> I’m not wise enough to see where the balance lies.

Oh, there is actually a very clearcut line for this; it's coincisively described by the following headline:

"If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding, We'd Ground Our Fleet"[⁰]

[⁰] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/if-a-dr...

I don't think its that simple. Weddings may constitute a collection of individuals key to a war effort and in striking a wedding one might prevent the devastation of a prolonged conflict. Also Middle Eastern weddings can occasionally be mis-interpreted as militant given the propensity for arms fire in celebration.

If a drone strike hit an American wedding they would ground their _home_ fleet. Its a key difference. The information for an electorate of a democratic state to make more empathetic choices are available its just a question of whether:

* The electorate are wilfully ignorant of foreign suffering (as its tortuous to read)

* The electorate are kept ignorant intentionally or unintentionally as a product of the conflict for eye balls between media institutions.

* The electorate are not able to make impactful choices due to the type of democracy they have.

I'd argue its a bit of every one of those things.

I prefer to measure things in outcomes and I would posit the major difference in supplying or not supplying arms to a conflict is merely the level of guilt from the origin of supply. People are still going to die be it by drone, missile, mortar, ak-47 or spear. We could argue that arms sales can enable conflict by giving one side an apparent advantage that they choose to capitalise on but that's a messy problem to investigate. Surely to wish to capitalise means that someone has already drawn the lines and is considering hostilities. What makes a war? The lines being drawn or the weapons or a combination of many factors multiplied over time and key events or decisions made by actors on either side? One may decide to war without advantage, one may choose not to war with advantage. So I don't think its as clear cut as weapon sales == war.

>> I don't think its that simple. Weddings may constitute a collection of individuals key to a war effort and in striking a wedding one might prevent the devastation of a prolonged conflict.

Same for a hospital (patching up wounded enemy combatants) or a school (educating future insurgents).

Or a nursery, football stadium, shopping mall, etc etc...

don't be so flippant. That's not at all what I was saying.

I'm not being flippant. You commented that there might be legitimate reasons to bomb a wedding. Well, there are similar reasons to bomb hospitals etc, yet we don't accept that this should be done.

If I misunderstood your original comment, please clarify.

you suggested bombing schools to "prevent future generations of insurgents". You're advocating genocide.

You were being flippant but now you're acting innocent over it which belies a fabricated ignorance that is further insulting.

Conflict and arms is a complex topic and simplifying it to "just don't kill people lol" is crass at best. Either engage with the arguments or go to a school about to be bombed in this perceived reality you've fabricated where I represent your perfect demon to squabble with.

If that wasn't clear enough: I am not fucking advocating genocide.

You said there may be merit to bombing weddings. Why is it any different to bombing hospitals, nurseries, scholyards etc? Those are all civilian targets.

Edit: In the spirit of reconcilliation, I would like to explain that I didn't accuse you of anything, much less advocating genocide (I don't even think that bombing a school is genocide; infanticide, at scale, maybe- but, genocide? I don't see that).

I felt you are trying to do something extremely risky, to justify killing Y civilians by the number X of combatants that would also be killed. I don't think Y > 0 can ever be morally justified and I don't think that a targeted strike against any number of enemy combatants in a civilian area is, either, no matter the tactical outcome. Dropping bombs on the heads of people going about peacefull activities is just wrong, any way you cut it. Hence my comment- we don't accept the bombing of hospitals, regardless of their tactical value as targets, so why would we accept bombing weddings to kill some terrorists?

It's clear you find the idea of bombing hospitals or schools revolting, yet you're OK with bombing a wedding? I don't understand that.

If its a wedding where a large number of key figures will be then its arguable.

Somehow I see that as far more rational outcome than a meeting of key figures in a nursery or a schoolyard unless you're going to war against babes or schoolchildren which suggests you have bigger problems.

Introducing the school/nursery begs the question though:

> If someone surrounds themselves with children 24/7 but commands an army or commits otherwise potentially savage deeds are they immortal in your eyes from a direct attack?

The blurring of combatants and non-combatants happens often in practice, especially as the scales tilt strongly toward one actor. Its easy to argue your point when your the scales are even and between completely non-civilian and professional armies but when those lines are blurred your position makes one completely incapable of action.

For example, if an army took its entire family onto the battlefield as civilians how would you respond? Would you consider the non-combatants civilian? Would you authorise the user of air-power against enemy positions? If a standing army has no barracks and operates from their respective family homes are their families still effectively civilians or just non-combatants and as murderable as an army technician or medic?

>> Its easy to argue your point when your the scales are even and between completely non-civilian and professional armies but when those lines are blurred your position makes one completely incapable of action.

