DG, I agree. I said, you have to take all reasonable precautions to prevent collateral damage to innocent civilians. The problems in the world stem from the defintions of the terms reasonable, innocent and civilian.

Right now, as we speak, Saddam Hussein and his generals are defending their gassing of 10s of thousands of Kurds not by denying that they did it, but by saying in light of the dangers they faced from Iranian invaders teamed up with Kurdish insurrectionists (and they agree these rebels were a minority), they essentially had no choice, and that in fact they never actually targeted any civilians.

So, as nobody can prove they actually targeted the civilian Kurdish population, the final outcome will be decided by what the trial court judges decide what were reasonable precautions, who was innocent and who were civilians and what the Baathists should have reasonably decided in light of that.

Similiarly, Israel's recent foray into Lebanon shows what happens when people take the attitude "well, hey, I'm not actually targeting the civilians". Clearly, Israel was acting beyond any reasonable bounds of restraint.

But French (Norman, to be precise) farmers died at Normandy. Heck, French nuns died during Normandy. Does that mean Operation Overlord was immoral? Thousands of innocent German civilians died in Berlin and other German cities in the spring of 1945 (and let's leave Dresden out of this for a moment, because that was a clear case of actually targeting civilians).

At some point, in the face of certain types of evil, inaction is every bit as morally reprehensible as action that allows for the possibility of some innocent civilian casualties. Examples?

Rwanda, Darfur, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Cambodia, Siberia... all the places in the world in histor where we as a global community knew full well evil was happening and we were too cowardly to act. We can console ourselves with the fact that we harmed no innocent civilians by refusing to intervene, but do you think that makes the millions of survivors of these horrors feel any better?