The entire point of war is to kill people and break things. It's an ugly dirty business and collateral damage will always be a part of it. Somehow a lot of people have come to believe that there can be a "nice" war where children aren't burned to death and city's aren't leveled. It doesn't work that way. The primary targets in armed conflict have changed, but those targets are often surrounded by people that are simply trying to survive.
I agree that every war has had "collateral damage;" dead, innocent civilians. Although we could reduce the numbers if we wanted to.
But the entire point of war? Not territory? Not ideology? Not resources? They get violent, we get violent. Are we confessing to not knowing any other way? To not try diplomacy with an "intractable" enemy? Is it impossible, or is using our might just easier and more profitable than a more peaceful solution? Only our bombs and planes can stop this, not our brains?
Since our enemies there have no air forces to speak of, the Syrian military notwithstanding, are we playing this game as fairly as we could, just bombing the heck out of cities, leaving no place for the fortunate citizens who survived to go home to? Is it good to create such a huge refugee crisis for the relatively few if any "fighters" in the buildings we destroy? Cities are in ruins. We've seen the pics. I guess we have really built up that mil./ind. complex we were so presciently warned about, itching for a fight. Can we bomb an ideology away, or will this be a never ending burden? Buildings, people here; cities, cultures there. We found our national pride, our collective resilience to the attacks. Are civilians in the Middle East able to find theirs through the decimation of a force far superior to fighters there, attacking from the air
at least partly indiscriminately? $8T since 9/11.
I'd rather be seen as a peacenik hippy, a pacifist, than a justifier of war. I fear how this chapter will be seen in a (hopefully) more peaceful future. I also fear that there is no end in sight, more casualties, more refugees of war. :-(
Why are residential buildings targeted with
no enemy in sight?
I guess that my links aren't read (I'll highlight):
"As Vox reported before, the US military has a civilian casualties problem.
For example, on May 26, Al Jazeera reported that more than 106 civilians, including 42 children, died during two days of bombing in Al-Mayadeen, Syria, by the coalition. The planes fired strikes at buildings that housed families of ISIS fighters. [a violation of the Fourth Geneva convention*]
US officials routinely note all the steps they take to ensure civilians aren’t harmed in an attack, such as gathering detailed intelligence and attacking sites during times when few noncombatants are likely to be in the area. However, Khan and Gopal couldn’t find a noticeable ISIS target near half of the strikes they visited.
Still, officials acknowledge, they take the necessary precautions to ensure civilians aren’t casualties of the war — even though they sometimes are.
“We’re not happy with it, and we’re never going to be happy with it,” Col. John Thomas, a spokesperson for the military command that oversees the war, told Khan and Gopal. “But we’re pretty confident we do the best we can to try to limit these things.”
Despite the advanced military techniques the coalition uses, however, it still cannot stop killing noncombatants because the US and its allies choose to fight ISIS primarily from the skies. It was inevitable that civilians would become collateral damage.
America is good at dropping bombs exactly where it wants to, but it can’t control the explosion and those who might get hurt as the dust settles. The Pentagon knows this, of course, but it has historically done a very poor job policing itself and its allies to take all available measures to minimize innocent deaths.
Thanks to Khan and Gopal, we now have statistics showing just how poor a job the military has done — and just how many civilians are paying the price."
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*
Some of the Relevant articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention:
Section I. Provisions common to the territories of the parties to the conflict and to occupied territories:
Article 33: Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage, reprisals:
No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
Pillage is prohibited.
Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited."
Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, collective punishment is a war crime. By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World War I and World War II. In the First World War, the Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity during the Rape of Belgium. In World War II, both the Germans and the Japanese carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that occurred at those places.[5] The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices "strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."
Additional Protocol II of 1977 explicitly forbids collective punishment. But as fewer states have ratified this protocol than GCIV, GCIV Article 33 is the one more commonly quoted.
Section III. Occupied territories:
Article 49: Deportations, transfers, evacuations:
Article 49. Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased. [me: are we destroying cities to rebuild them? What then if fighters reemerge? Destroy it all over again?]
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated. [me: are we playing fast and loose with the words, "to the greatest possible extent?"
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. [me: are we justified here? Are the leaflets a rationalization of our tacit detainment?]
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
The last paragraph has been understood to forbid the construction of settlements in occupied territory.
Article 50: Children:
Article 50. The Occupying Power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.
The Occupying Power shall take all necessary steps to facilitate the identification of children and the registration of their parentage. It may not, in any case, change their personal status, nor enlist them in formations or organizations subordinate to it.
Should the local institutions be inadequate for the purpose, the Occupying Power shall make arrangements for the maintenance and education, if possible by persons of their own nationality, language and religion, of children who are orphaned or separated from their parents as a result of the war and who cannot be adequately cared for by a near relative or friend.
A special section of the Bureau set up in accordance with Article 136 shall be responsible for taking all necessary steps to identify children whose identity is in doubt. Particulars of their parents or other near relatives should always be recorded if available.
The Occupying Power shall not hinder the application of any preferential measures in regard to food, medical care and protection against the effects of war which may have been adopted prior to the occupation in favour of children under fifteen years, expectant mothers, and mothers of children under seven years.
Article 53: Prohibited destruction:
Article 53. Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.
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ICRC on definitions of "occupation."
1. What is occupation?
Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations (HR) states that a " territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised. "
According to their common Article 2, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 apply to any territory occupied during international hostilities. They also apply in situations where the occupation of state territory meets with no armed resistance.
The legality of any particular occupation is regulated by the UN Charter and the law known as jus ad bellum. Once a situation exists which factually amounts to an occupation the law of occupation applies – whether or not the occupation is considered lawful.
Therefore, for the applicability of the law of occupation, it makes no difference whether an occupation has received Security Council approval, what its aim is, or indeed whether it is called an “invasion”, “liberation”, “administration” or “occupation”. As the law of occupation is primarily motivated by humanitarian considerations, it is solely the facts on the ground that determine its application.
2. When does the law of occupation start to apply?
The rules of international humanitarian law relevant to occupied territories become applicable whenever territory comes under the effective control of hostile foreign armed forces, even if the occupation meets no armed resistance and there is no fighting.
The question of " control " calls up at least two different interpretations. It could be taken to mean that a situation of occupation exists whenever a party to a conflict exercises some level of authority or control within foreign territory. So, for example, advancing troops could be considered bound by the law of occupation already during the invasion phase of hostilities. This is the approach suggested in the ICRC's Commentary to the Fourth Geneva Convention (1958).
An alternative and more restrictive approach would be to say that a situation of occupation exists only once a party to a conflict is in a position to exercise sufficient authority over enemy territory to enable it to discharge all of the duties imposed by the law of occupation. This approach is adopted by a number of military manuals. [me: does this give us justification that the Fourth Convention doesn't apply to our strikes? Deniability?]
