At 01:31 PM 09/15/2001 -0700, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
Apples and oranges. There is a world of difference between targeting innocents (the focus of my post) and targeting military targets with resultant innocent casualties. If a gunman grabs a human shield and starts shooting at me, I will (regrettably) return fire. Hopefully, I'll hit the bad guy and not the innocent human shield, but if I do hit the hostage, the moral responsibility is on bad guy, not me.
Back when Osama bin Laden was accused of the African US embassy bombings, the Clinton administration decided they had to Do Something Decisive, so they fired off about 75 cruise missiles at "Osama's Chemical/Biological Warfare Factory" (somebody's legitimate pharmaceutical plant in Sudan) and another place he was rumored to hang out. It's not clear whether this sets him up for Double Jeopardy protection if anybody takes the $5M reward and rats on him, because they didn't bother with the formalities of a trial, just a declaration of guilt followed by punishment, but it was Constitutionally pretty dodgy. And if it's not strictly targeting innocents while knowing they're innocent, failing to find out the facts before attacking people with missiles is sufficiently negligent that I'd count it in the same category. I think the US did pay off the factory owner after finding out that they'd screwed up. I don't know how many people got killed in the process, though.