The morality of war

[DanaC]

Read a piece in the Guardian today that I found both worrying and challenging.

The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for "children with potential hostile intent".

In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as "deeply troubling", army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as "military-age males", had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

"It kind of opens our aperture," said Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. "In addition to looking for military-age males, it's looking for children with potential hostile intent."

Reading through the report a few thoughts come to mind. First, that the more things change the more they stay the same: the rationalisation of a change of accepted definitions and the actions that change allows. Second that there may be a fundamental clash here between what makes military sense in the field and what is morally acceptable to most people within the context of warfare.

In the context of Afghanistan, children are now categorised as potential combatants. A number of things flow from this recategorisation. When children are injured or killed in US strikes, it can be justified on the grounds of of their status as combatants. The expectation of children as combatants means it is more likely that children will be met as combatants on occasions when their status is unknown.

On the one hand, this seems a drastic step to take. An immoral and unjustifiable step. On the other hand, it is a response to actual instances of children being used by the enemy as active participants in the conflict. If children pose a danger to soldiers, then how are they not to view them as a potential threat? If not by ordered consent, then in their own minds at least.

The trouble is that the consequence of redefining children in this way, though it may recognise a real threat, allows not just for an awareness of and readiness to defend against child attacks, but now the targetting of children suspected of being combatants.

In doing so the US army closes the circle, and completes the child's transformation to soldier.

Rest of the article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...gy-afghanistan

I'd be interested in hearing other views on this.