But if a toddler with apple cheeks and an adorable curl is pointing an assault rifle at me, and if I can't avoid being shot at, I'm afraid I would shoot him.
In the Somali battle, U.S. troops were on the ground too, not just in helicopters, and they were besieged on all sides. Nor did they go into the city to shoot people. They went to capture a militia leader who was obstructing food relief efforts. If things had gone according to plan, there would have been few civilian casualties. You can criticize them for a bad plan and an associated thoughtless disregard for human life, but I don't think you can accuse them of striving for the actual result -- one which was a major political debacle for the military and the Clinton Administration.
I've read in the papers of a murderous bandit gang in Thailand or Burma, I forget which, lead by ten or twelve year-old twins. Would you send Mister Rogers out to deal with those youngsters?
Funny that for all the talk about materialist analysis here, there is a kind of raging moralism -- not particularly coherent in its own terms either -- that is substituted for analysis and politics.
mbs
>I read "Blackhawk Down." There is no question that
>the U.S. policy during the mission to snag
>Aideed was to shoot anybody in the way,
>but there also seems little doubt that
>women and children were among the combatants.
I think you entirely miss the point being made of the quote as a criticism of the military action, which is that they are condemned by their own words. Unless you think that it us justified to attack and kill children using helicopter gunships if they are "combatants". Paul