Civilian deaths in Vietnam--- not mere allegations. Plenty of court martial records and at least two paperbacks -- Rumors of War and Marine Sniper (starts with the assassination of a 12 year old boy) go into detail. Fact is that as, Sherman said, war is hell. There are always civilian and friendly fire casualties. The biggest mistake people make is not aiming everything at the enemy leadership. It is contemptible to kill civilians, enemy underlings, or your own troops unless its from a near miss aimed at the enemy leader who presumably is responsible for starting or letting the war start.
I suspect in just a few years we will have missiles with juju eyeballs that can track down and kill trouble makers individually. This should change the nature of war considerably. The Nuremburg trials were a great start. Now, if we could just have some of these before the death and destruction of the wars. "Acts against the Peace of the World" punished by the most serious punishments in that country's laws should be the offense. What those acts are to be developed in human common law. On conviction, the actors would be outlaws -- subject to punishment by anyone who could acquire them, with a special huge award to any country that turned over their own for punishment.
We could easily start with a bunch of Americans -- Kissinger, Rusk, Reagan, Bush, Schwartzkopf, --- just to get the ball rolling, and on the understanding that Hussein, etc. would be along shortly. |
