“Apples, meet oranges. We aren’t talking about collateral damage casualties. We’re talking about the intentional targeting and murdering of individual civilians.”
Did we “intentionally target” civilians when we firebombed Tokyo and dropped two Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? When we bombed German cities were they full of soldiers or civilians? It was WAR and we did some awful things to win it.
We don’t know all the facts about this incident. Until we do what is the sense in discussing it
‘It was WAR and we did some awful things to win it.’
As you are aware civilian bombing victims are considered collateral damage. Deliberately killing an unarmed civilian is considered homicide.
Good grief. Where to begin.
There is a WIDE divide between a President, or a theater commander, ordering an attack on military industrial targets that pose a high-risk of collateral damage, and the actions of a squad leader or platoon sergeant killing people in a fit of rage, quest for entertainment or in a drug-induced haze.
The "firebombing" of Tokyo wasn't a "firebombing" it was a systematic dismantling of the Japanese industrial complex. Put another way, it was the ending of Japan's ability to project force, to wage war. The mass fires that swept through Tokyo were not intentional. We targeted plainly military or military industrial complex installations. Nothing more. Of course, weapons then weren't nearly as precise as weapons today. As such, many did not hit their intended target.
Moreover, for months prior to the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima - actually almost immediately from the time of the fall of Saipan - leaflets, in Japanese, were dropped warning the people of Japan to evacuate 35 cities. The number of leaflets was so significant, their weight was measured in the millions of tons. The leaflets - which have been denied by contemporary anti-war activists in an attempt to revise history - were having such an impact on the civilian Japanese psyche, that the Imperial government made it illegal to possess them. Those who heeded the warning to evacuate were spared. Those who didn't, weren't. We asked them for months to leave - hardly "targeting" them. You don't tell you target to run, if you really want to kill them, do you?
As I said, there were crimes committed against civilians by US forces in WWII. Over 130 Americans were executed for those crimes. That is what happens when US soldiers intentionally target civilians. Why should our service members in Iraq and Afghanistan be held to a lower standards than their peers were held in WWII?
They shouldn't. If these allegations are true, they deserve the justice that will be meted out.