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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SARMAN who wrote (196493)	8/9/2006 8:01:07 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"This case", the case we were talking about was the UN observer post. Where there even children there? If there where did Israel know it? Also you can know that there are innocent people at the target, and that still doesn't make the attack murder. Its still collateral damage. If you kill a huge number of civilians, and do no significant damage to the enemy then the attack was unwise. If you knew that exact combination would occur you could even argue it was an evil act to intentionally make an attack that you knew would be pointless and cause such a huge level of collateral damage, but it would still be collateral damage, not murder. "Collateral damage", does not automatically equal "completely acceptable". There is such a thing as "unacceptable collateral damage". OTOH while its important to try and reduce collateral damage if you take the efforts to far you can get a greater number of civilian deaths because you can't bring the war to a close, and a long run of extraordinarily careful but mostly ineffective attacks eventually kill more people than a shorter run of attacks executed with a more normal level of care. The main point of war is still winning. If you aren't going to do what it takes to win, then you might as well throw down your arms and beg for your enemies mercy. Exactly what level of collateral damage is acceptable for what level of achievement towards weakening the enemy or defending yourself, or winning the war, is something that could be debated endlessly, but the people on the ground have to make their decisions quickly, and even the people back in headquarters picking bombing targets don't have an unlimited time. Paralysis by analysis is unacceptable during a war.