Hi. Welcome to the blog for my IB English B class at Jur Hronec High School in Bratislava, Slovakia. Below you will find links to other websites and discussion questions. My students are required to comment on one of these postings every month and also respond to each other's comments. Feel free to add your two bits, but be aware that all comments are monitored before being posted.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
No more bombing houses
It is said that modern warfare causes more civilian deaths than war in the past. What can be done to limit the deaths of ordinary people during a war? Is the accusation that the targets use human shields accurate, or is this just a way of blaming suspected terrorists for leading normal lives and engaging in normal activities like socializing, running errands and visiting their families? Is the difference between a soldier and a terrorist merely whether they kill civilians by accident or on purpose? Do you sympathize with Karzai’s position? Is his announcement mainly motivated by humanitarian concerns or political ones? Is it a good decision?
I think it is in human nature to exaggerate the impact of accidents. The death of the civilians in this case was just an accident, human error, but the president wants to stop all the air strikes. It seems to be just too radical solution for this. Much more people die every day in car accidents, but no one is going to ban car traffic. Something similar happened in Germany recently. They are going to stop and dismantle all of their nuclear power plants just because one accident that happened on another side of the world. From my point of view it looks like people are driven by their emotions and do not consider the impact their actions will have in the long run.
ReplyDeleteOther think to consider is the impact of technology progress in military. During Second World War were the air strikes very inaccurate and could not hit the ordered house and in many cases not even the right street. Thanks to the development in technology is the army able to not only hit the right house, but also the ordered room in it. I think this is the reason the terrorists started to use civilians as shields. Without the civilians around them they would be an easy target. However, even if we had infallible and maximally precise weapons accidents like the one mentioned in the article will always happen. It is because humans will always give orders and choose targets.
Therefore, human errors will be always present.
I also do not like the actions of Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai. The president should be a strong personality so people can rely and trust him. However, it seems to me that he acts in a populist way, trying to please everyone. Even the article suggests that he has “made strong statements against certain military tactics, such as night raids, only to back away from them later.” I think this is a very bad approach. Everyone is probably sorry for this tragedy, but the president should support his people in this hard times. Instead he supports them in their anger and turns them against the NATO forces. If the president wants to win this war he should realize that war is always terrible and has a large impact on civilians. He cannot end it after every civilian casualty.
Rado@
ReplyDeleteRado, it seems to me like you’re looking at this issue only from one side. First of all, how can you compare car accidents to a military mission? That is just ridiculous! Every time you sit down into your car and get on the road, you’re taking the risk that something may happen to you. However you aren’t just taking responsibility for yourself, but also for the other drivers. For then if you happen to cause someone’s death and the law says it’s your fault (even if it’s by an accident, like you said), you bare all the consequences. The same counts vice versa. However when you sit at home, you shouldn’t be worried that something happens to you. But then all of a sudden, some soldiers "accidentally" kill your whole family. And you would say it’s ok, because we are human, and humans make mistakes. But who gives us the right to take innocent lives? Finally, the difference between causing a car accident and accidentally killing an innocent civilian is that, when you cause a car accident, you bare all the consequences, but if a soldier "accidentally" kills an innocent civilian, he usually gets away unpunished. Moreover I also think you should have a second thought about the abandonment of nuclear power plants all around the world, however, I suppose we leave that issue for another time.
What I want to focus on now, is the reconsideration of your resolute attitude towards this complicated issue, for you are clearly missing an important aspect of it. You said you don’t like the actions of Hamid Karzai and you insist that the air strikes should continue. But imagine this: The bases of a militant international Islamic fundamentalist network would be in Slovakia. NATO’s forces would invade Slovakia and fight against the terrorist group. This would include air strikes, which one day would hit your house. You get my point?
In fact Karzai’s situation is very difficult and only by the way he threatens NATO to react unilaterally, he shows people that they can trust him and rely on him. As you could see the border between perceiving foreign forces as an "occupying force" and an "allied force" is very thin. Finally, it is terribly important to realize that when we support fight against terrorism in the pursuit of avoiding casualties of innocent people in our own country, we must bare in my mind that such fight requires casualties of innocent people in the country we fight in and this way we prioritize the lives of our people above the lives of their people and this we should have no right to do.
Branislav Skocek IB3