The headlines--in the New York Times, in Britain's Daily Mail, on CNN--say a U.S. Army Sergeant "killed" 16 Afghan civilians, including children.
Why "killing?" It's murder.
The license to kill in war does not include targeted children.
Or does it?
The United States targeted the entire civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in atomic attacks in World War II. I approve of that. The United States also bombed Dresden and other German cities into oblivion.
I remember my brother, initially trained as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam war, saying he didn't think he could kill someone face-to-face, as this Army Sergeant in Afghanistan did, but dropping bombs on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong? He could do that. I understood that.
I think I could kill face-to-face and bomb. But I couldn't do what the Army Sergeant in Afghanistan did (apparently): deliberately setting out, going door to door, and shooting unarmed civilians, including children.
Why not? Certainly, the immediacy--my brother's tipping point of squeamishness--would make it harder; in addition, the defenselessness of the Afghan civilians, especially the children. Would my brother and I have been able to bomb deliberately the very houses where the Afghan civilians were shot? Speaking for myself now, if I were told "Hey Harris, wanna have some fun? Go bomb those houses. They only contain civilians, including kids," my moral tipping point would have been reached and I would have refused. But, if I were told, "Hey Harris, go bomb this area (point to map)" and that area was known or reasonably assumed by me to have civilians present, that I would do.
Newt Gingrich, as he frequently does, said a brilliant thing over the weekend. He said he didn't think America was "ruthless" enough to wage the kind of war in the Middle East necessary to success--the kind of war that Abraham Lincoln came to see as necessary to win the Civil War. I entirely agree with Gingrich and have written the same thing here.
But you can't just go house-to-house looking for people to shoot and then shoot them regardless of whether they're the enemy, civilians, or children. I say that's murder. Why?
Image: New York Times.
