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Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

Totally different war structure.

The onus of protecting journalists (and medical workers) falls on the military regardless of how difficult the war they’re trying to prosecute is.

How many journalists did the US kill in 20 years of OEF/OIF?

I'm not condoning the death of anyone.

I am however pointing out the very significant differences between what the original comment is referring to and what is happening and what might be driving the largest (if true) difference in numbers.

I didn’t say you were. I am pointing out a more directly analogous war to demonstrate that similar militaries have waged similar wars against similar adversaries for far, far greater spans of time yielding far fewer journalist deaths.

I am also pointing out that “this war is extra hard to prosecute” is not actually justification for certain actions. The difficulty of fighting the war falls on the people fighting the war, including the difficulty of protecting civilians during that war. What else would any standards or laws mean if that weren’t the case? The whole premise of these standards is to set a ceiling on what sort of awful conditions can be allowed during warfare.

Thirteen for OIF: https://cpj.org/reports/2006/01/js-killed-by-us-13sept05/

> The onus of protecting journalists (and medical workers) falls on the military regardless of how difficult the war they’re trying to prosecute is.

No it doesn't?

Just searched the International Criminal Court's English document on war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity for 'journalist' and found no results.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Ele...

1. Onus doesn’t mean legal requirement. Civilized nations can be, should be, and generally are held to standards far exceeding legal statutes.

2. They DO have an actual legal obligation to protect journalists as well, try searching for “civilian.” If they are targeting journalists (read: civilians) that would obviously be illegal.

You said "protecting" and protection is far different from "not target".

We have laws for an important reason, without them it's up to any individual to decide for themselves what is just at any given moment. What happens when Israel decides that what's fair and just seems barbaric to you or me? We agree on the rules ahead of time so that we can act accordingly.

If you want war crimes to include "must protect journalists", then I'd suggest your best chance at realizing that goal would be to get the legal codes modified.

You said journalists, not civilians. If you want to talk about civilians now not journalists, that's a new topic.

> Onus doesn’t mean legal requirement. Civilized nations can be, should be, and generally are held to standards far exceeding legal statutes.

Are they? USA literally has a law on the books that authorizes bombing the netherlands if any of their troops are ever held responsible. Trump pardoned 4 people who masacared civilians (including 2 children) in Iraq

The west doesn't just not go beyond the legal requirements, it flouts the legal requirements when convinent.

Proof forbthe claim about the US bombing the Netherlands please.

GP is referring to the "Hague Invasion Act", aka "American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002" passed under GW Bush to authorize a US invasion of The Hague, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution [by the ICC] or rescue them from custody. Originally drafted in response to the Iraq invasion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

Oh dear... I knew the US is one of the few to not recognize the ICC. Never heard of Section 2008. The wording so interesting, especially part covering also people of NATO allies: So theoretically, the US could sent Seal Team Six to extract a member of the Dutch armed forces from The Hague, and attack a NATO member in order to free a citizen from said NATO member. Theoretically, right after Seal Team Six delivered a wanted war criminal to The Hague. Well, I guess at least the strike is easy to position in that case...

Thanks for the throw back to the times of bad George W. policy and laws, almost forgot how bad it was over everything that happened since 2016...

Failing to protect and targeting is widely different, and it is not in good faith to claim the latter without evidence.

I think the argument is that its a lot easier to protect journalists if there are very few journalists in the war zone, so absolute numbers are the wrong way to look at it.

Essentially base rate fallacy.

So you don’t think there is a difference between a huge front across a country, and a tiny blob of very densely packed land, with a huge population density? Just something as simple as the chance of a bomb exploding near you is significantly higher in case of one.

I think the US chose not to level Baghdad and if it had, it would’ve been at least as catastrophic as what’s going on in Gaza. So no it’s not merely a matter of a different situation, it’s a matter of different decisions.

I agree. In Ukraine, combatants are not fighting from within an overpopulated prison camp.

Sorry, correction, Concentration Camp would be a proper term in this case. Prison implies a crime, the only crime is that they are born in an occupied land by a brutal occupier.

It's a very imperfect comparison, but at least it's a factual basis. If you have better data, please share it.

agree, this is not war. this is a genocide

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