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@interfluidity

They killed at least 50 civilians, but "It would have been a terrible tragedy if US servicemembers had been harmed" ?

@lienrag It would have been, yes.

@interfluidity

Could you explain your reasoning ?

@lienrag the servicemembers acting as ordered, on a mission that is not a war crime, are not the people responsible. their deaths are not to be sought or excused. in consequential terms, had incompetence led to their deaths, the probability of an escalation for all involved, leading to more civilian and noncivilian catastrophe, would be very high. it may already be high, but severe escalation (eg restarting full civil war) may also yet be avoided.

@interfluidity

How is killing 50 civilians not a war crime ?

@lienrag Orders to bomb targets carefully selected for military importance are not *prima facie* a war crime such that a servicemember could or should refuse such orders. Questions of proportionality might lead to accusations *ex post* of war crime, that risks or harms to civilians were beyond proportionate to legitimate military objectives, but that is beyond the duty or capacity of servicemembers to judge in real time. They had no basis to refuse these orders.

@lienrag ( as more information comes out, the case that military planners were not in fact adhering to obligations to protect civilian life and proportionality grows stronger. after the fact, we may well conclude there were war crimes. but again, that's not something servicemembers executing these orders could have judged and refused. https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3llcabku2xk25 )

@interfluidity

Thanks for elaborating.
You're aware that it's the same for most Russian soldiers in Ukraine ?
And that the consensus is usually that killing them is still either a good thing or (among less callous persons) a sad necessity ?

The Vietnam war was stopped by killing tens of thousands of soldiers (at the cost of extreme sacrifice), many of them who were not willingly monsters.
Still, peace was achieved by killing them.

@lienrag I don’t revel in the deaths of Russian soldiers either, though of course it’s legitimate for the Ukrainians to kill them. It would have been legitimate for the Houthis to kill these servicemembers too—this is war—but I am very glad that did not happen, despite the severe intelligence breach. War is tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy. Mass death may eventually help exhaust support for war, but that doesn’t make it virtuous or desirable. There are better ways to peace.

@interfluidity

I hope you're right, that there are better ways for peace, but alas history has at best a mixed message about that.

As you wrote, it certainly would have been legitimate for the Houthis (or anyone attached to international justice) to kill them, and though I understand how emotionally you can feel glad that it didn't happen, it rationally can't be presented as a tragedy if it happened.

It's bad to be callous about enemy soldiers, but I'm not sure about the attitude...

@interfluidity

... "my soldiers don't deserve to die whatever unjust the war they wage is" either.

Though, again, I understand the difficulty of balancing emotion and reason in difficult life-and-death situations like this, trying to protect one's soldiers by any other way than preventing them to go to war is objectively displaying some callousness towards the lives of the people they're killing.

@lienrag War is bad. But it is also not one-sided. I’m not inclined to give the current US administration, which I consider lawless and fascist, much benefit of the doubt. I think it likely this leadership are reckless with civilian life to the point of war crime. But these melees are in response to hostilities from the Houthis that have also resulted in deadly consequences. 1/

@lienrag You may condemn that too, or you may consider it a justified response to Israel’s actions in Gaza. But these aren’t killings coming from one side out of nowhere. Whichever of the many linked parties you consider more or less culpable, they are all — the US, Houthis, Israelis, Hamas, etc — prosecuting murderous military actions. /fin

@interfluidity

That's true, but the fact that the death toll is so one-sided is imho at least partly the reason violence escalates so much and is considered the only resource by so many actors.

And also, though I do not wish harm on Hamas or Houthis soldiers (at least some of them should probably face justice in a fair trial, though) I don't consider their death a tragedy - it's the cost of war and they knew it.

@lienrag I guess I consider all of their deaths tragedies. Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference, one way or another people participating in war risk getting killed, whether you consider that a tragedy or an openly accepted hazard. (Of course how voluntary participation is can vary a lot.) I’d like to think if force capability were more balanced, mutual deterrence might yield peace. But then groups like the Houthis initiate military action despite relative weakness.