Originally Posted by
Just This Once...
I suspect the authors are on mind-bending drugs. At no stage do civilian
locations become 'hostile' and in any case hostile civilian personnel only become targets for their time of participation. The idea that you can claim lawful 'proportionality' when you have absolved yourself from considering the effects of an attack is utterly preposterous.
The authors are military professionals. (or were).
It does not help attempts at polemical analysis when the LOAC themselves have modifying and vague language, in detail.
When military objectives are attacked, civilians and civilian objects must be spared from incidental or collateral damage to the maximum extent possible. Incidental damage must not be excessive in relation to the direct and concrete military advantage you anticipate from your operations. Excessive use of force quite clearly violates the law of armed conflict.
Excessive is a subjective quantity. To be blunt, these words are ascribed quantities, qualities and meanings AFTER THE FACT with some vigor, while offering little in situ practical or quantitative constraint.
More to the point, the history of warfare has shown that overwhelming force applied tends to shorten a conflict. What extends a conflict is any and all pretense to turning it into a balanced or fair "match" which is what SPORTING EVENTS are, not war.
One could accuse the LOAC of being an attempt to create the infamous self licking ice cream cone: structure your operations such that war lasts as long as it could do, as we want to give each side a fair go.
(Being more than passing familiar with LOAC, I am being a bit tongue in cheek with the above).
Getting the war over sooner is a better idea. 1914-1918 hopefully taught the world something, didn't it?
If this study was funded by the Friends of Israel Initiative, per just another jocky's point, can it be accepted as objective?