To be deliberately provocative....
Should there be laws governing Libya's civil war? Is the Libyan army justified in using cluster bombs on Misrata (against the rebels). May Libya bomb Misrata to demoralize the city, and try to force the rebels to capitulate?
If not, then why not?
---------- Post added at 08:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:30 PM ----------
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Originally Posted by EventHorizon
should noncombatants be killed? this might sound cold, but it all depends on the desired effect of whoever is doing the killing. the people/group/country responsible for those deaths need to be willing to accept the consequences, diplomatic, violent, or otherwise from doing exactly that but look at Gen. Lemay. he was a racist genocidal war criminal but there was some genius in the simplicity of his war strategy: kill enough of them and they'll stop fighting. so what'd he do? firebombed swaths of Japan. did the deaths of hundreds of thousands of noncombatants demoralize leadership? believe it. Lemay was the goddam Voldemort of the skies and he did terrible terrible things, but he was really good at it.
tl;dr: if you're going to go to war, be prepared to get alot more than you originally thought you were going to get.
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What you've espoused is basically the principle of proportionality--that the amount of collateral damage must be proportional to the strategic/military value of the target.
Finally, it's also worth it to note that, in international law today, firebombing of Japan would be in direct contravention of Article 51 of Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Convention: (Promulgated in 1977)
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2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
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However, note that the USA is not a party to Additional Protocol I, but may still be subject to liability since Protocol I may have attained 'customary law' status (hence if the USA decides to bomb Iran in to submission--such actors may be legally liable).