I don't disagree. The current situation is that we're trying to find a balance between the perceived necessity of warfare and the undeniable horror of the consequences of it to civilian populations. It's absurd to think that we can nicely and cleanly separate war against a nation's army from war aginst that nation's people.

The obvious solution would be to not accept the necessity of warfare anymore. But I guess, we're very far from that.

> The obvious solution would be to not accept the necessity of warfare anymore. But I guess, we're very far from that.

One could argue that conflict is a consequence of human behaviour so I don't see that ever being a likely outcome. Nice to see we can somewhat agree. I just feel that coming down hard on either side is missing out on discussing the detail.

I don't see the conflict in Yemen as just but at the same time I feel like countries should have the freedom to declare war on neighbouring countries, especially given an uprising.

Sure, between the lines the Saudi Kingdom is trying to retain its puppet government but this is what we get from having allies that we don't see eye-to-eye with.

Historically, the primary tactic of organised armies was to attack the enemy's infrastructure, including their civilian base. For instance, in ancient times, military campaigns typically ended with the winning side pillaging and razing the defeated enemy's city and taking its civilian population as slaves (the ones who were docile enough- the rest were put to the knife). That was the case for the more merciful campaigners. Others simply slaughtered everyone and burned everything (e.g. the Mongols).

In recent years, we have this notion of battlefield morality, where armies are supposed to fight each other and an invading force is expected to occupy the enemy's territory _without_ proactively harming its civilians. Whether this is actually achieved in practice or not is a different matter (it is not- civilian populations are still the ones that bear the brunt of any invasion).

The thing is, modern morality leans very strongly away from attacking civilians with militaries. Again, whether this is at all possible in practice is a completely different issue, but what is certainly not equivocal, or "arguable" is that civilians must not be attacked deliberately.

You will notice for instance that even when the US bombs weddings or other civilian targets (it's usually the US) they never, ever, under any circumstances try to justify the killings. Instead, they explain the civilian deaths as a mistake and try to explain the mistake (the wedding participants were firing their AK-47s into the air as per custom, the bride's gown looked like an Islamic oriflame, the groom had a suspiciously long beard, or something equally absurd).

In other words, you might consider that bombing a wedding to kill an enemy lieutenant visiting it is "arguable"- but you are very certainly into a minority.

And like I say, that's some very dangerous arithmetic. We don't accept that innocent people should suffer in order to harm a legitimate target. You seem to be arguing that it's just a matter of how many innocents and how many legitimate targets we're talking about. There can clearly be no definitive answer, which opens the gates for a lot of what we currently recognise as war crimes.

Edit: removed a bit about genocide, to avoid further misunderstandings. Apologies.

You were suggesting killing civilians, in order to may be get a 'bad guy', which amounts to a war crime.

and when you bomb a military base you are killing non-combatants. Cooks, mechanics, administrators, a completely un-associated postie or truck driver might be delivering a parcel or supplies to the base.

These do not constitute war crimes but occupy this nebulous grey area named "collateral damage" at best and "war crimes" at worst.

In this case we are assuming that several if not many enemy commanders are attending a wedding and the question is asked whether the loss of lives at the wedding are "worth" the loss of lives through a protracted war that would arguably be the outcome if the enemy commanders continued operations.

I do not claim to have the answers but to merely state that this is not the solved mathematical and ethical conversation that some people assume it to be.

Well, consider where these drones would be most likely used, a lot of these recent bombing campaigns are taking place in Yemen these days, a country that has not attacked the U.S. and yet the U.S. is assisting Saudi Arabia there to conduct the strikes, even the ones where they know the majority would be civilians, including in the use of double-taps.

I'd argue that when you're the aggressor and are assisting a country that is one of the biggest human rights abusers on the planet, you do not get to claim moral superiority or any sort of gray area, you're just wrong and a war criminal, that's why I used the terminology.

I don't think the U.S. is in any position to judge how much someone's life is "worth", especially when not acting in self-defense, as in the case of Yemen, (or any recent U.S. intervention for that matter).

I can sort of see you point in the more general case, but in this case, where this drone would be used by the U.S. for illegal invasions, I can't.

Yeah, I think we have a fundamental difference in our beliefs about the effectiveness of violence (i.e. assassination via drones) to promote world peace. Hard to know what wars have been prevented via assassination, but if you might look into all the evidence of violence continuing or escalating after assassinations (how many "heads" of ISIS have been killed in drone strikes? and check out all the US activity in Latin America...). But that discussion goes beyond the graveyard of a hacker news comments section. In any case, thanks for the thoughtful responses.