Comment by romwell
2 years ago
>And yet, somehow I still feel like the answer to this problem still isn't "authorizing up to 15-20 civilian deaths for every enemy militant killed" as mentioned in the article.
See, that's how you feel, because you aren't thinking or looking at data. And perhaps because you interpret "up to" as the actual ratio.
According to the UN, civilians make up about 90% of casualties during a war[1].
Meanwhile, the estimates for Israel operation in Gaza is ~9000 militants killed out of ~25000 total[2].
The entire problem in discussing the issue is that the way people feel isn't driven by reality on the ground, but on what sounds nice.
[1] https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm
[2] https://twitter.com/yaakovkatz/status/1749870793486405750
> According to the UN, civilians make up about 90% of casualties during a war[1]
That's not exactly what it says:
"Conflict continued to cause widespread civilian death last year, notably in densely populated areas, where civilians accounted for 90 per cent of the casualties when explosive weapons were used, compared to 10 per cent in other areas."
Why would you omit the qualifiers?
>Why would you omit the qualifiers?
Because we're talking about Gaza, to which the qualifer ("notably in densely populated areas") most definitely applies.
If that's the only case where this is true, then both the headline and the first sentence of this article are misleading or incorrect. The headline states "Ninety Per Cent of War-Time Casualties Are Civilians" with no qualifiers. The first sentence starts "With civilians accounting for nearly 90 per cent of war-time casualties..." with no qualifiers.
It's disappointing that this UN report is so poorly written as to seem to contradict itself. Do you think ultimately the 90% refers exclusively to explosive use in urban areas, or all war casualties? I'm frankly not sure which thing the article is claiming.
>>According to the UN, civilians make up about 90% of casualties during a war
I don't know what you are trying to say though - that this is ok? Normal? Expected? All of the above?
Like I'm not going to just shrug my arms and say "well it's war, what are you going to do".