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Monday, April 6, 2009

War Ethics

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Al Jazeera

Let me use this first paragraph to make this topic clear. I am going to be talking about what is right or wrong during a war. This is not to debate whether or not a war was just or unjust to start in the first place. For the purposes of this post, assume any given war has already begun.

Because I have only one source, I am not going to choose sides here. A human rights group is claiming that Israel mistreated the wounded and attacked medical personnel in the recent invasions in Gaza. Israel is doing its own investigation and is claiming that fighters coming against them were posing as medical personnel or wounded people to lure them in to combat where they would have an advantage. The human rights group has requested and independent investigation and I think that is a great idea.

There are two possibilities for what has occurred here. The first is that Israel really did as the claims say. If this is true Israel is just as bad as any evil dictator and we should not be allies with them. That would be truly wrong and it should be reprimanded. If Israel's claim is true then what they did was fine. If you, as a fighter or combatant, choose to pose as medical personnel or a wounded person you take away the rights of your own medical personnel or wounded. If I am a soldier or a commander and I know this is has been going on, I am going to care about my own life or my own men's lives a lot more than my opponents. This is simply how war goes. You can't fake like you are a non-combatant, then start attacking, and expect that your opponents won't start shooting at other non-combatants.

We will need more information before we can make a decision on this. If anyone has anymore sources on this please post.

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