Also remember that in highly asymmetric warfare, clearly separating yourself from civilians effectively means hanging a target sign from your neck and asking to be killed. Those who have the most advanced technologies and weaponry at their disposal cannot be serious in asking that a poorly armed enemy fight on the same terms: a bit too cavalier when they have Kalashnikovs and you have semi-autonomous drones piloted from half the world away.
I wonder what kind of person pushes false narratives dehumanizing a people who have been oppressed by a brutal occupation for decades.
However I fail to understand why this human shield topic seems so unbelievable to some people. Terrorist-like groups such as Hamas constantly show a very explicit lack of respect for innocent lives (even for the lives of innocents who share their same culture), the most clear example being attacks directed exclusively towards civilians. You can say "similar" things about the US (and other governments), but certainly not the same thing.
One of the obvious reasons for this is that a terrorist group usually faces an extreme disadvantage when it comes to logistics and operational capabilities in general, specially against the US military. Using civilian installations as human shield seems to be in line with the way terrorist groups usually fight back (using civilians lives as a mean to reach their goals).
I'm not saying that the fact that it's a plausible possibility makes it a reality. It is a possibility (an unlikely one in my opinion) that a terrorist group decides to avoid killing civilians (refusing also to use this human shields) and tries to dominate the conflict spreading terror by any other means. And it's certainly a possibility that Israel created this hoax, too. I'm only saying it's not that strange seeing terrorist groups doing this kinds of things, without the need to create any fictional narration.
War is horrible it’s taking life in the hope you’ll save more.
It's not about winning battles, It's about killing the enemy troops before a battle could even occur.
The fact that the US military has no qualms with killing random innocent civilians
You can say the U.S. military doen't care nearly enough about it. Fine. Now we're in the realm of opinion. I'd probably agree.
But "no qualms?"
If you want to see a military power with literally "zero qualms" look at regimes like Assad in Syria, using indiscriminate chemical attacks in civilian areas. That is what "no qualms" looks like.
Or look at landmines.
Suicide bombers in civilian areas.
Large-yield nuclear weapons.
High-altitude carpet bombing runs.
Those are "no qualms" weapons.
Even a standard explosive drone-launched Hellfire missile is a weapon of extreme precision and minimal collateral damage compared to any other explosive weapons that have been used for the last hundred years or so.
It would be utter madness to spin Hellfire missile strikes as benevolent acts of kindness. They are acts of violence that sometimes hurt and kill innocents and thinking about that should make anybody with a conscience feel ill.
But as far as those sorts of things go, characterizing their use as "no qualms with killing random innocent civilians" is just untrue. They are remarkably focused compared to just about any other method of killing people from great distances that humans have managed to invent.
There are plenty of injustices perpetrated by the U.S. military. We don't need to invent or exaggerate them. It doesn't help the cause of legitimate criticism.
Why is that a red herring? There's a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that America's activities on the Af-Pak border have been wholly counter-productive. A drone strike might kill a terrorist, but the collateral damage creates an immense amount of hatred towards the US. If drone strikes are creating more terrorists than they're killing (an entirely plausible hypothesis) then the answer is probably to stop drone strikes and try something else.
This isn't some wishy-washy liberal argument from a clueless civilian - Gen. McChrystal makes pretty much the same case against drone strikes.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-mcchrysta...
And we followed up by blowing up the target's funeral figuring the bereaved where fellow operatives.
Quite a way to win hearts and minds...
I suppose, we could count the deaths to see who has the better part of the asymmetry.
1. Stop selling weapons to terrorists for decades.
2. Stop toppling democratically elective governments and propping up dictators.
3. Stop killing children with vaccination programs.
4. Stand away from drones and identify yourselves and go onsite to find militants.
5. Stand away from civilians and don't run the financial operation of your global hegemony through downtown office towers.
6. Stop kidnapping and torturing innocent people at black sites.
7. Stop killing for a President who openly advocates killing family members of the enemy.
And I will ask another question: why bombs? Why remote drones? Why is it impossible to use other means? The assassination of Osama bin Ladin was carried out by soldiers on the ground, after all.
>> The fact that the US military has no qualms
>> with killing random innocent civilians -
>> including children - in their strikes
>> against (assumed) terrorists