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Comment by darkarmani | Hacker News Reader

What do you think used to happen with artillery strikes? It doesn't make it ok, but in war when under fire, they would call in air-strikes or artillery and clear a whole ridge. The difference is "the heat of battle" versus intelligence that 3 terrorist operatives where staying in a village of 300 people.

Military operations are not law enforcement. They aren't required to prevent all deaths other than combatants. I don't know where you draw the line on collateral damage, but to say that you can't kill any "innocents" is not practical.

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" but to say that you can't kill any "innocents" is not practical."

Yes, by all means, let us not burden our efficiency at slaughtering our fellow man with morality!

Why should the soldiers on the ground consider it moral that 5 of them die so that 1 less civilian dies?

Certainly that's an easy choice for you to make; you're not the one bearing the brunt of that decision.

It would seem that the civilians would be the ones bearing the brunt of those decisions.

More importantly, the issue at hand is that we don't know whether that decision was as clean-cut as you suggest, precisely because of the lack of transparency of our .gov and .mil.

Now, there are very sound opsec reasons for not making that information public, but when we are the foreign aggressor I believe that it is not an unreasonable burden to place on ourselves; indeed, it may help encourage caution when considering military adventures abroad.

Because they signed up for it and are paid to risk their lives. They then get another choice - they can refuse to go there. The civilians don't get that choice. There isn't much fair in the situation, but I sure dont think many people would argue that the civilians are in the position of strength.

First, because they are soldiers and that is what they signed up for to do.

Second, it was not 5 soldier lives versus 1 civilian, more likely it was 5 soldier lives versus 140 civilian lives.

Third, yes I myself would probably also make the same decision, favouring the lives of my friends over a bunch of foreigners who are probably on the enemies side.

That doesn't make it less wrong, if I was in that position, and I made that decision, I would still have to be tried for committing a war crime, because that's what it is.

Why don't we keep pretending that there is a way to wage war without innocents dying? Why don't we mention the morality of terrorists using villagers as body shields? There is some complicity for both the villagers and the terrorists in all of this as well.

Military operations are not law enforcement.

A side that operates like this doesn't get to call itself the "Good Guys" or call its opponents "Terrorists".

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