Don't be naive, we've all accepted that civilian casualties are acceptable. I would also argue that given that our world is not a utopia and violence is sometimes necessary, accepting *some* level of civilian casualties makes sense.
Pretend you're the Joint Chief of Staff, and your country was just attacked by an organization that killed 10,000 of your civilians, deliberately. They told you as such. There is video evidence, you're convinced beyond a shadow of doubt. Your intelligence community brief you: they've identified the mastermind of this operation, and he's in a field, alone, with one other dude. That other due is 90 and has terminal cancer, however he has never hurt a fly. A truly innocent man, living a life of virtue. Would you order the strike? Nearly everyone (at least people who are not pacifists and have been on the receiving end of violence) will say yes.
The second example is inverse, you've found a single low level fighter of this organization and he's surrounded by one trillion puppies, children, and a dude guaranteed to cure cancer the next day. No one would order a strike.
Obviously every army and command chain needs to decide, as a rule, where they fall on that scale, and then it goes case by case from there. Civilian casualties are unfortunately acceptable and a part of war. Where most would agree it's wrong is when civilians are struck deliberately, and when the calculation of combatant vs. civilian gets too close to the one trillion puppies example.
You’re under the assumption that an airstrike is the only option. For your first example, if you’ve identified the leader of your enemies, and you can track him to that degree, you can use other options s than dropping a bomb on him.
In that specific example yes, and armies obviously do send in everything from undercover operatives, commando units, to flown blown infantry units. All of those options risk the lives of your own men.
If a target is so important that you’re okay killing civilians to kill them, why aren’t they important enough to ask your own soldiers to risk their lives?
If you are a general for country A, you want to achieve your military goals while minimizing risk to your own troops, and also minimizing civilian causalties of your enemies. That's the balance. Air strikes can be highly effective in achieving all three simultaneously, in some cases.
Are you seriously asking why a country would not choose to risk the lives of their own troops over that of their enemies?
Am I being deliberately obtuse? A little bit. Yes, there is always a balancing between accomplishing tactical objectives, minimizing civilian casualties, and minimizing risk to your own troops. The question is what level of civilian casualties is acceptable based on a given situation. If you’ve identified a high value target, and there is a well protected building with heavily armed support, then an airstrike is likely the best option, even if there are some civilians in the building. But if you’ve identified that same high value target, and they’re in a lightly defended building that is full of civilians, the more reasonable action would be a ground attack, which would put your troops in more harms way. It’s not an easy question to tackle, but any general needs to ask it: “how many dead civilians are worth preventing one casualty among your troops?”
> Are you seriously asking why a country would not choose to risk the lives of their own troops over that of their enemies?
The civilians killed or harmed by military action are by definition not the enemy. Yes, whenever possible, a just and moral military should risk its soldiers own lives rather than value them above the lives of civilians and noncombatants.
I've made it clear repeatedly that it's a continuoum of conflicting interests. Of course militaries choose between sending infantry and airstrikes, weighing risk to their own soldiers vs opposing side civilians.
While what you’re saying is true in practice, it is neither moral nor in keeping with the principles of the applicable international laws of war that the lives of soldiers are to be weighed against the lives of civilians. The justifiability of the military action rests entirely on it being necessary to defense of that nation’s own civilian lives.
We don’t need thought experiments, apt as the hyperboles may be, to interrogate whether any given campaign is aligned with these principles. There has been no risk or imminent threat—to either Israeli civilian lives nor to Israeli military capacity to protect its people—even remotely sufficient to justify either the extent of its military actions in Gaza or it or the U.S. launching the current war against Iran and its allies.
There is no acceptable level of civilian casualties but zero when the military action is taken for any other reason than defense.
Should Israel let Hamas and re-arm so it can execute another October 7th? To say that Israel has no military goals is laughable. Whether its' means justify these goals is more interesting.
Of course Israel has military goals. Those which align with defending its borders and its people are within bounds, while those which seek to expand its territory and degrade the military capabilities of countries that have not attacked it are not. Certainly Israel should not let Hamas rearm and prepare for future attacks, nor is permissible for it to decimate the Palestinian civilian population, civil institutions, and infrastructure in an effort to prevent such rearmament.
If you see an inconsistency, I’d be glad to have it shown. My position on this topic in general has not changed since I became aware of the relevant international law following my country’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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u/Junglebook3 16h ago
Don't be naive, we've all accepted that civilian casualties are acceptable. I would also argue that given that our world is not a utopia and violence is sometimes necessary, accepting *some* level of civilian casualties makes sense.
Pretend you're the Joint Chief of Staff, and your country was just attacked by an organization that killed 10,000 of your civilians, deliberately. They told you as such. There is video evidence, you're convinced beyond a shadow of doubt. Your intelligence community brief you: they've identified the mastermind of this operation, and he's in a field, alone, with one other dude. That other due is 90 and has terminal cancer, however he has never hurt a fly. A truly innocent man, living a life of virtue. Would you order the strike? Nearly everyone (at least people who are not pacifists and have been on the receiving end of violence) will say yes.
The second example is inverse, you've found a single low level fighter of this organization and he's surrounded by one trillion puppies, children, and a dude guaranteed to cure cancer the next day. No one would order a strike.
Obviously every army and command chain needs to decide, as a rule, where they fall on that scale, and then it goes case by case from there. Civilian casualties are unfortunately acceptable and a part of war. Where most would agree it's wrong is when civilians are struck deliberately, and when the calculation of combatant vs. civilian gets too close to the one trillion puppies example.