What is an innocent civilian? Isn't that term absurd?

Question

Mankind is neither innocent or civil. Everybody is fair game. This is what the Jewish zealots, Mohammed, William the Conqueror, Napoleon, Hitler, Harry Truman, LBJ, Bin Laden, and George W. Bush have taught us. Muslims and Orthodox Jews and Christian hillbillies are extremists because they are more inbred than normal people, no? Shouldn't they be weeded out through the war that they created?

Answer 1

It's not a matter of guilt. Yes, everyone on the planet is probably guilty of something if they're over a year old. It's matter of what punishments are appropriate for that guilt.

Imagine a person who borrowed a stapler from the office and took it home. Is that person guilty of something, even if only morally? Sure. Probably. But does that person deserve to be killed, after watching his family be raped. No.

Imagine the person who didn't say thank you in the grocery line. Or didn't offer his seat on the subway to an older woman. Was that person uncivil. Sure. Does that justify burning down his house?

There have always been fanatics and extremists. There will likely be fanatics and extremists for some time to come. Does that mean that the other 99% of the population should suffer pain and fear and destruction?

The fanatics should be weeded out by being ignored. The extremists should be taken out of power, put in their own little sandbox, and allowed to scream and rant all they want harmlessly.

The problem is not that we have fanatics and extremists. The problem is that we don't do anything about them, even when we know they are unstable and irrational. We have leaders who flagrantly break the law, and they keep getting re-elected. We have corruption at the highest levels, and what do people do about it? They watch reality TV.

The problem is not that we have fanatics and extremists. The problem is that we allow them to run the world because of our apathy. The fanatics and extremists should not be weeded out by the wars they create, because they should never be in a position to start wars in the first place. That is where we as a species have failed.

Fortunately, it may not yet be too late to do something about it.

Answer 2

The problem with fighting an insurgency is precisely determining who is or isn't an enemy soldier. Insurgent fighters thrive on their ability to disappear into a civilian population so that it isn’t clear who is “innocent” and who isn’t.
The principal is very effective because the governing adversary has to clamp down on the entire population in order to protect itself and those loyal to it. The result is less freedom and probably higher taxes for all with the effect of more people being alienated and going over to the insurgent side. Revolutions have been fought like this for hundreds (maybe thousands) of years.
Robin Hood (fiction?) was the leader of an insurgent band of “merry men” fighting the incumbent, though corrupt, de facto regime. Many countries have had anti-government groups who conducted violent acts of terror to gain headlines to their causes and drain the resources of the incumbent government. We have had these in the United States. All of these people have tried to appear like innocent civilians when not directly engaged in battle.
In these conflicts, errors of judgment are impossible to avoid. That is part of the intention. Innocent people are hurt and this puts more of the population in opposition to the powers in charge. Terrorists will deliberately use school buildings – with the children and teachers inside – so that innocent civilians will get killed if the government backed forces attack them. They will also use hospitals, neighborhoods, apartment buildings or anything they can find where a number of innocent civilians become causalities of war.
This is murder, pure and simple. Such tactics are immoral and unethical by any definition. Bombing a marketplace or retail outlet for the purpose of killing innocent civilians is not fighting a government; it is the perpetuation of crimes against human beings. These perpetrators do not deserve our respect. They deserve to be captured and locked up in cages for the rest of their lives or summarily executed.

Answer 3

imagine a mother cowered in the corner with her new born baby, scared of the war going on outside of her door. This is an innocent civilian. This is what we need to protect. I don't care what color they are, or if they have access to oil.

Answer 4

It is almost impossible to define it or to figure out who is an extremist. I want to point out that there are extremist from every religions!

Answer 5

Read the Geneva Convention it may shed some light cause your in the dark. If ignorance is bliss you must be quite giddy.