Yup, war is hell.

--
Ed Huntress

Yes it is, but that's what we say when we really mean tough **** for the
innocent people we kill as we go after the ones we want.

Or tough **** for us when the killing is on the other side.

Except for one thing, the killing of our people is so much less than it is
on the other side. Remember we're masters of war, so when we inflict harm on
our enemies we do it at a far higher rate than any of them do to us. In the
process we kill enormous numbers of innocents. Iraq is proof of that. Look
at the amount of insurgents we killed compared to how many civilians we
killed. It's the civilians who have the high casualty rate.



We offed a whole
lot of them in Panama when we went after one guy, Manuel Noriega. Our
view
is if innocents get killed by us that's just the cost of doing business.
You'll notice that our attitude is quite different when our people get
killed as collateral damage.

You have a short-sighted view of civilian casualties, Hawke. There use to
be
many, many more, in nearly every war.

No I don't. You're looking at war as it is recently. Look at it historically
and you find that it used to be soldiers and warriors who got killed not the
civilians. Look at the numbers in WWI. Relatively few civilians were killed
but millions of soldiers died. Same with the Civil War. Historically wars
were fought among soldiers and civilian deaths were small. The 2nd WW was
the aberation.


We make lots of enemies killing by so many
civilians. By now it's to the point where we're just about out of
friends.
Talk about isolationists, we've isolated ourselves about as much as a
country can. Not by choice but by our actions. It's just more of the
stuff
we've been pulling for years now.

War is reaching a critical stage. In attempting to minimize civilian
casualties we've created a hyper-sensitivity to them. This is a political
complication that suggests war is going to go through another evolution,
and
probably fairly soon. I have no idea how it will evolve.

We may be trying to minimize civilian casualties but we're doing a bad job
of it. Look at Afghanistan. We've killed not only innocent civilians but
quite a few allies as well. It's true the attitude towards killing civilians
is a lot better than it was in WWII but well intentioned or not we're still
killing a lot of people we didn't intend to.

I'm not sure war is going through any major changes. It looks pretty much
the same as it always has to me. Different people and different weapons but
aside from that it's not very different than in the past. As to the future,
a prophet I'm not.


Meantime, the "asymmetrical warfare" metaphor has become an apology for
the
fact that insurgents can hide among and behind civilians, forcing their
adversaries to kill some civilians or capitulate. This, of course, is a
serious war crime, a capital offense, under international law. But
insurgents know that war crimes tribunals have become a farce and they
have
virtually no chance of being prosecuted.

I think the insurgents know they will either be killed or imprisoned for
life. They see the legal system of the infidels as a farce. They know if
they are caught for anything it's prison for life. I think they're probably
right. As far as hiding behind civilians that isn't a new idea in warfare
either. Like I said, aside from weapons I don't see a lot of changes in
warfare.


Stay tuned. Something will happen. Don't bet the farm on what it will be.

My bet is that for the most part things will remain the same. Now if we stop
using force to get what we want that will surprise me.

Hawke