Herr Uhl wrote...
Plaintiff wrote...
Being "non-combat personnel" is not the same as being a civilian. You work in a military structure? You are involved in military operations, directly or otherwise? You are not a civilian.
The only possible civilians in the Chantry would be people who happened to be in there praying. And none were shown at the time of the explosion. I will believe there were civilians in there when they are shown.
Instead of going with the pentagon comparison, would the house of congress be a civilian or military target?
If politicians that decide what the military does on a broad scale considered military in that case, is the populace that elects them also military?
Those would be some of the right questions to ask, I'd think. And, since I'm getting a sense that you intend to suggest the answers are obvious, I'd say the answers are not as easy. Answering your questions would partly involve, for example, considering whether inaction could also be considered a form of action; not to mention direct actions that have noticable and measurable impacts. It'd also involve considering the circumstances and contexts involved.
The segmentation of any population into this and that is fairly an unnatural organization, I think. And it is perhaps not meant to absolve any group from the actions of another, and even a simple application of common sense would tell us that they are not indeed distinct groups, one independent from the other. It doesn't work that way in practice. The answers don't lie therefore merely in the terminology used for the classification itself, but it perhaps lies more in the reasons why such classifications are made in the first place.
I'd say the laws that exist in our times (such as those that label a group as "civilians" and another as "military," and offer the civilians a certain degree of protection), probably do so for a very good reason. And they are as much a form of reinforcing a mutual agreement among nations to protect their general population from harm than anything else. They are there perhaps as forms of deterrants to prevent acts of reckless violence that might otherwise be avoided - I don't know if one could consider those laws as arising out of a general sense of "good will" among nations, hinged perhaps on the very notion that even though human beings could be considered as compassionate in nature, in general and on average, it'd sometimes be impossible to avoid acts of violence or war; and if such a war is unavoidable, what best to do to minimize casualties as much as possible.
To illustrate a situation where such a good will might be misused, perhaps I'd need to take an extreme example: let's consider a nation, whose citizenry routinely elects a body of leaders, which routinely makes it a habit to organize a military that conducts terror camps in other nations. Could the inhabitants of that nation then hide behind the international laws that protects citizens of nations, in general? Let me just say the answers are not obvious. It'd also not be obvious, even under such extreme circumstances, to point to a particular citizen and say that he's also guilty of all the crimes that his nation's military routinely commits. But perhaps the probablility of him being considered guilty merely by association goes up. And, if he's not agreeing with his nations policies, what is he doing about it? Is inaction therefore also a form of action, then?
I think of it as a case of everything working with everything else, creating a sense of general balance, or what behaviors to adopt so that others might resort to similar behaviors, therefore resulting in a general sense of general peace.
I'm sure it's a very complex problem and in the general chaos that in a state of war, it'd be impossible to make acurate distinctions. Perhaps such distinctions are then merely meant as guidelines for "proper" conduct than anything else, and a breach of such propriety could entail circumstances going on a spiral, out of control, increasing the probability for one's opponents in turn to resort to similar actions. It is perhaps to avoid such general mayhem that such laws exist.
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they both have other fanatics feeding ther fanaticism.
