Jeffery Goldberg raises an interesting question relating to the widespread death of Gazans:
I couldn’t get an accurate read on how many of those Somalis were civilians, so I called my colleague, Mark Bowden, who wrote the book. He said that eighty percent of the Somali deaths were of civilian. Eighty percent! Roughly eight hundred people. I asked Bowden if he thought this meant that American forces in Somalia had committed war crimes.
You can read Bowden’s answer here, but the short summary is that no, it wasn’t a war crime, and that there really is very little difference between Hamas and the Mogadishu militants. However, this raises an interesting hypocrisy among many on the Left: while believing that Israel is in the wrong and is committing war crimes, they also believe that Bush committed war crimes during his tenure and should be investigated accordingly. Yet if we put these these two axioms together, it becomes apparent that Clinton, too, and in fact anyone who has authorized military force resulting in widespread civilian deaths. In fact, Clinton not only was responsible for civilian deaths in Somalia, but in Iraq as well.
To steal from a paraphrased comment by Sonny Bunch, “All war is a crime.” Sometimes, sadly, it is a necessary crime; yet its inherently criminal nature should make nations serious consider the horror of the war option, and to avoid it as much as possible.
Image courtesy of Flickr user ctsnow.
