They don’t care. Just another tally to add to their spreadsheet under the column titled “collateral”. The Americans realized they could greatly reduce that total number with a very convenient assumption: any male of a certain age was probably in service to the taliban so they’re a legitimate target.
The scene from Apocalypse Now with “Anyone who runs is a VC, and anyone who doesn’t is a well disciplined VC”.
They would notify everyone in a village they had to go to the concentration camps, then designate the area a “Specified Strike Zone”, where every man, woman, animal, structure, and crops were considered to be enemies. Some of these areas had arsenic dropped on them to poison the crops via Agent Blue so nobody could move back in.
Before that, in Korea, standing orders for the airforce was to strafe any group of 5 or more civilians, because they must secretly be soldiers.
They don’t care. Just another tally to add to their spreadsheet under the column titled “collateral”. The Americans realized they could greatly reduce that total number with a very convenient assumption: any male of a certain age was probably in service to the taliban so they’re a legitimate target.
That didn’t start with Afghanistan.
The scene from Apocalypse Now with “Anyone who runs is a VC, and anyone who doesn’t is a well disciplined VC”.
They would notify everyone in a village they had to go to the concentration camps, then designate the area a “Specified Strike Zone”, where every man, woman, animal, structure, and crops were considered to be enemies. Some of these areas had arsenic dropped on them to poison the crops via Agent Blue so nobody could move back in.
Before that, in Korea, standing orders for the airforce was to strafe any group of 5 or more civilians, because they must secretly be soldiers.