Posted on 01/24/2010 5:22:26 AM PST by debka
As the uses of force in Somalia, Kosovo and Iraq show, Western armies are very concerned about protecting the lives of their soldiers, and to that end are willing to risk many civilian lives. They also find acceptable the notion that civilian lives can be forfeited in order to attain important military goals. Israel’s Gaza operation clearly shows that Israeli commanders successfully followed the requirements of the administrative model of the principle of proportionality. The IDF required commanders to take humanitarian law into account in the planning stages of the operation. Legal advisors were involved in the planning of many operations and provided advice regarding specific targets. The right questions were asked, checks were made, and the incidental damage to civilians was on the whole limited. For the full article got to: http://www.jcpa.org/text/proportionality.pdf
(Excerpt) Read more at jcpa.org ...
re: Western armies are very concerned about protecting the lives of their soldiers, and to that end are willing to risk many civilian lives
This is from the intro to the article. It’s so full of BS that IMHO you need not bother to read any more.
This one statement has it directly opposite of how the US approaches conflict. Its claim that we sacrifice civilian live to protect the lives of our soldiers is pure BS.
No country in history has made it as dangerous for its fighting forces to engage the enemy by having ROE that are heavily weighted against them.
I didn’t have the stomach to read the entire article. Perhaps I’m mistaken. If one of you can make it through the article please let me know if I’m wrong.
The approach should be one of telling our enemies “Don’t make us come over there and deal with you, because if you do we’ll be loaded for bear and the lives of our troops will be utmost in our mind!”
Do what? Has the author been paying attention for the last 15 years? Does the author have a clue about the RoE that the US armed forces have been operating under in Afghanistan? So incredible, I can't bring myself to bother to read the rest of the "analysis."
The truth is the a war is only over when the loser acknowledges defeat. Often that will not occur until the loser is beaten, broken, and exhausted—and not just his military, but his civilian population as well. They have to be cured of ANY illusion that they could have won. Our current ROEs are designed to prevent this from happening. By inflicting targeted, pinprick strikes we may hurt the enemy, but we won’t defeat him. I think our senior military leaders know this, but PC prevents them from speaking out. I don’t think our populations is up for waging this kind of war either. So....we will have an eternal stalemate.
Poster seems to have joined FR just today and so far posts only long pdf essays from JCPA.org...Not sure what his/her point is, as he/she doesn’t provide any additional comment.
Western armies are very concerned about protecting the lives of their soldiers, and to that end are willing to risk many civilian lives. They also find acceptable the notion that civilian lives can be forfeited in order to attain important military goals.
beeeeee essssss
By inflicting targeted, pinprick strikes we may hurt the enemy, but we won’t defeat him. I think our senior military leaders know this, but PC prevents them from speaking out.
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I think they don’t speak out, for the same reason they didn’t speak out in Nam....they are looking out for their careers in the military and afterward.
About 90% of those killed in WWII were civilians. I don’t recall much porportionality in that war.
PS: Not a good choice of screen name in terms of credibility.
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