
Lieber Code - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lieber Code of April 24, 1863, also known as Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, General Order ? 100, or Lieber Instructions, was an instruction signed by President Abraham Lincoln to the Union Forces of the United States during the American Civil War that dictated how soldiers should conduct themselves in war time. It was named after the German-American jurist and political philosopher Francis Lieber.
The Lieber Code Of 1863
14. Military necessity, as understood by modern civilized nations, consists in the necessity of those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of the war, and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages of war.
15. Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the Army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.
16. Military necessity does not admit of cruelty--that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult.
Basically...Even though the idea of 'military necessity' compelled the military to inflict death and destruction, the fact that we are moral beings is equally compelling and is expected of a command decision to inflict said death and destruction to create a calculus or 'balancing act' between non-combatant status, deaths and a potential outcome of a military operation prior to the execution of that operation. If that potential outcome can lead to an eventual cessation of the war, or perhaps even an immediate cessation of that war, but that some civilians will die, then the operation is justified. The fire bombings of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were not absent of these 'balancing acts', as much as those who would like to heap moral approbiums upon the US would like to believe. The continuing debate about them on whether the US military devoted sufficient time and efforts to justify the missions serves only to highlight the fact that discussions and disagreements did exist prior to the authorization to execute those missions.
Civilian deaths in war are never joyful events for the side that is on the receiving end of the attack regardless of the fact that these calculus exists. The issue and problem is that there are not and have never been any concrete valuations and calculations that will absolve any military of the charge of conducting an 'indiscriminate' attack, even when there was a legitimate military necessity, such as an arms depot as the primary target. One civilian death can be dismissed under the military necessity principle, but not one hundred and if the owner of that arms depot is sufficiently adept at public displays of grief and anger, the immorality of that one hundred civilian deaths will outweight any military necessity valuation. Even your Quran and related Islamic literature are not crystal clear on this issue. Even the older Code of Hammurabi is equally unclear on this issue despite the king's attempt at outlining his opinion on the conduct of war.
The GCs and their Additionals are to date the best we have at consolidating these past attempts from many cultures at regulating the conduct of war. The objections from many but not all US generals over Fat Man and Little Boy, even after the horrors of the fire bombings missions were known, are clear indicators that there were internal conflicts in the military leadership because of the lack of indisputable precepts on these valuations and calculus. If God Himself, in any incarnation other than burning bushes, dreams or vague figures in rocks and trees, can make it so undeniable His wishes on how mankind
SHOULD kill ourselves in our anger, the US military would welcome His opinions.
The Quran and related Islamic literature are unclear so al-Qaeda and the Taliban took the broadest interpretation and erased any distinctions between combatant and non-combatant status. The Quran is not our book. Take a sober look at our current nuclear arsenal...Read below...
International Court of Justice
However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of facts at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State is at stake.
...And be glad that we did not adopt the same attitude as they have and be true to your slander that we shoot first and justify later.
When one side so easily discard the combatant and non-combatant distinctions for its enemy, like how al-Qaeda and the Taliban have done in order to expedite an offensive operation, be it to hijack enemy airliners or to suicide bomb a marketplace, it would be equally easy to make the same discard for itself. Hence al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iraqi insurgency were able to quickly blend themselves with the general non-combatant population in order to take advantage of the other side's stricter respect for what they hold in contempt. They are counting on the other side's reluctance to liberalize whatever criteria there may be regarding military necessity to enhance their survival in the face of overwhelming superiority. Sadly, there are many Western apologists who sees nothing wrong with tactics like using human shields or even suicide bombing marketplaces when their pets are facing superior forces that respects even unclear guides on the conduct of war.
Erasure of the combatant and non-combatant distinctions naturally would negate the need for any proportionality calculus and would make the prosecution of
ANY war, conventional or nuclear, much easier. Of course, by the time we are done, even without resorting to nuclear weapons, given our technological advantages and the same ruthlessness we displayed against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, there would be no need to justify ourselves to anyone in any war regarding any conduct. The danger is real that the battlefield tactics of al-Qaeda, its ilk and their Western apologists are influencing a move towards a redefinition of the current GCs and their Additionals, potentially to the detriments of civilians in future conflicts. Your slander now, that we shoot first and justify later, may later end up as high praise.
