US warfare in Somalia and the trade-off between casualty-aversion and civilian protection

Targeting: Precision and the production of ethics

“…13 These targets could have been taken out by different means, means that might have reduced the number of non-combatant deaths. As Sebastian Kaempf (2006: Ch. 5) shows in relation to Afghanistan, various reports have argued that a greater use of ground troops and special forces in particular could have reduced the risks for civilians.…”

“…Put differently, Shaw’s charge is that the deciding ethical standard is force protection rather than non-combatant immunity and that the former actively undermines the latter. Kaempf (2006: Ch. 5), however, points out that these arguments assert and assume that force protection meant greater dangers for non-combatants; they do not actually show that this is the case.…”

“…It is not clear, for example, that flying lower in the Kosovo operation would have reduced the collateral damage incurred. As Kaempf (2006: 305) observes, where GPS-guided bombs are used, their accuracy would not have been affected by the aircraft’s altitude. In relation to the more recent Operation Enduring Freedom he argues, nevertheless, that non-combatant protection could have been improved, not least by making more use of special forces (Kaempf, 2006: Ch.…”

“…She points out that we ‘tend to view accidents as destructive, as unthought, random, events that occur against our best intentions ’ (Owens, 2003: 597; emphasis added). This is particularly problematic as civilian casualties, though unintended, are nevertheless often foreseeable (Kaempf, 2006: 303). If such casualties are knowingly accepted as part of a particular strike, we may argue that they are more properly seen as incidental, rather than accidental.…”

Re-examining the Australian public's attitude to military casualties: post-heroic or defeat-phobic?

“…Only once US leaders learned to accept higher short-term casualties in order to practise population-centric counter-insurgency (COIN) was the 'surge' able to be adopted in Iraq (Ricks 2009). The second problem is that military force protection can conflict with protecting civilians and with Australia's obligations under international humanitarian law, as was seen in the case of the USA's and North Atlantic Treaty Organization's operations in Somalia and Kosovo, respectively (Kaempf 2013;Palazzo 2008).…”