Palestinians have a right of self defense too. What they do not have, in my opinion, is a right to try to kill as many civilians as they can.
I don't expect a poorly equipped force to achieve the same effectiveness as a well equipped one in avoiding civilian casualties. I do expect ALL combatants to do the best they can, and I think that trying to inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties is wrong for ALL combatants. I don't think the fact that one side is outmatched is sufficient justification for PREFERRING civilian targets.
I recognize that you support the Palestinians' cause and not Al Qaeda's, and it is your right to do so, but the fact remains that they both use a tactic that I abhor, and that is the preferring of civilian targets.
If you think my numbers are wrong, what are the right ones? Of the people killed by Palestinians, what percentage do you think are civilians and what percentage are military?
The goal I stated of ten percent or less civilian casualties is what I would like to see on the part of a modern military. I have no idea whether the military arts have advanced to that degree, and I certainly would agree that many, and perhaps even all, past wars came nowhere near that goal. I'm just saying that the goal should be to minimize it, not to maximize it. For example, if you're thinking in terms of World War II, the U.S. and its allies certainly had much poorer capabilities to avoid civilian casualties than they do today. However, there were also some targeting decisions which in the benefit of 20/20 hindsight seem wrong to me, such as area bombing of those cities whose activities were of little importance to the enemy's war effort.
AI
