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Here is where the non-combatant speaks up. Even in the war against opposing and presumed "guilty" forces, there will always be what politicians and novelists alike have penned "collateral damage."

Anytime you have imperfect people, armed with weapons designed with frightening efficiency to kill people, and then place them far away from their usual surroundings, with only the slightest of military supervision, let alone humanitarian (even a football game has a ref) there will be mistakes made, and even deliberate killings, as has been seen in many documented cases.

A "perfect war" as many vainly coin the phrase, would be one where only the guilty are killed, and the innocent are spared. The only place I personally have ever seen such a thing is in the Bible. So maybe one should look there for the secret to perfect warfare. As far as the US is concerned, I think the point has been demonstrated to a large degree, even with so called "smart bombs" there will always be mistakes, bad feeds, bad intelligence, crossed signals, mechanical failure, pilot error, operator error, and just good old fashioned killing spree among individuals, it cannot be avoided.

When an army becomes increasingly frustrated with the task of identifying the innocent from the combatant (as was so much easier back when it was guys in red coats and guys in blue coats) they are bound to either 1) act out on those frustrations, or 2) begin to broaden the terms for who is a combatant. If they continually see children with AK-47s, for example, they will naturally become more suspect of children, and in turn give them more attention, and when you are the attention of an armed soldier, well, your life span shrinks pretty quickly.

Bottom line: automatic fire, human error, unpredictable ballistics, and high strung rest and food deprived emotions will always ensure that even the best laid raid, mission, or take down will always have an incidence of error. The perfect war is one that is never fought in the first place. If everyone on the earth was a pacifist, there would be no wars, no military, and no need for either.

Learn more about this author, M.L. Brooke.
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