Aycharaych to Ivar Frederiksen:
"'Existence always begets regrettable necessities. Be not overly proud, Firstling. You are prepared to launch a revolutionary war if you can, wherein millions would perish, millions more be mutilated, starved, hounded, brought to sorrow. Are you not? I do no more than help you. Is that horrible?'" (p. 229)
Aycharaych does a lot more than help but his question to Ivar is valid. Ivar has just accused him of treachery, murder, torture etc. What is Ivar proposing to do?
This week, a Russian bombardment of Ukraine killed, among many other people of course, a two-day old baby.
A two-day old baby.
The purpose of changing society is to prevent further wars killing millions, not to launch another one. Ivar changes course of necessity but does not seem to come to grips with what he nearly started.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And that brutal thug Putin doesn't care how the way he wages war CONTRAVENES the Hague and Geneva conventions, attempts by civilized powers to put some restraints on how wars are waged. In Ivar's time the Covenant of Alfzar codified the laws and customs of war and diplomacy the civilized interstellar powers bound themselves to accept. Based on the Hague, Geneva, and Vienna conventions.
"Society" cannot be changed so that there will never again be wars. Because the propensity for violent conflicts of all kinds, including wars, is INNATE to all humans. We are all potential killers or worse. The innate tendency for violence and conflicts that we all have can only be managed, not "solved."
Ad astra! Sean
Civilians always die in large-scale conflicts.
What the laws of war, as currently constituted, forbid is not -killing- civilians.
It forbids -targeting- civilians, that is, deliberately setting out to do them harm, not as collateral damage incidental to military operations, but as an objective(*).
An example in the life of the father of a friend of mine: he was in charge of a reconnaissance unit working in advance of a Canadian armored division advancing into Belgium in 1944.
They were going through an area of large farms centered on big complexes, farmhouses and outbuildings.
The Germans were using some of those as rear-guard strongpoints, with antitank weapons and machine-guns in the cellars, to slow the Allied advance.
The standard technique for finding out which ones the Germans were holding was to get hull-down a couple of hundred yards with their armoredcars out and pepper the buildings with light cannon and .5 heavy machine-gun fire, or some mortar rounds.
If the Germans were there, they'd have to shoot back because otherwise the building above them would burn and collapse on their heads.
Then the reconnaissance units called in artillery and airstrikes with rockets and (IIRC) napalm, or marked the locations for attack by following 'heavy' forces.
One of the kids listening to his story asked "But what if there were only Belgian farmers inside?"
"Oh, then they died," he said with a shrug and a laugh. "Better them than us, sonny, better them than us."
That's a perfectly legitimate use of lethal force, btw, on both sides. The Germans were using physical concealment (allowed) and the Canadians were performing 'reconnaissance by fire' also allowed.
They weren't -targeting- civilians; the civilians were just getting caught in the gears. C'est la guerre.
(*) this is why guerilla warfare or partisan activity was traditionally considered a war crime in itself; by hiding among civilians, you were deliberately courting massive collateral damage.
You were supposed to carry weapons openly, fight openly, and accept the result. Civilians were supposed to stay out of the way as much as they could, and accept the orders of whoever occupied the territory.
Soldiers could hide -physically- (eg., in the cellar of a farmhouse) but they couldn't pretend to be civilians -- couldn't dress in civilian clothes and conceal their weapons to pass for civilians, for example.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! What you wrote above clarifies what I was trying to say. And that thug Putin IS having his army deliberately targeting civilians and clearly civilian locations. To say nothing of malevolently brutalizing civilians in the Ukrainian territories his forces still holds. War crimes both.
Ad astra! Sean
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