HeyHey LBJ How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

its disingenious to claim that the US is NOT targeting afghani civilians?

umm, you do understand that cruise missiles were designed primarily to avoid civilian damages.

if we didn't care about civilian casualities then we wouldn't be using 600,000 dollar cruise missiles for our strikes.

and, the navy wouldn't have switched from using more effective 2,000 pound bombs to less effective, but safe 500 pounders.

the US is going to extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualities, denying that is disingenious

The US military KNOWS the standard faliure rate of so-called "smart" munitions.

Put simply, it is a matter of mathematics that if you drop X number of bombs that some percent of X will land off target.

Now, as a matter of probablility (determined by population density around the targeted area) you can fairly accurately determined an expected number of civilian casulties for any military operation.

The end of this is that, surprise, that number is higher than zero.

For example, if you wante to launch 10,000 cruise missles into moderately populated landscape you could reasonably expect a certain number of civilian casualties. Lets say 100 to make up a number for the example.

If you agree to this military action with the math indicating that it is extremeley likeley that there will be at least 100 civilian casulties, this is an overt aknowledgement and planning of these deaths.

Does it really make such a large ethical difference to you that we don't plan which 100 civilians we are going to be killing? Does it make you feel so much better that these 100 will be randomley selected?

If we KNOW that our planned military action will lead to the death of a certain number of civilians, it is disengenous to suggest that it is 'accidental' that 100 civilians are dead.

The only 'accident' is WHICH PARTICULAR 100 civilians are dead. The 100 civilian deaths are considered an 'acceptable rate of collateral damage' for the operation.

Granted technology has lowered this number over the years, but as the operation in Afghanistan has shown, it is FAR from zero still.

So, in a very real ethical sense, when the US military drops a preponderance of bombs over an area where civilians live they are planning to kill a certain number of civilians.

QED

next?

Bullshit. Knowing that civilians will die soes not mean that the Military is TRYING to kill them. Don't try to paint this picture as being one where civilian lives are being callously written off. The US military is obviously trying to AVOID killing civilians.

The US military is not trying to kill civilians. And, yes, we know there will be civilian casualties in any war-- it's simply unavoidable. What we can do is try to minimize those casualties as best as humanly possible.]

If I or my relatives are civilian victims of the war-- so be it.

It is not moral to recoil in front of this terror, because if we do not stop them now, the likely result will be that the United States will suffer the use of a weapon of mass destruction by fanatics. If we sit on our asses and try to negotiate peace, we are inviting the death of thousands of civilians.

I agree Ryan. As Americans we should be willing to die to stop the killing of Afghani civilians. We have had a fat, spoiled, pampered existance. They have already suffered an incredibly destitute life.

Therefore, even if we get more terrorist attacks carried out upon us during the time we are correcting our foreign policy to cure the hate we get and so richly deserve around the world, we must be willing to sacrifice ourselves and our relatives.

The Afghanis have sacrificed enough. I am willing to be a civilian casulty to save the innocents in Afghanistan from murder at the hands of the US War Machine.

Q: How many Afghanis does it take to equal an investment banker.

Ryan: A WHOLE LOT!

To argue that the US is not responsible for civilan deaths that it knows will happen [even racist ryan agrees that third world deaths are 'unaviodable' if we our to save our lily-white lives] is ridiculous.
Thats like a person saying it was an 'accident' that she developed lung cancer from smoking. Basic ethics dictate that if you are fully aware of them, then you are responsible for all of the consequences of your actions.
Its like yelling 'fire' in a movie theatre. True you weren't 'intentionally' trying to cause a stampede, but because you had a reasonable reason to beleive that this would be the consequence of your action, you are responsible for it. The US military knows its actions will kill innocent people, and does them anyway. therefore it is responsible for these deaths.
just like the terrorists.

Emma

Preach on, Sister!

we are not trying to kill civilians.

american military strategy for the past 10-20 years has been almost obsessed with the concept of reducing civilian casualities. any cursory research into the "western way of warfare" or "liberal warfare" will present to you literally hunderds of articles and books on this rather profound shift in US military policy.

oh wait, this requires reading from sources other then chomsky and zinn, my bad.


if the US was indifferent to civilian casualities, then why:
1) do we use cruise missiles that cost from anywhere between $600,000-2,000,000 apiece when a few conventional gravity bombs do the same job just as well?

2) why was the navy and air force ordered to switch from 2,000 pound munitions to less effective, but relatively "safer" 500 pound bombs?

3) why are US pilots putting themselves at risk by flying low-altitude bombing raids when carpet-bombing from 40,000 feet is just as effective yet entails no risk?

again, the US is going to almost extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualities, much at the expense of our operational/military goals.

and to say that we are doing this only to avoid bad press is a bit disingenious. after all, the decision to switch from gravity bombs to precision munitions was decided long before the afghan crises.

oh, and if the US is indifferent to afghani suffering, then why before sept 11 did the US contribute 80% of all the humanitarian aid that afghanistan received?

i find it ridiculous that so much of the muslim and arab world is expressing profound sympathy with the afghani population, yet left it to the US to contribute far more to the afghani population then its own relative share of world economic wealth.

<<<<So, in a very real ethical sense, when the US military drops a preponderance of bombs over an area where civilians live they are planning to kill a certain number of civilians. >>

umm, no.
planning implies a conscious decision to cause this harm, and more importantly intent to do so. as you yourself freely admit this damage is entirely accidental.

civilians always die in warfare. are you people truly so naive as to not believe that?

and again, it is so easy to just hate america and blame them for the world's ills. if you are intellectually lazy and dishonest then so be it. but remember that almost every political issue is multifaceted and contains many shades of gray. to restate an earlier fact, the US supplied afghanistan with 80% of its humanitarian aid BEFORE sept 11.

with 25% of the country dependant upon int'l humanitarian aid for survival, this meant that the United States kept a whopping 20% of the country alive.

and again, remember that although the US has around 50 or so percent of the world's economy (actually may be done to 40), most of that is from our service oriented economy. when it comes to resources (like grain for example) we only sit on around 20-25% of the world's resources.

in other words, we were contributing FAR more to afghani humanitarian aid both in absolute and relative terms then the rest of the world COMBINED.

The US provided 80% of the humanitarian aid to afghanistan? don't you mean non-profit organizations working with in the US which the governmnet has no part of?

also the US sure didn't care about civilian deaths when it supported terrorists all through out the 80's and before.

no, the World Food Program is the main giver of afghan aid, and the US is far and away the biggest contributer to its afghan program