A Story, A Hypothetical, And A Question:

[Kaj]

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Iraqis blow up a bomb and kill 50 Iraqi civilians, and 1 US soldier. ... Americans don't intentionally target Iraqi civilians in Iraq, they target combatants, sometimes civilians are killed, and its tragic. Iraqis intentionally target civilians in Iraq...

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If we drop 2000 lb bombs into residential districts to kill a single or a few men, then we can claim we don't target civilians. But when an Iraqi car bomb which kills a soldier at a checkpoint but kills 20 civilians as well, then that's targeting civilians.

Granted some Iraqis do target civilians directly. I don't dispute that at all. (And our dismantling of the entire social, military, police network is a big part of what enables such acts ... There wasn't a suicide bombing problem before the invasion, but I digress.) But it's just WRONG to keep asserting that our disregard for the lives of Iraqis is just a cost of war. The British have commented that our use of excessive force to kill a small number of insurgents is merely creating more insurgents as we keep killing innocent bystanders. And the same thing is happening in Afghanistan where the Afghan govt has been appealing to NATO to start restraining US forces from excessive use of bombing which is killing scores of civilians but having little effect on the Taliban. You can't keep dropping bombs into residential areas and claiming its "just war" -- find a better way to fight it, because such tactics are a recipe for eventual defeat as they make a political solution that much less tenable and without a political solution, there is no military solution.

Do I think most Americans intentionally use too much force? No. But it occurs way too often and having served in the AF, I know how a lot of commanders feel regarding use of airpower -- a target is a target, we'll take some minimum precautions to avoid collateral damage, but if a target exists, then dead civilians is an acceptable price. You can't win against insurgents with that attitude - in fact, you're playing right into their hands.

[TomVeil]

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Is this all under the assumption that the United States military killed his family? Or should we assume that it was an Iraqi that killed his family during the war? This is usually the case; Iraqis blow up a bomb and kill 50 Iraqi civilians, and 1 US soldier. So it'd be better to assume an Iraqi killed his family, not an American. So, really, he should have gone and killed all the Iraqis he could find.

So not only are his actions not "understandable" they are also completely unjustified, and in no way similar to an Iraqi being the casuality of war. Americans don't intentionally target Iraqi civilians in Iraq, they target combatants, sometimes civilians are killed, and its tragic. Iraqis intentionally target civilians in Iraq, sometimes US soldiers are killed or, if you prefer, Iraqis intentionally target US soldiers, sometimes civilians are killed, and its tragic.

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I would imagine that it wouldn't matter to him, because they died as a direct result of the US occupation of the war. But just for kicks, let's say that it was a private company such as KBR that killed them. KBR is civilians?

I agree that his actions are not justified. But then again, neither is what we're doing. Or are you saying that it's only OK civilians die over there, but not over here?

[bills217]

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He choose to kill innocents instead of those that droped the bombs, but in a way, a large way, we're all guilty

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Uh...not me...? Are you Donald Rumsfeld?

[ikestoys]

he was probably killed by either other foreigners or other iraqis