Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Morality and Political Violence
- 1 Staring at Armageddon
- 2 The Idea of Violence
- 3 Violence and Justice
- 4 Aggression, Defence, and Just Cause
- 5 Justice with Prudence
- 6 The Right Way to Fight
- 7 The Problem of Collateral Damage
- 8 The Morality of Terrorism
- 9 The Immunities of Combatants
- 10 Morality and the Mercenary Warrior
- 11 Objecting Morally
- 12 Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 13 The Ideal of Peace
- 14 The Issue of Stringency
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Problem of Collateral Damage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Morality and Political Violence
- 1 Staring at Armageddon
- 2 The Idea of Violence
- 3 Violence and Justice
- 4 Aggression, Defence, and Just Cause
- 5 Justice with Prudence
- 6 The Right Way to Fight
- 7 The Problem of Collateral Damage
- 8 The Morality of Terrorism
- 9 The Immunities of Combatants
- 10 Morality and the Mercenary Warrior
- 11 Objecting Morally
- 12 Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 13 The Ideal of Peace
- 14 The Issue of Stringency
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly as possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us.
“Enough,” editorial in the Jerusalem Post, September 11, 2003, p. 8I recognized beforehand that someone might be … bringing their kid to work. … However, if I had known there was an entire day-centre, it might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage.
Timothy McVeigh, interviewed by reporters for The Buffalo News about his attack upon the Alfred P. Murrah Federal BuildingWe have been examining the principle of discrimination, in particular, its prohibition of intentional attacks upon noncombatants. But there remains an important area of contention, even if all I have argued in Chapter 6 about the immunity of noncombatants is accepted. This area is that often covered by the military euphemism “collateral damage.”
This phrase is one of those catchwords that help to sanitise the horrible reality of war and other employments of political violence. It has taken its place along with “surgical strike,” “revisiting the area” (i.e., renewed bombing), and “neutralising assets” as part of the linguistic camouflage that contemporary war fighters often use to disguise the human and moral costs of what they do.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Morality and Political Violence , pp. 132 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007