"Oh, I wouldn't hesitate (to drop an atomic bomb) if I had the choice. I'd wipe 'em out. You're gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we've never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: 'You've killed so many civilians.' That's their tough luck for being there."
He is talking about civilians, not the "recent spate of news stories concerning possible civilian deaths in Afghanistan," as you put it. He is dismissing civilian deaths as too bad, so sad, as "tough luck."
I concur with you on the "moral approach" to this issue. We should not be surprised when old birds of prey come home to roost.
I concur with you on the "moral approach" to this issue. We should not be surprised when old birds of prey come home to roost.
One of the reasons we had to cut short the first gulf war was the saturation television coverage of the civilians who died in the bunker buster blast. Well, THEY DIED BECAUSE SADDAM HUSSEIN PUT THEM IN A MILITARY INSTALLATION!!!
In the case of the "Afghan Wedding Party" hoax, a group of Afghan people, which may or may not have included a bride, a groom, and a bridal party, chose, of its own free will, to encamp in a military installation that was targeting USAF fighter planes with anti-aircraft fire. TOUGH LUCK!!!
As far as the rules of war, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, while a little cowardly, was a perfectly legitimate military act. For that matter, so was Al Qaeda's attack on the Pentagon. What was illegitimate was slashing the throats of civilian airline stewardesses, and murdering the entire civilian contingent on the airliner.
When our forefathers declared independence from England, they fought and died, as men, on the field of battle. John Wilkes Booth notwithstanding, hundreds of thousands of American warriors were slaughtered in an unsuccessful attempt to defend the federal constitution against Abraham Lincoln. When Hitler invaded Poland, the Poles faced the Panzers with horse-mounted cavalry, and mule-drawn artillery, and fought and died with as much courage, and as much valiantry, as any men in the annals of warfare.
Islam is more than welcome to wage war on the post-Christian West, but if, as the cowards they are, the men of Islam run and hide behind the skirts of women and children, well, that's their tough luck for being there.