Look: I’m not crazy about this “innocents” situation either, but we really have to realize that in order to make this omelet eggs are going to be cracked. Sorry I was so harsh, but we really have to get cold-blooded about this or we’re going to be returning to the Dark Ages... I’m not joking at all, and a couple years ago I wrote extensively about that subject - replete with walled cities and people not trusting anyone other than their closest friends and family... the progress toward that will be inexorable if we reward terrorism by letting them dictate political outcomes by terrorist methods, since other groups will then take the lesson and start doing the same.
I am not advocating eliminating harm to innocents. I am making a point about those who assume that everyone on that boat was guilty. They could well have been but we don’t know.
That wasn’t advocacy to tie the hands of those fighting the good fight— they have to do what they have to do, but we have to be straight about what we know and what we don’t. It is okay not to know something, but it’s important to be open about it.
I wasn’t intending to make the bleeding heart argument about how to stop hurting innocent people. In warfare, the US has made vast steps toward precision fighting, but this enemy does seek to hide behind children and anyone else who if hurt will invoke sympathy. I won’t stop having sympathy for someone hurt who should not have been, but I support everything our military is doing (and is planning to do) to defend Western Civ.