[EligibleDecoy]

There’s a theory (I forget which) that morality of warfare rests on the agency of the warring parties to avoid civilian deaths. We didn’t have laser guided bombs in WW2 so it was more or less highly impractical (if not impossible) to just bomb the tank factory, rather than the tank factory and the surrounding 10 blocks. The US now has missiles without explosives that can accurately take out the driver of a sedan without killing the passenger (AGM-114R9X) and has an intelligence apparatus to know the passengers in the car are not the target, for example. Leading to scrutiny on civilian deaths where there wouldn’t have been in decades past, perhaps.

Something this essay points out is how many civilian deaths were strictly caused by soldiers, on the ground, who knew they were killing civilians. That’s knowledge I didn’t already have and was honestly shocking.