7 ms·

You make an interesting point but the alternative is to purposely hamstring your combat abilities in order to make a commitment to using them less appealing. Th

You make an interesting point but the alternative is to purposely hamstring your combat abilities in order to make a commitment to using them less appealing. That doesn't sound like a sound survival strategy. I am by nature a pacifist and would prefer not to engage in war or violence at all. However, once the bonds are slipped and the blood starts flowing, I don't think there should be any punches pulled and the more options on the table the better. I still maintain that if the pilot in this particular instance had less reason to fear for his own safety he would have been more careful with his judgement call on the combatant status of the target group. This is actually one of the common arguments for increasing the role of remote robotic agents on the battlefield, less necessary to be overly aggressive in defense in edge cases. I think the commonly cited example is not calling artillery on apartment buildings to flush out a sniper.

jacquesm 17y ago
> That doesn't sound like a sound survival strategy. It wasn't meant as one. There is a price to war, it should be paid by both sides for things not to go badly out of control. The current trend is to minimize the cost to the aggressor so that 'home support' for a war is easier to come by. If there would have been one American soldier dead for every Iraqi civilian this conflict would have been over long ago. If the perceived cost of waging war to a nation is low then the chances of war being waged go up.
- etherael 17y ago
  If you were a world champion boxer would you get into a lot more fist fights because it's less likely that you'd be injured in them? Speaking for myself, I would not. I'd hope that just because we can doesn't necessarily mean we should in any case.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    It depends on the character of the person. Plenty of people with martial skills are amongst the most controlled that I've known. And then there are the psychos that are fascinated by violence. Some countries are a lot more restrained when it comes to applying violence than others. Compare Switzerland and America for instance, the gun ownership in Switzerland is one of the highest in the world, yet gun related fatalities are extremely low. In the US it's a bit different...

jacquesm 17y ago

> That doesn't sound like a sound survival strategy. It wasn't meant as one. There is a price to war, it should be paid by both sides for things not to go badly out of control. The current trend is to minimize the cost to the aggressor so that 'home support' for a war is easier to come by. If there would have been one American soldier dead for every Iraqi civilian this conflict would have been over long ago. If the perceived cost of waging war to a nation is low then the chances of war being waged go up.

etherael 17y ago
If you were a world champion boxer would you get into a lot more fist fights because it's less likely that you'd be injured in them? Speaking for myself, I would not. I'd hope that just because we can doesn't necessarily mean we should in any case.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  It depends on the character of the person. Plenty of people with martial skills are amongst the most controlled that I've known. And then there are the psychos that are fascinated by violence. Some countries are a lot more restrained when it comes to applying violence than others. Compare Switzerland and America for instance, the gun ownership in Switzerland is one of the highest in the world, yet gun related fatalities are extremely low. In the US it's a bit different...