Islamic fighters and Muslim armies never have adapted to the Hague Landwarfare Convention.
Some of our "allies" in syria have been rpeort5ed to take civilians and human shields, and having committed atrocities themselves. Thats the guys that our guys fight with, support from the air, or spend millions and millions on.
I always considered it to be an utmost hypocrisy of a very sickening form that we hail the treatment of wounded soldiers by altruistic sisters in hospital, just then to send them back to war as soon as possible, or allow the enemy to send his treated soldiers back to battle so that they can shoot our soldiers - or tapping ourselves on the shoulder for being so "noble" and willing to prolongue a war by saving the enemy. Romanticism of this kind is nice in sports and fair sportsmanship. But this here is about
war. To think in terms of noblesse or sportsmanship about it, makes me sick.
If there is infrastructure that is of use to the fighting forces of the enemy, it is a target. If there are resources that can be of use to the enemy, they are a target. If the enemy hides himself in the middle of civilian society, the enemy nevertheless is a target. Should the other side stop fighting just becasue he hides inside civilian society?
If you are not willing to accept that war is a bloody, dirty, inhumane, brutal and unfair event - ,
then do not go to war. If you are not willing to get your hands dirty from dealing blood-dripping cards - then don't play.
You recall the Laconia incident, sure you do. It often gets debated whether the Allies were right to attack. I happen to belong to those saying they were right - in war time. It was a German U-boat, and it had the wepaons and the crew to sink Allied vessels and kill allied soldiers and sailors. Thus, it weas a target. In peace, it would have been something very different. But it was no peace. I totally reject to assess the needs of war by standards and ethical views basing on peace times, nor do I accept to judge peace time procedures by means designed to be run during war time. Its two totally different things.
If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. I wish we would have stayed out of Syria. Possible that the war already would have been over without Western and other supplies to fighting factions pouring in. But there we are, and we do not know what we really want there, and how to achieve what, and we do not get fully in and we do not want to get really out, and so the thing lasts on and on and on. In the end, there will either be a Russia-loyal regime that has ripped apart and drowned in blood the country (already now Syria will never be again what it was), or there will be an opposition waging war against itself after it sent Assad to hell and the Russians out, abusing and destroying the country even longer after Assad'S defeat, and this time Syria will get beaten up not in the name of Assad's and Russian interests, but "radical Islamists's " interest.
I pick no sides here on grounds of moral arguments, there are no moral arguments, becasue it is war. If you want to reduce the suffering of civilians, end the war. The best way to achieve that, is to stop all who suppoort the rbeels, and to see the Russians and Syrians defeating all militrary opposition as fast as possible. If you argue that you cannot allow a Russian victory or Assad to remain in power, and you keep the war running to prevent that - all your morally superior concerns over the civilians suffering, fly right out of the window.