"Perhaps the events of September 11 might therefore be regarded as the last war of the second Christian millennium, instead of the first war of the third. In consequence, we implore you to react with discrimination, to target only those truly responsible, and to avoid the cruel and thoughtless errors characterizing humanity's blind and ethnocentric past." Uh, if people who are guilty get targeted, why isn't it a war? And what happens if America's Delta Force commandos can't kill/capture the bad guys without harming anyone else? Innocent people die in war. They particularly die in modern war, where weapons have a greater explosive capability and where the bad guys are often located in places with boatloads of civilians. I'd like to see a conflict where only the truly guilty are brought to justice. But it ain't gonna happen. I can see other positions on this conflict, and I respect those who approach and stand by them on their merits - but this one attempts to make both sides happy by appealing to a fantasy that won't and that can't come true. You can run a war and avoid an indiscriminate attitude towards civilians, but you eliminate their deaths entirely. You can either have no conflict and attempt to solve this via nonviolent means, or you can have violent conflict, which means that at least some innocent civilians will die. You can't have both.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:44 AM EST EST