Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - South Korean military ship sunk by torpedo possibly launched by North Korea.....

SportsDino · 03-26-2010, 01:34 PM

Na, it continues to work fine... if the target is important enough... kill the civilians. The notion that war is something that can be done cleanly is the greatest tragedy or crime perpetrated on human morality in the past two decades.

I'd probably be considered a person of great evil for even thinking such in our PC culture... but really it is exactly like a hostage situation in a bank heist. Do everything you can to save each hostage, but as the threat to life escalates there is a breaking point where the risk to a particular hostage is outweighed by the cost of more lives.

Are we any better in Iraq with all our supposed smart weapons and 'clean tactics'? Civilian casualty estimates are fairly large, not to mention the daily interference in people's routines with an occupying force and a guerilla war around them constantly for years. At least when it comes to only attacking concentrations of military hardware, after a point the civilians see a Korean tank rolling into their village they are going to run for the hills.

Not to mention there are a lot of conventions of war that hiding among civilians is pretty much a 'war crime', and there are no conventions (other than our culture) saying that civilians cannot die if fighting erupts among combatants entrenched in population centers. IT ALREADY IS HAPPENING, so you can make the argument that my way saves lives, even if on the surface it is more vicious.

Clarification: civilian casualties in recent wars are significantly reduced proportionately to other wars in history. Tactics and technology help a lot to reduce the toll on civilians, but the amount of damage to civilians has and always will be significant. Whether troops are embedded among the populace or not. They should be content that at least we are not firebombing cities for the hell of it anymore (see WWII). If there was to be a war between major powers I would expect the civilian casualty rate and those old tactics to make a return... its easy to take it light when you have a superior advantage, but in a fight for your life against a matched foe you do what you have to.

03-26-2010, 01:34 PM	#28
SportsDino College Prospect Join Date: Oct 2001	Na, it continues to work fine... if the target is important enough... kill the civilians. The notion that war is something that can be done cleanly is the greatest tragedy or crime perpetrated on human morality in the past two decades. I'd probably be considered a person of great evil for even thinking such in our PC culture... but really it is exactly like a hostage situation in a bank heist. Do everything you can to save each hostage, but as the threat to life escalates there is a breaking point where the risk to a particular hostage is outweighed by the cost of more lives. Are we any better in Iraq with all our supposed smart weapons and 'clean tactics'? Civilian casualty estimates are fairly large, not to mention the daily interference in people's routines with an occupying force and a guerilla war around them constantly for years. At least when it comes to only attacking concentrations of military hardware, after a point the civilians see a Korean tank rolling into their village they are going to run for the hills. Not to mention there are a lot of conventions of war that hiding among civilians is pretty much a 'war crime', and there are no conventions (other than our culture) saying that civilians cannot die if fighting erupts among combatants entrenched in population centers. IT ALREADY IS HAPPENING, so you can make the argument that my way saves lives, even if on the surface it is more vicious. Clarification: civilian casualties in recent wars are significantly reduced proportionately to other wars in history. Tactics and technology help a lot to reduce the toll on civilians, but the amount of damage to civilians has and always will be significant. Whether troops are embedded among the populace or not. They should be content that at least we are not firebombing cities for the hell of it anymore (see WWII). If there was to be a war between major powers I would expect the civilian casualty rate and those old tactics to make a return... its easy to take it light when you have a superior advantage, but in a fight for your life against a matched foe you do what you have to. Last edited by SportsDino : 03-26-2010 at 01:38 PM.