Originally posted by: Obi Jeewhyen
Tiptup, I'm not sure I properly conveyed the gist of my question. I understand when a war is considered "just" vs. "unjust" (despite some very gray areas) ... but I was wondering when, in your view, the civilians of a society can be held responsible for the war acts of their ruling regime .. and thus be legitimate targets of military attack ... whether for coercion to surrender or as direct "assets" to wipe out?

I thought I was being pretty clear that I believe civilians to be a legitimate target when they have satisfied two criteria. Namely, when they are mobilizing to support a war effort and when the war effort they support is unjust. At that point we can coerce them to surrender and even kill them if need be, just so long as we don’t attack them beyond that which we try to wisely determine as needful. Our “need” in this context is to discourage an enemy “civilian” population from supporting a war, and/or destroy their physical ability to support it. (A secondary “need” is to do this in ways that will simultaneously preserve the lives of the people from our own nation.)

A society is responsible for supporting a war if they support it, it doesn’t matter in what way. Certainly if their chosen support for a war is low (as may be the case under a totalitarian regime), we should take that into account and be less inclined to target them. Still though, even in this case, support for an unjust war is still support (whether physical or mental), and if the best wisdom we can muster decides that it is best to attack that civilian population, to the degree they support it, then so be it.

The civilians in Iraq should be targeted to the degree they support evil actions and illegitimate authority. And, in terms of WW2 Japan, I believe the atom bomb attacks would not have worked as mere demonstrations only. By using them to destroy actual military targets (mobilized cities) they were far more compelling. That’s not to say that pure demonstrations of power cannot work under certain circumstances, and shouldn’t be considered, but with the Japanese of that time, I’m convinced that such an approach would have solved practically nothing (even with the two bombs attacks, we were barely able to convince them to surrender).