bd popeye said:
"Z" war is not an exact science. Commanders in many cases take what ever action is neede to defeat the enemy. Civillians will be killed no matter how calculating & careful the commanders are. They can only hope to minimize civillian casulites. But only if the so desire. Civillians should just flee in time of war.
So in reality there is no ethical solution to your senerio. None. Simply because war is a filfty dirty business. It's not a game. It's very real and people die. Both the just and unjust.
War just simply sucks...
I know that it's not a realistic scenario, and that was never my intention either. It's purely a philosophical discussion on ethics, that's all. Anyway, here's my take on this.
Frankly I'd consider General A's actions in this situation more evil, regardless of the disparity in civilian deaths in this strike. General A is essentially taking the civilian population hostage by using their deaths to force an enemy hand. Historically, it's possible to note that those that are willing to kill a few innocents at a time to force someone else's hand (Germany's V1s) are more inclined to kill even more people once they have that capability (V2s) and so I would argue that even though there were a smaller number of civiilian deaths in General A's situation, it would be less ethical than General B's situation, which is the result of military limitation.
Going down the slippery slope for the sake of argument, I would tentatively venture that should General A have command of nuclear weapons, he would be less likely to hold them back, seeing as his target IS the civilian population, and it's quite possible he will use the nukes to cause as much damage as possible. Even as his weapons grow more and more deadly he probably won't hold back because he has no qualms against using innocent deaths as a (albeit vile) force of diplomacy.
Now looking at General B...
In my opinion he's being an asshole, but at least he's a "true military man" with a (relative) disinterest in the larger political game. If his orders included avoiding civilian targets he probably would do it. (It's odd for me to hypothesize what the Generals are like considering a set up the scenario, but what the heck.) Indiscriminate artillery fire at an urban neighborhood that kills 1 soldier and 50 civilians is a VERY bad tactic, but at the very least he's got a military goal in mind.
Another factor worthy of consideration is intent.
Suppose General A deliberately fired at a school with 100 kids inside, but with some poor quality missiles. He was expecting to kill maybe 20 of them, but because the missiles sucked he "only" managed to kill 10 of them. Now just because he could have killed 100 but only got 10 doesn't mean he's an ethical guy. It just means he's incompetent. As his weaponary improves he'll be able to fire missiles with heavier warheads and kill all 100 kids, and he arguably WILL do it because that was his intention in the first place.
General B on the other hand fired his artillery at an area that had 20 soldiers and maybe 20 civilians that could possibly be injured by the debris. Due to some factors (wind, miscalculations, etc) his grunts were unable to score a direct hit on their target, instead missing and killing a truckload of innocent people. It wasn't their intention, and the deaths are still their responsibility, but it was a military action. (The Geneva Convention throws in another twist in that if you have another option that can reduce civilian casualties, for example if you have the option of using a sniper on a soldier when possible, then you must use it instead of artillery, or an AH-64 using a chaingun on the surrounding area, or a "tactical" nuke.)
Now suppose the area had 20 soldiers in the area, and 50 civilians, but the strike only managed to kill 1 soldier and all 50 civilians. In this case it's a pisspoor attack, but "B" was still more ethical than "A". He just needs Gollevainen leading his artillery squad.
Now other factors that could potentially change someone's view of how "ethical" General B's strike was would be what the soldier was. Was he a angry Arab kid with an AK-47, or a Sniper, or someone calling down artillery, or (heaven forbid) some lunatic with a backpack nuke?
Then there's the numbers problem. I don't think there's anyone that would think that using a nuke on a city to kill 1 soldier would be worth it, so somewhere there's a line, and numbers DO matter.
That's my take on this, feel free to add more.
