But why should this be so? This paper suggests that it should not be, and that the prevailing legal perspective, which accepts the unlimited and indiscriminate killing of soldiers, is less justifiable than is commonly held.Ģ Prosecutor v. Combatants, as a matter of international law, are fair game. Civilian casualties are illegal, immoral, and unjust. For those parties who engage in propaganda wars over "hearts and minds" of both domestic and international public opinion, the tendency is to exaggerate the number of one's own civilian casualties and, correspondingly, minimize the number of one's own combatant casualties. Almost none goes to how many combatant casualties they inflict. How many civilian casualties their military operations inflict. Much of the criticism of how countries fight wars goes to the question of s The number of Taliban, |Īl Qaeda, and other insurgent groups' members who have been killed rīy Coalition forces in Afghanistan is estimated at over 22,000. Scores (Colvin, Allen-Mills, & Mahnaimi 2008). Palestinian police cadets (on the theory that they were part of the Hamas pįorces), while they were marching in their graduating ceremony, killing g Geting of the sporting soldiers.2 In 2008, Israel struck an entire group of / Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found the Bosnian-Serb command- |Įrs guilty of harming civilians, but found no legal violation in the tar. Killing and injuring civilian spectators nearby. In 1993, Bosnian-Serb soldiers fired mortar rounds lĪt Bosnian soldiers playing soccer on an improvised neighborhood field, f Military officers were reported to be "sickened by what they saw" (Waller t Road they later dubbed "the Highway of Death" (Waller & Barry 1992, 16). Trucks, personnel °Ĭarriers, and hundreds of civilian vehicles lay strewn along the road," a d Reporters who arrived on the scene "recorded the carnage that stretchedĪlong that road for miles, producing gut-wrenching images of charred oīodies in the blackened hulks of bombed-out vehicles. Lower than the initial reports of thousands of casualties (Heidenrich 1993), military pounded with airstrikes and gunfire a convoy of The heads of the Navy pilots, referring to them as the "butchers of Kapsan"-Ī term proudly adopted thereafter by the Navy itself (Pontrelli 2007, 60-66). The outraged Communist broadcasts on Radio Pyongyang put a price on Spring, 2010: Volume 2, Number 1 ~ Journal of Legal Analysis ~ 115 Natalie Lockwood provided outstanding research assistance and contributed her own thoughts and suggestions. I also thank the participants of the Harvard Law School faculty workshop and of the Just and Unjust Wars seminar at NYU Law School for their engagement with this piece. I am grateful to Ken Anderson, Yishai Beer, Rachel Brewster, Glenn Cohen, Jack Goldsmith, Jim Greiner, Moshe Halbertal, Stephen Holmes, Sam Issacharoff, Asa Kasher, Adriaan Lanni, Daryl Levinson, Larry May, Gerry Neuman, Ben Sachs, Roy Schondorf, Jed Shugerman, Matthew Stephenson, Roberto Unger, and Adrian Vermeule and the reviewer for the Journal of Legal Analysis for their helpful comments, suggestions, and debates. The archives of the North Korean Communist Party (Peebles 2005, 80).đġ Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. Party officials (Pontrelli 2007, 64-65 Reynolds 2005, 463), and obliterated , The surprise attack destroyed the entire camp, killing oĪn estimated 510-530 Chinese and North Korean personnel, including 144 U Korea, where Chinese and North Korean officials were attending a meeting ö naval command struck the Kapsan compound in North 1 8 Ments, suggesting possible legal strategies of bringing them about.ē I discuss the practical and normative implications of adopting these amend- n> Tive of capture or disabling of the enemy would be preferred to killing whenever p Tary necessity, introducing a least-harmful-means test, under which an alterna- ti The second is a reinterpretation of the principle of mili- o Consequently, combatants who pose no real threat would be | I offer two amendments: The first is a reinterpretation of the principle of dĭistinction, suggesting that the status-based classification be complemented by uĪ test of threat. Ing nature of wars and militaries casts doubts on the necessity of killing all enemy a Would place further limits on the killing of enemy soldiers. Why are all soldiers fair game in war? This paper challenges the status-based oĭistinction of the laws of war, calling instead for revised targeting doctrines that t
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