{"id":452,"date":"2011-05-16T11:54:43","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T17:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=452"},"modified":"2011-05-16T11:54:43","modified_gmt":"2011-05-16T17:54:43","slug":"the-nastiness-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/the-nastiness-of-war-452.htm","title":{"rendered":"The Nastiness of War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">Some critics of the killing of Osama Ben Laden think that since he was not shooting at the Seals, his killing was murder.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">That is, killing in war is not murder only if the enemy is actively attacking you.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">This sounds very chivalrous but has no relation to reality. Enemy soldiers (and generals) are legitimate targets even if they are sleeping or praying.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">I read in one memoir of the First World War how the British narrator, who was a sharpshooter, had a German soldier in his sights; the soldier was taking a bath <span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">\u00a0<\/span>\u2013 utterly vulnerable. The British soldier couldn\u2019t bear to pull the trigger, and gave the rifle to someone else, who did. If the German soldier were not killed, he would have the opportunity to kill British soldiers. War is a nasty, nasty business, even when its laws are followed, even when it is a just, necessary, defensive war.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-452\" data-postid=\"452\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-452 themify_builder themify_builder_front\">\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<!-- \/themify_builder_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some critics of the killing of Osama Ben Laden think that since he was not shooting at the Seals, his killing was murder. \u00a0 That is, killing in war is not murder only if the enemy is actively attacking you. \u00a0 This sounds very chivalrous but has no relation to reality. Enemy soldiers (and generals) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}