by Bobby Brown

Created on: April 25, 2009   Last Updated: May 07, 2010

In the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean", Will Turner and Captain Jack Sparrow have the following (paraphrased) dialogue which takes place after Jack tells Will that his father, William Turner, is a pirate:
Jack: "Put your sword away, son, you wouldn't want me to beat you again."
Will: You broke the rules of engagement! In a fair fight, I would have won."
Jack: "That doesn't give me much of an incentive to fight fair then, does it?"

There are people who believe that warfare can be, should be, neat and pretty. Those people need to stick to playing chess. For the rest of us, the realist, we take warfare as what is: Hell. As such, we realize that while the mandate of every military is to protect its civilians, (military people are paid to die, by the way) it becomes impossible to achieve some military goals (i.e. the protecting of civilians) without the suffering and death of some civilians. This is a main paradox of war.

For sure most military forces would wish that "collateral damage" could be avoided. It's bad publicity and, frankly, no one wants to look bad in the media or inside a history book for that matter. Nevertheless, to save the lives of many, it does become necessary (at times) to sacrifice a few innocent people. Or to say it more euphemistically, some civilian sacrifice is unavoidable.

Consider the current world climate as it relates to terrorism. The United States is at war with organizations (some internal some external) who have decided that they must win their ideological or religious battle at all cost. These people have reduced the rules of war manual to this one line: what a man can do and what a man cannot do. All other rules are meaningless at that point. If I kill you are you going to sue me? Are you going to retaliate? Organizations that follow this rule couldn't care less about the "rules of engagement." This is the tipping point where innocent civilians can become the casualties of war. Imagine if you will that a known terrorist is on a mission to disperse botulinum toxin in the New York City subway system. (Botulin toxin is one of the deadliest poisons on the planet) Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people could die. There are only 2 choices:

1. Allow the terrorist to ride the train to his/her destination, and hope that there are no civilians around while law enforcement attempts to take out the bad guy.
2. Derail the train before the terrorist gets to to his/her destination. This would most certainly kill the terrorist and the

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