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Comment by lostlogin | Hacker News Reader

Do many people think that bombing the patients is the acceptable answer?

The hospital really needs to move the patients out immediately if the local military starts military operations from within hospital (which is basically a war crime).

Then, if the commanders force patients to stay by threat of violence to stay as human shields, that's a further war crime. The responsibility of casualties here is more with those using patients like this, than anyone else.

This seems like a long-winded way of saying "yes we bomb patients". Do you actually believe this?

There's probably a reason why we don't start killing hostages in an hostage situation.

Typically because the cost of not killing the hostage takers is basically the risk of dead hostages. There's nothing else at stake. You can safely assume that the next plane full of hostages that has terrorists at the controls will be shot down.

I'm not really advocating yes or no to bombing hospitals or schools to kill terrorist leaders hiding within - but your assertion is false. We will kill the hostages. All actual breaches involve a risk of % losses and that's baked into the decision to go in. Just a person somewhere trying to make a decision about the best outcome, for the "greater good".

Obviously using human shields like this is criminal. Do you see the people who bomb hospitals as baring any responsibility?

I believe many in the military would simple say that Total War doctrine, present since perhaps the US Civil War and definitely by World War I, would argue bombing patents to get at command-and-control would be acceptable during times of war.

Now before everyone buries me, total war is a rather rare military state, and probably only present a select few times in the 20th century.

About one million Germans were dead or wounded as a result of allied bombing. Almost certainly entire hospitals were blown up too, in Dresden if nothing else.

A small prize to pay for not having nazies stomp around my backyard (almost literally, there are remnants of a nazi bunker not half a mile from where I live).

Area bombing was largely ineffective and German production increased during the heaviest periods. In the view of many, it was a crime committed by a vindictive group of criminals. Area bombing has some well documented cases of slowing down the fall of nazis (hindering troop advances, taking away a lot of war production resources etc) but little evidence of speeding up the end.

Edit: good book on the subject https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/201...

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