by Harry Windsor

Created on: April 02, 2009

Any war inevitably involves casualties and some of these may be civilians. The nature of modern warfare, however, has led to a drastic increase in civilian casualties. Whereas in previous eras civilians would not be present at battles and the weaponry not powerful enough to cause much collateral damage, in recent times powerful weapons and less predictable battlegrounds mean civilian casualties are on the increase. So yes accidental civilian death is unavoidable within the current paradigm of the war on terrorism but rather than simply accepting this, there is very good reason to abandon the war on terrorism in its present formulation as soon as possible.

The war on terror is not really a war in the way the word has been understood for millennia - there are no clearly defined sides, no obvious material objectives and often the distinction between civilian and militant is on of degree of adherence to an ideal more than anything else. Combating terrorism in the middle east and south Asia relies almost entirely on the use of military intelligence to establish targets who are otherwise indistinguishable from the civilian population. In such situations it is impossible to avoid the occasional costly mistake. The US policy on this, as with everything else relating to the war on terror, tends towards acting first and evaluating later - always supported by the half-formed idea that the suspect might be about to launch an apocalyptic terrorist attack if not stopped immediately. This policy has led to numerous civilians being killed, tortured or imprisoned as suspected terrorist when they are not.

The second way in which civilians suffer through modern warfare is as collateral damage, usually in an urban environment. Despite the supposed extreme accuracy of modern weapons, many manage to end up destroying the houses of innocent civilians, often women and children. The reason for this is obvious; it is impossible, however accurate the technology, to drop bombs and missiles on a densely populated urban area without occasionally causing the deaths of innocent bystanders. This may be because the original target was inaccurate, because of an error in hitting the target or simply because civilians were in or very near to the target when it was hit. There are in fact countless examples of this from all outposts of the war on terror and the trend shows no sign of abating in the near future.

Aside from the clear moral problems of innocent deaths this problem is the cause of a much

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