It is fairly easy to realize the immediate credulity given to American and Israeli forces on the claimed justifications for their attacks, they can pretty much cover for any atrocity. Like any accidental killing is immediately brushed aside as an innocent mistake. And of course they really love the "human shield" defense, which not only eliminates responsibility for the crime, but reverses it. Clearly this gives you the ability to pretty much kill as many civilians as you want, and if you find some military age males among the ruins, bam, they were using the others as human shields and are entirely responsible for all the killing. This is just trusted implicitly, that the militants were indeed the target of the operation and indeed were actually trying to use the others as human shields as a military strategy.


There is some logical absurdity to these claims which is never examined. No you cannot question the human shield claim or else you're just trying to enable the terrorists. But the thing is, irl human shields are almost always of the opposing faction. Like Israel is known to use human shields, when they do it's always Palestinians that they drag out in front of them daring the soldiers to attack. It is highly effective because the Palestinians are hesitant to shoot at their own people to get at the Israeli's. Somehow the Israeli's, have great faith in the amount of value the Palestinians put on the lives of their people at that moment, they literally are betting their lives on it.


But we inherently believe it the second Israel claims that the gigantic bomb they dropped on a terrorist that also killed 50 schooldchildren a football field away was an unfortunate human shield incident. Like the terrorist just knew that Israel was going to drop a giant ass bomb that will kill people a block away on him and was trying to avoid that by using the schoolchildren as a human shield. This would be like trying to use one of your own family members, as a human shield in a criminal standoff. This doesn't happen generally, it's fairly irrational.


Of course the irrationality of that is then turned around to make it more evil, look at how far they are willing to go, putting their own people in danger (when above, again, the Israeli's clearly had so much faith in Palestinians value for Palestinian lives that they bet their own lives on it). But not only is it just counter to typical morality, it's just plain irrational. Israeli's are highly dissuaded at killing targets when it might kill an Israeli. Clearly from their actions, the possibility of killing a Palestinian is given almost no credence at all. They just bombed 50 schoolchildren to get at a terrorist, clearly no amount of innocent Palestinians are going to dissuade them. The strategy doesn't work and would never work, Israel has never in history been dissuaded from bombing a target by however many innocent civilians of the opposing faction are present. I guess we could get more galaxy brain their, the Palestinians are both evil and stupid, putting their citizens lives in danger for almost no real military benefit, look at how even more inhuman they are, geez!


It is almost unthinkable to suggest that in fact the civilians might have been the actual military target. Or at least a benefit. We're moral! Of course we'd never do that! It would have no value because it would just drive them against us! Suddenly they become good liberals when arguing about the militaries behavior.


But when discussing strategy at other times, they constantly complain about their hands being tied, they want more and more power to launch more and more indiscriminate attacks with less and less red tape. Remember "carpet bombing" in the 2016 Republican primary debates? In unguarded moments of course they express the most absolute delight at the prospect of dead civilians of the enemy faction.


And it must be remember, clearly the military has in the past considered the strategic utility of killing enemy civilians. It drives the civilians into fear which causes them to submit. It destroys supply lines and enemy workers who contribute to the war economy. It demoralizes enemy soldiers who may now have dead family. Furthermore it shows off the vast and overwhelming strength of your forces compared to the enemy, who are comparatively powerless. Certainly if we dropped a nuke on Gaza it would probably entice Hamas to complete surrender. It can be logically deduced that a few indiscriminate bombings might have a similar but lesser effect, at least enough that it might be desirable on its face to the military forces involved in Gaza. Furthermore the blood often improves the morale of your own citizens. Look at the Israeli's who took out lawn chairs near the Gaza border and watched the bombs fall on Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, cheering wildly as each one fell. Do you think they cared very much whether those bombs were falling on Palestinian militants, or Palestinian babies? They were totally unaware, it was a non-entity to them. They were getting the enemy back, it was based, it was fun.


This is why we used indiscriminate carpet bombing against the Axis. That's also why we used it against North Korea. The Axis were undoubtedly pursuing horrific war crimes on an unprecedented scale, so I can almost accept the first instance. In the second I find it highly unnecessary, and an example of how dangerous it is to let society fall into barbarism and become numbed to it. We were not bombing Korea to stop the holocaust after all, North Korea was well willing to go back over the border. No we killed 20% of their civilian population because that wasn't good enough, we had to get "unconditional surrender" and conquest like we did against the Axis, even though the enemy wasn't nearly equivalent.


We did use largely indiscriminate bombing in Vietnam, and I think the experience of brutality in that era was what prompted this whole charade the military puts up where it's constantly claiming clean hands, no no, we don't want to kill any civilians at all, it's the furthest thing from our mind. This due to the increased news coverage and knowledge of the brutality in the war on the Vietnamese.


But keep in mind, killing civilians of the enemy is arguably a highly effective military strategy. You can make arguments against it, but the forbidden desire is of course always there, and you can in time justify military strategy in its favor if you want. The *least* desirable thing about killing enemy civilians is not the immorality of the action itself. It's negative news coverage from disgusted citizens back home.


So remember, when you hear from the news repeat, with total credulity, accounts that the massive loss of civilian lives was an accident, or a devious use of human shields by the enemy, you are hearing the account of a certain side in a military conflict with its own inherent motivations and reasons to lie to you. This is the same military that has killed civilians en masse in the past, and in which there still exists a lot of sentiment and desire to go "gloves off".


You cannot just accept it at its word, otherwise, yes, it will kill massive amounts of civilians in "accidents" or as "human shields" and drive fear into their hearts while at the same time avoiding that negative coverage back home. There is no reason at all to assume they wouldn't do this, again, they've done it in the past, only difference this time is news coverage. The human shields claim is especially devious, you can wipe out tons of civilians and at the same time increase the sympathy towards your forces, it incentivizes attacks on civilians as long as it can be claimed as human shields.