They did the meme!
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (67)
sorted by:
That is literally what I said the US did. They did it for a lazy reason, but its still a moral failing because regardless of how you slice it its a building of military importance that is within range of considerable civilian destruction. Its not intentionally shielding, but its involving them regardless.
Those who use them as an actual meat shield are committing a greater scale moral failing, but its the same scale with a 2/10 and a 10/10 on it.
It is, because the modern world is built on not having actual "hot" wars often enough that they rest on their laurels and don't even care to think about it. Those that are embroiled in such wars often, like Africa, South America, and the ME jump the ship hard enough to simply hide behind civilians anyway.
Also already acknowledged. Pre-modern war had lines where you had to get through to actually commit direct warfare damage. You aren't getting to the civilians behind the walls without, you know, breaching the walls.
Now that we have technology that render those points more moot, its a lot more important where you place your target in expecting retaliation.
I'll accept your acknowledgement, though it's still silly to me.
I think the technology in modern warfare makes the whole concept of separating military and civilian effectively impossible because we have pushed very hard into irregular warfare and strikes "behind the front lines" by drones, rockets, air strikes, special forces raids, saboteurs, terrorism, and light-infantry tactics. I think the era of not involving civilian populations is now well and truly dead (and was really just a remnant of 19th century warfare).
Being impossible doesn't mean a token attempt should not be made if its the difference between innocent lives lost. Irregular warfare makes it even more simple to do so, because we no longer need literal boots with all their equipment on the ground nearby to respond to threats in a decent time. Administration buildings even less so, because communication is near instant.
Which returns to my initial point, choosing to still do so is making a statement about how little you care about that collateral damage. The US, and I guess all other modern militaries, does it out of laze and self assured superiority while ME nations do it deliberately as shields.