Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfish
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If in a war unimportant/non-mission-objective/non-combatant/civilian persons get targetted for the sake of killing these very persons, without a military objective being tried to achieve, it is "murder" indeed. If this happens, it does not matter whether the shooting platform is a live-manned plane, or a remote controlled drone. The intention is what decides the moral dimension of the crime, not the weapon used.
If above mentioned persons get targeted for misidentification reasons, bad intel, fog of war or such, it is tragic, but an event of war. War is no police law enforcement. War is war. That's why we have a separate name for it.
If you have a military objective or target and want to achieve that, and in doing so former mentioned non-combatant persons get hit by crossfire or by random chance stand in the fireline or inside a blastradius of an explosion that indeed precisely hit the target, they are unlucky and tragic victims. Still: no murder.
If an enemy intentionally hides behind above mentioned possible groups of persons to gain military advantage from hiding behind them or in their middle, maybe even forces them to stay close to himself and expose themselves, then he is the one qualifying the best for being called a murderer.
Asymmetric warfare makes tremendous use of this, for it does not care for the educated differentiation between war and murder, like you do.
Throwing it all into one pot, stirring it, and then claiming there are no such differences to be made, may fulfill a moral desire or an ideological mission. But it does not become less meaningless by that.
What comes it down to? Intentionally aiming and shooting at an known civilian non-combatant who has nothing to do with any of the fighting side'S casues, and aiming at an indentifed enemy and shopoting at him and by crossfire or mistake accidentally causing the killing of said civilian bystander as well, morally is not the same thing.
Not at all. If I stumble over my feet, fall down and by that cause a glass of wine spilled over your shirt, that is something different than if I stand before you, take the glass and intentionally empty it over your shirt.