While proportionality is in LOAC, if there is ample intelligence that the hospital is being used to commit attacks, it doesn’t have to be used exclusively to commit attacks to be a legal target.

Rule 28. Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule28#:~:text=to medical units-,Rule 28.,and protected in all circumstances.

“the protection of medical units ceases when they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy. This exception is provided for in the First and Fourth Geneva Conventions and in both Additional Protocols.[37] It is contained in numerous military manuals and military orders.[38] It is also supported by other practice.[39]”

“While the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols do not define “acts harmful to the enemy”, they do indicate several types of acts which do not constitute “acts harmful to the enemy”, for example, when the personnel of the unit is armed, when the unit is guarded, when small arms and ammunition taken from the wounded and sick are found in the unit and when wounded and sick combatants or civilians are inside the unit.[40] According to the Commentary on the First Geneva Convention, examples of acts harmful to the enemy include the use of medical units to shelter able-bodied combatants, to store arms or munitions, as a military observation post or as a shield for military action.”

And that’s before we get into the creative reinterpreting of LOAC for terrorists in non- international armed conflicts fought by non-state insurgent groups which were invented post 9-11.

In both those wars there was a plan for war. But not a plan for peace.

The civilian leadership in Iraq made a choice to send the Iraqi military home with no pay and no plan to do anything but hold up in the green zone as if everything after opening up the war would just turn to roses.

The civilian leadership refused the military leadership’s requests to negotiate with the Iraqi religious leaders calling for violence. To create a plan for peace.

These guns your jerking off over did not bring peace. Nor could they win a war. All they did was create a stalemate.

To plan for peace is a tiny bit harder than telling a few young men to leave the FOB every once in awhile. It involves negotiating with religion, creating win/wins, making sure people have the means to support themselves. Or crushing those that oppose the system. It’s easier if you get the locals to do it for you in exchange for reconstruction for instance in Germany and Japan.

There small local conflicts you’re describing are in places with a long history of tribes fighting other tribes. They are used to that. WWIII will be a flash point conflict among civilians that may not stomach a prolonged conflict and will be more likely to want to negotiate peace.

If coolers heads prevail then peace is possible. If shareholders just want a war that drags on far away and civilian leaders ignore military leadership you end up with the wast of time and money Iraqi and Afghanistan were. The difference is the endgame of politics. Why did the war continue after Osama was caught and killed? What was the objective after that? Why was holding the dirt so important after the enemy had been reduced to a point that could no longer project power behind their hill of dirt?

If getting Osama was the main goal why did we ignore all the Intel that he was across the border in Pakistan for so long? Why did we keep searching where we knew Osama wasn’t? Because Halliburton wanted a prolonged war and the military leadership had no authority to stop the madness, win the war, negotiate peace, and move on after the mission of taking out the terrorist leader Osama was complete. So instead it devolved into holding a hill of dirt for no reason except to line pockets.

If you want to go trench by trench or door by door go ahead.

The future of war is not dirt. But instead information.

If Australian warnings for Perl Harbor had been heeded we wouldn’t have had to build so many boats. We built 9000 boats in WWII and we’ll build more than that many drones in WWIII.

But what good are drones without information? Without targets? Without information what to they do?

Targets, tactics is only one kind of information. Real time surveillance, biometrics, the ability to strike command and control. To cut the head off the snake is worth more than clearing a city.

If you need to clear a city, you need infantry.

Did we go island hoping all the way to Japan and then go door to door? Or did we break the enemies will to fight and force a surrender?

Is it always worth going door to door and holding worthless land? Trading bodies and bullets for what? Dirt?

What would it be worth however to cripple the enemies Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, and Intelligence? Do we really need to take land in future wars as much as force a surrender out of idiots that want to start shit.

There’s a terrific documentary about how the Air Force planned to win a nuclear war before ICBMs. It’s called the power of decision. It’s not about going door to door or trench by trench however. It’s about a different kind of war where you win by removing your enemies ability to fight in a flash. Unfortunately similar can be done today in cyberspace without the assurance of MAD or the early warning of an ICMB launch.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?426926-1/the-power-decision#

Cannon fodder?

To quote Patton

“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

It’s a good thing this near-peer BS is thrown around about armies that can barely keep their troops fed in their own countries where we have the logistics to feed our troops around the world.

I’m sure there will always be a roll for infantry. The problem of the last few wars has been using infantry to hold ground and as a police force.

You don’t win a conflict by holding on to a hill of dirt. You win by removing your enemies ability or will to fight.

Ukraine is a bad example as they’re playing by other people’s rules. Europe and the West won’t provide them weapons if they use them in Russia. Russia won’t give up ground if Ukraine cannot reach inside of Russia to remove their will or ability to fight.

It’s trench warfare stalemate a la WWI all over again.

If there is a WWIII it’ll be marked by hybrid war, hacking, air defense reacting to missle and drone attacks and the deployment of decentralized weapons.

