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Originally Posted by dennisw
I guess I'm missing the relevance of this statement.
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It was a bit of a tangent in response to JustinW20's post, which I took to be promoting the idea that jihadists are really just authoritarian ideologues cynically dressed up in religious terminology. I agree with you that their motivation, religious versus political, is irrelevant if they are committing a crime or an act of war.
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Originally Posted by The Reaper
How can we justify the bombing of civilian targets and the death of hundreds of thousands of German civilians to remove the bad ones?
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First, historically speaking I don't think this argument flies. We bombed factory towns producing war material and we bombed them in the daylight at added risk to ourselves in an effort to get the max possible accuracy out of some very limited technology. We never bombed civilian populations without at least some military rationale, even if that rationale was as broad as displacing the labor population away from key production centers. If we'd had laser-guided bombs, etc. in 1941-1945 the strategic bombing campaign would have been far less bloody for Germany. The obvious point of comparison for that is the air wars in Iraq, both in 1991 and 2003, where civilian casualties were tiny compared to the amount of missions flown, targets hit, ordinance dropped, and damage done.
That said, I agree with your general sentiment that in the GWOT we've been a little overly squeamish. There are things we could do, that I believe we should do. But I don't think less discriminate use of fires is on that list. Or more plainly, I don't think carpet-bombing the Hindu Kush into dust amounts to a military necessity for victory and therefore would not consider those civilian casualties acceptable.
If you're making the analogy that its ok to hold law-abiding American Muslims responsible, to some degree, for the threats and actions of jihadists and to injure (legally, physically, or otherwise) them accordingly, because thats the only way to win the war, then I reluctantly have to agree. American Muslims are going to have to put up with a certain amount of suspicion and with a certain amount of wariness (for example, federal surveillance of certain mosques, international money transactions, etc).
Muslim-Americans need to accept this because there's only so much of a balance that can be realistically struck between liberty and security. In the same way white people who shave their heads, live on ranches, and have large gun collections might need to accept that they're going to get an extra long look from the ATFE or whomever because they share certain identifying attributes with neo-fascist militias.
That said, its incumbent on the government to constantly reassess if what its doing is necessary for the common defense or merely easier for the majority defense.