Martin Van Creveld Quotes

Mahathir, in his moral assessment, fails to come to grips with the fact that the Coalition forces in their Afghan and Iraq activities attempt to kill and injure as few people as possible to accomplish their objective. The terrorists attempt to kill and injure as many people as possible. In the September 11 attack, the buildings could have been attacked late at night so there would be few casualties, and in Bali they could have bombed the facility after it had closed instead of waiting until there was the largest audience. And the terrorist bombs include nails, rat poison, and other additional material designed not to do more building damage, but to kill and maim more people which is their specific objective. Most wars have collateral damage and the parties are required to make a good faith attempt to minimize that. But the terrorists not only make no attempt, but make strong efforts to kill as many as possible. That is a huge moral and ethical distinction.

The Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the PLO were preparing a coordinated attack on Israel. After statements like this, the Israeli’s preempted the attack, routed the Egyptian Airforce and Army, and then defeated the other three. The Arab “War of Liberation” resulted in the Arabs losing more with Israel tripling it’s control of area. The quotation however cast a pall over attempts thereafter to create a Palestinian State as in effect the PLO had announced a policy of a Holocaust—the extermination of the Israelis. The dispute over land was not for the Jewish state a land negotiation amenable to compromise and give and take, but instead was an existential threat to Israel whereby any compromise might result in the death of the entire population. As the ultimate intention of the PLO had been revealed.

Although the Yugoslav casualties were horrific, they inflicted great casualties on the Germans who lost more men fighting the Yugoslavs than they lost to any other of the allies except the Russians.

Ironically, one of the major objections to drone strikes is that they have caused civilian casualties.

The Hamas leadership of the Gaza strip had fired thousands of rockets into Israel which their charter states should be eliminated. The Israelis after many being hit by more than a thousand rockets, used their military to attack (via the air) the Hamas leadership. However, Hamas had stored their rockets and their armaments in or very near civilian facilities including hospitals, schools, mosques and even UN humanitarian facilities. The Hamas leaders thereby made civilian facilities legitimate military targets under the Rules of War of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. So the Gaza leadership, instead of their military protecting their own civilians, used the civilians to protect the military and their weapons in the midst of war. The Secretary General also was referring to the Hamas leadership who had rejected at that point 5 different cease fires that had been proposed by the Egyptians, Americans, The Arab League and others. Israeli accepted them all.

The Minister equates the unintended consequences of war and civilian casualties with a terrorist retaliation which has as its purpose the killing of as many civilians as possible. The proliferation of terrorism complicated the ethics of counter terrorism. In the case of Palestinian terrorists their tactics included using civilian facilities---schools, hospitals, homes---from which to launch rocket attacks or to store weapons or hide terrorists. Under international laws of war, a civilian facility and the civilians in it become legitimate military targets the minute that weapons are stored in or fired from that location or that location is used for planning, training, equipping or manufacturing of military material. Palestinian terrorists claim that even though civilians were harmed in legitimate, legal attacks on military targets, a proper response is to send suicide bombers into civilian areas and preparing the explosives with nails and rat poison to cause as much pain as possible.