good point

Reader comment on: Targeted Strikes and Collateral Damage

Submitted by Jonathan Savery (Thailand), Jan 28, 2012 03:31

Shoshana makes a fair point - both in terms of the precision attacks themselves and in terms of the attitude to "collateral" damage which great efforts are taken to avoid or minimise. There is a moral distinction between those who offer civilians for slaughter (as human shields) and those who not only strive to protect their own civilians but recognise the "innocence" of the enemy's offered human targets and seek to spare them. One is a death cult; the other - which is the morally better - values life.

As for targeted assassinations (which some recoil from on quite bogus moral grounds, often) when all else fails, how many would be alive today if, for instance, Pol Pot and his generals had been sent to meet their maker? Of course, a fair trial and a bringing to justice would be much preferred; but ask the mother who's about to be raped, then shot in the head along with her husband and children, which she'd rather have, The moral niceties of a court that won't sit - if at all - until after much much suffering and worse? Or a swift, summary removal of the evil doers, a halt to her own and her familiy's death and an end to the genocide?

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