issuevoter wrote on Apr 8
th, 2016 at 8:54am:
How and why a military assault can be organised and made against an enemy position, involves a wider strategy, military discipline and dedication. They are rarely instigated as suicide missions except in the case of fanatical troops like the Japanese in WW2. In Western history, a laggard in desperate charge could be shot without question, so there were not a lot of choices.
Making a comparison with regular armies and religious fanatics who have worked themselves up into something like a trance of piety and hatred is tenuous at best. I have seen reports that Muzlims consider themselves the soldiers of Allah, so you might like to find equivalency if it supports your sympathy. There is also the overall Islamic declaration of War against the Infidel which has been exploited so effectively in recent decades by the Ayotollahs, Wahhabs, Grand Mullahs, and other witch-doctors of the cult. But you will not see any of them wearing a suicide belt. When push came to shove, bin Laden ran away and hid.
Some wars fizzle out, but many have grown ever more desperate and ugly. They spiral out of control with growing numbers of civilian casualties.
The question really was whether Australian soldiers would strap a bomb on to themselves to blow up women and kids in Istanbul. I believe they would have rejected the idea on moral grounds as well as those of self-preservation. Muzlim have demonstrated over 25 years that they have no such Western Style qualms about taking out woman and kids first before attacking military targets.
People like Gandalf will quickly reply that these Muzlim attacks on soft targets are the same as drone strikes in Pakistan. This flimsy comparison always dismisses any military caution or protocol as non-existant. It also forgets that military operations in the Muzlim areas were brought on by suicide bombers among the soft targets of the West first. This present Jihad is the one thing that unites Muzlims, and it began when their conventional armies were humiliated by Israel.
Just listen to any commentary by ex soldiers from any western nation who've served in the Middle East.
It's understood there will be collateral damage but the planning to avoid it is immense and when it happens the is analyses and often compensation. There is collateral damage, make no mistake but everything is structured to do to avoid it.
The opposition uses collateral damage as a tactic.
I actually don't think much of the human species.
We're barbarians.
Perhaps a way to measure civility, and this is a low bar, is not the ease at which we kill the other, but the ease at which we kill our own and by that measure, we are better than them.