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Comment by probably_wrong | Hacker News Reader

Some searching led me to this report from an NGO called "AirWars" [1] which, in connection with The Guardian, reports that "at least 22,679, and potentially as many as 48,308 civilians, have been likely killed by US strikes".

You can't bomb an apartment without also hitting the neighbors. And while we know the US has the the technology to hit a car driver without (physically) hurting the passenger, we also know that this is not the type of technology deployed regularly.

I don't think a drone operator would be naive enough to believe that they are killing exclusively military targets and no one else.

[1] https://airwars.org/tens-of-thousands-of-civilians-likely-ki...

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Israel will happily flatten a whole apartment complex to get one guy.

Israel actually has the capability of targeting a single apartment in an apartment building, and has done so dozens of times in the current war against Hezbollah.

Doesn’t that make it even worse that they also choose to flatten entire buildings?

Destroying civilian infrastructure and killing civilians is the current Israeli government's goal. Military advantage is just a nice window dressing for the Geneva Conventions.

Lot easier to steal land if there aren't any people living there (because the infrastructure to support modern life was destroyed).

To take out just the room where the target is requires knowing what room the target is in. They usually do not have that kind of information. Hamas has been on the front lines for decades, they know about concealment.

Does Israel actually have the capacity to target the whole of Hamas with those small accurate bombs, as they get intelligence on them? If Hamas is in the basement can the small bomb get them? And if they forgo the opportunity will it be possible to target that person again soon without civilians nearby?

They also have been giving civilians warnings to leave areas before they "flatten a whole apartment complex"

Hope they checked their text messages

Not so much anymore:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking

The real truth is that Israel is happy to flatten entire, crowded, apartment complexes. That "one guy" is just an excuse.

Most recent example (out of at least 100,000 examples in just these last 3 years alone) would be their "defence" (hah!) minister delightedly boasting how they have Gaza'fied South Lebanon and destroyed over 15,000 structures.

Careful, this is borderline antiseptic

seems small when compared to the overall effects of war

"An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting."

https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human

What point are you trying to make, exactly?

An important one that often that gets lost in "drone strikes bad" internet debating: the cost of the alternative.

If a nation is conducting drone strikes on another nation's territory, the alternative is usually conventional forces at scale on the ground*.

As the Iraq occupation showed, conventional ground forces at scale cause an even larger number of civilian deaths.

So drone strikes, if kinetic intervention is pre-decided, are a less-bad option from a civilian casualty perspective.

* Granted, there might be a decision not to deploy conventional forces because of the risk / cost, but if there are regular drone strikes, it feels like the aggressor country is past that Rubicon.

Isn't "if there are regular drone strikes, it feels like the aggressor country is past that Rubicon." kind of self-refuting?

Conventional forces aren't deployed in many instances where regular drone strikes are used, thus the country didn't feel it was the right risk/cost to deploy conventional forces.

At the very least, it's a statement that deserves more debate, and I'd point to the many examples of how reducing cost and risk tends to increase the rate of an activity.

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