<Reflecting back what you understand is one way to avoid misunderstandings - I think it's the best way, personally.>
OK. I'll accept that. And continue re-parsing your parsing of.....
<1) We know that deer hunters sometimes shoot other deer hunters.
2) Knowing this, deer hunters deliberately hunt deer.
3) Therefore, deer hunters deliberatly shoot other deer hunters.>
When society decides to allow a yearly ritual, where a lot of drunk (or hung-over) men with guns wander the woods, looking for large mammals to kill, that's a decision to allow a certain amount of "friendly fire" casualties. No hunter deliberately shoots another specific hunter (well, almost never...). But, allowing the hunt, is a deliberate decision to allow a situation where, every year, hunters are shot. That cost is measurable and predictable. It's a cost we've collectively, and knowingly, decided is worth the benefit.
<1) We know in advance that sometimes civilians will be killed in wars.
2) Knowing this, we deliberately go to war.
3) Therefore, we deliberately kill civilians.>
Yes! The only thing I'd change is "sometimes" into "always". Given the current state of technology, civilian casualties are not just possible, but inevitable. And, in a guerrilla war, (like the Intifada, or our fight against Al Queda, or what the Iraqi and Afghan wars are becoming), the majority of the dead will inevitably be civilians.
You've actually got a very good point. And I'll admit, my position here has weaknesses. Let me try to explain, using an example I'm very familiar with:
Vaccinations kill. This is known, and provable, from a huge amount of data. Yet, the decision is made, to do mass vaccinations. The reason is because the alternative kills more people. If you vaccinate everybody, one in 10 million may die from it. Before vaccinations were available, there were periodic epidemics, where perhaps 1 in 100 would die. The right choice is the one where the fewest die; there are no real-world choices where nobody dies. So, yes, the decision to do mass vaccinations, is a decision to deliberately kill a few people. And that is the right choice.
This is a cost/benefit analysis, and the only honest way to do this accounting, is to add up all the costs, all the dead, no matter how they died, no matter whether intentional or not. When doing a cost/benefit analysis, it is dishonest to say, "We aren't going to count those deaths, because they were unintended, or because it wasn't in the Procedure Manual to kill them." If it happened, and happened because of the original choice, it's a cost, and the responsibility lies with those who made the original decision. The reason most cost/benefit analysis fails, is because the list of "costs" is incomplete.
You're trying to do this cost/benefit analysis, and delete the thousands of dead civilians from the "cost" side of the equation, because no U.S. officer instructed his soldiers to "go kill the civilians on this list". I say it's still a cost, and we are still responsible, because they died as a result of the decision to do Regime Change. And, further, that there were alternatives not chozen, where fewer would (probably) have died. |
