[jai_]

I think this is less about the casualties of war itself, but the effects of when trying to move on after the war.

If people die due to landmines many years after a ceasefire are they a casualty of the war?

I think landmines represent a physical device that artifically extends the destruction of war in a time that is way after the parties may have agreed to peace. In that sense, the landmine inflicts death on people with no agency. A bomb dropped on a someone has intent and an army responsible for it. A landmine planted decades ago is so divorced from its original intent that any resulting death or injury feels random and injust.

[sbaiddn]

War has many generational effects.

Russia still has periodic fertility gaps from WW2. In Paraguay blond, blue eyed, natives who only speak Guarani are witnesses of the Triple Alliance's widespread rape (150 years ago?). Europe is littered with unexploded ordinance

A landmime is not a pleasant thing to leave behind. But if deployed strategically (not scattered everywhere as a terror weapon), and if it can avoid a war its not obvious to me that the generational effects aren't the least evil.

[jai_]

This may be a poor analogy:

Imagine, during a war, a missile that has been set to target a city. The casualties will be many, and random, and innocent, but this is wartime and horrible things happen.

Now, imagine that this missile is set to target the city, but will launch at a random time in the future. The missile may launch during the war, or many years after.

Now it's obvious to me that the missile that lauches at the random point in the future is more evil than the one fired immediately.

It's a poor analogy, but the random missile is how I view landmines.

[sbaiddn]

Cant reply to jai's missile comment:

Targeting cities is already a war crime regardless the weapon.

Nor am I arguing that laying landmines everywhere is not immoral. Certainly not landmines in a city.

Im arguing that a concentrated land mine field across a small strategic piece of land (say a mountain passage, the DMZ) can be militarily effective and therefore help avoid war.

Does this then change the moral calculus of land mines?