It’s not a stretch to imagine hundreds of thousands of civilians could be killed by killware in a hacking attack without a single traditional weapon system being involved.

People aren’t going to line up in pretty little lines fire salvos at each other. If anyone starts digging a fucking trench let them have that ground. They are no immediate threat to the factories, production, and training centers. Let them dig in. Send a bomb run later to clear them out when they come out to play.

This is actually a good question.

Law of War is often referred to as the law of armed conflict (LOAC). This is what is permissively legal to do, if you are engaged in conflict.

The Rules of Engagement (ROE) are directives regarding the exact circumstances United States (US) forces will initiate and/or continue combat engagement.

Has the hostage takers used force such as firing a weapon to take the hostage? Did they fire at US forces? Did they deploy munitions of any type? Has there been an escalation of combat or have they disarmed? Is there an immediate threat to the hostage? Have they threatened to kill the hostage? Are they retreating or advancing? Are the hostages prisoners of war? Are they being provided the required treatment for POWs?

All of these and many more can determine the rules of engagement for US forces.

The ROE is separate to the rules of war and not all forces have the same methodology. In fact some nonUS forces may receive no training for LOAC or ROE.

Finally, the current interpretation post 9-11 is that those that do not follow the LOAC are not legally combatants and therefore do not have to be provided the protections that they would if they were legally combatants. So, if they engage in war in a way that does not follow the legal methods they may not hide behind the protections.

Drafts have not won recent wars. Wars are not PVP.

The US has made an effort to maintain a highly trained and extremely specialized fighting force. It can take over a year of training in certain specialities before you even get to the last school house.

There’s a focus on making advanced weapon systems easy to use through human factors analysis and that’s slowly transitioning into killbots that do everything but pull the trigger and need a human in the loop to authorize the kill.

During WWII there was a massive increase in manufacturing which was beyond the enemies reach. If you got drafted to do anything it’d likely be work in a plant making drones or something logistical such as transporting drones.

The rules of war aren’t about perfection, they’re very much a do not let perfect be the enemy of good, and filled with compromises to do less evil.

If you want protections for medical staff you have to clear a section of ground for them that isn’t used for war.

It’s important to realize these rules were agreed to in order to try to prevent total war. Where carpet bombs flattened entire cities like what happened in Dresden.

War is horrific. Those that wage war unleash hell. We cannot make war logically or compassionate. We can try to afford safety nets for those to help others and reduce harm in war. However, the rules do not elimt harm for “innocents.” They simply offer a way to have less civilian casualties by doing things like not running a command center out of a hospital.

The rules of war do not state it has to be used exclusively to commit attacks to be a legal target.

Rule 28. Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule28#:~:text=to medical units-,Rule 28.,and protected in all circumstances.

the protection of medical units ceases when they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy. This exception is provided for in the First and Fourth Geneva Conventions and in both Additional Protocols.[37] It is contained in numerous military manuals and military orders.[38] It is also supported by other practice.[39]

While the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols do not define “acts harmful to the enemy”, they do indicate several types of acts which do not constitute “acts harmful to the enemy”, for example, when the personnel of the unit is armed, when the unit is guarded, when small arms and ammunition taken from the wounded and sick are found in the unit and when wounded and sick combatants or civilians are inside the unit.[40] According to the Commentary on the First Geneva Convention, examples of acts harmful to the enemy include the use of medical units to shelter able-bodied combatants, to store arms or munitions, as a military observation post or as a shield for military action.[41]

You literally said Hamas should be given all of Israeli and Israeli citizens should give up their citizenship and live under a “democratic” Palestine. We both know Hamas will stop at nothing less than exterminating all Jews. That’s their official stance that Hamas themselves advocate for.

“Jewish people can stay and live under Palestine”

Translation, remove the borders and let Hamas expand their operations

I’d be open to this type of thinking if the leaders of the rallies I went to didn’t say they want all Jews dead and their homeland restored to them after the rally was over behind closed doors when they weren’t in front of the media. All that one state solution is propaganda BS without a chance of happening.

Yea sure let’s trust the hostage takers and child murders not to take any more hostages or murder more Jewish childen.

There are no innocents here and it’s all propaganda.

In the other thread you call for the destruction of Israel and for Jews to live under Hamas rule. This is going to get a lot worse while Hamas and people like you refuse a 2 state solution.

I used to be like you. Went to the rallies. Even met with the leaders, until they showed me they were racist and hated Jews. Didn’t want Israel to exist. Then I realized that both sides were just going to be at each other’s throats till the end of time. Because neither would back down or allow the other to back down.

In a game of Total destruction there will be no winners. The only way to win is not to play. Yet Hamas has plenty of support from some people to erase Israel. Hamas and Israel are going to fight. And more people die in conflicts in Africa every day. But it’s more important to hate Jews then discuss what can be done to protect civilians in conflicts with higher casualty rates in Africa…