Ethics in war?

A novel concept.

Maybe the soldiers should shed their bullet proof flak jackets to make it more fair?

I am with Foxy and Shadow here. I don't see how bombing a building from 2 km away while sitting in a plane is that much different from sitting 1000 km away. Or for that matter from ship bombarding a shoreline from 10km, or artillery from 40 km.

As for these drone attacks stories on assassination, they seem to miss the bigger picture, as usual. The US has some 6,000 drones. Only 100 odd carry weapons. http://islamonline.com/news/print.php?newid=318109 So they are used mainly for reconnaissance, not assassinations.

On a side note, I love the irony of finding the best overview of the topic in an Islamic news site.

What's ridiculous is being perplexed about minimising the amount of our troops in harms way because it's what .... more SPORTING?.

Please.

I think you may be reading a text that isn't there, Hasbeen.

My "point of view" is that we have changed the way that we conduct warfare, and because it is different, it surely calls for a different set of rules.

We do not charge soldiers with murder when they kill people while doing the job we ask of them, and quite rightly so. They are protected by the Geneva Convention, which provides guidelines on what is an acceptable form of warfare.

Here we have a situation where CIA civilians are taking aim, not soldiers. The people they target are not necessarily soldiers either. I'm simply asking, where does this fit in the scheme of things? Should the Geneva Convention be expanded to encompass their activities too?

Or are we getting so cynical, that we just say, let them get on with it, why should I care?

Don't forget, that technology knows few boundaries. The natural extension of this is that if one day someone in a cave in Waziristan decides that you are a danger to them, they will have little hesitation in pushing the button.

But it's ok if we get them first, right?

>>Ethics in war? A novel concept.<<

Not novel at all, Shadow Minister. Historically, ethics have been observed until relatively recently. It started to decay when the British invented concentration camps during the Boer War - "not cricket, old boy". And quite a few objected to mustard gas in WWI trenches as being ethically dubious.

I might be persuaded to accept "old fashioned", though, instead of novel.

All views have value.
But I too am with those who find nothing wrong with using these things.
We are involved in a fight with primitive pure hatred.
A hatred that seems would exist no mater what we do.
Murder and worse is deserving of no support.
I stand with America using these tools.

Dear Pericles,

For millenia, people have hoped for peace
in their time. Today, as usual, there's
no shortage of grand proposals for peace -
such as new defensive devices...

Yet arms races and wars continue as before,
sometimes creating the discouraging idea
that hopes for peace are too "idealistic."

I think we are likely to be disappointed
if we expect dramatic results in the form
of an immediate end to war and militarism.

However - you're right - we should apply
popular pressures to try to influence
government policies. The prospects for peace
look more encouraging once we recognise that
war and peace are really opposite ends of a
continuum, and that movement along this
continuum, in either direction, is the result
of social processes that develop and change
under the influence of government policies
and popular pressures.

A few years ago I compiled a selected anthology of
anti-nuclear Australian poetry as part of my
tertiary studies. We could choose any theme -
but to me an anthology based on an anti-nuclear
theme of Australian poetry became the assignment
I had to do because I feared that our world was
becoming obsessed with the problems of hatred
and aggression, and that it would allow peace and
love to be regarded as soft and weak. Yet our
survival depends on their dominance. Otherwise
Stephen Vincent Benet's prophecy will come true:

"Oh where are you coming from soldier,
gaunt soldier
with weapons beyond any reach of my mind
with weapons so deadly
the world must grow older
and die in its tracks if it does not turn kind."