"Collateral damage' is a purely, and rather disgusting, American concept invented to minimize their responsibility for killing innocent people. Non combatant persons are not "collateral" anything. They are people.
It probably worth noting that Americans even have a concept of "collateral damage" about civilians. Most every other country wouldn't give two craps about killing non-combatants.
This is such a quirky thing about lefties. They hate on the West and the US for not following values unique to the West and the US, but don't really care that the non-Western world doesn't follow these same values.
You call it "hating on the west" when some criticize our leaders for failing to adhere to the very principles that make us worth not hating: that we have, or hope and claim to have, values that are not always those of the rest of the world, and that we consider those values to be worth following even if others do not share them, because those are the values that define us.
That's why practically nobody signed the Geneva Conventions.
Rules of engagement is for wimps, according to the present US government. Those were the rules that were imposed to avoid collateral damage.
The what now?
Weak?! It appears they are in favor of them!
No it seems pretty strong on committing war crimes at least when republicans are in office, we really owe the Germans an appology for the Neuremburg tribunals.
Well, maybe the Trump administration is strong on committing war crimes, but they are weak on prosecuting them.
Americans have never prosecuted other Americans for war crimes. Obama was weak on prosecuting them too, signing off on all of Bush's torture programs as legal.
Exactly, it is not a new policy. The novelty lies in being proud of it.
The right didn't exactly shy away from being proud of the My Lai massacre and supporting its commander. Why he only served two days of a 15 year sentence. We always have been proud of our warcrimes.
I was only a teenager at the time, so I didn't know know what the opinion was of the My Lai massacre among supporters of the war. I just thought it was a manifestation of the general position that Americans are the good guys per definition, and the same definition says that everything done by the good guys is good per definition. A more modern example is Abu Ghraib where it also took a long time to to acknowledge what had happened, or the position on renditions.
Look the only reason Abu Ghraib was prosecuted is the pictures got out, that is why Bush and Obama made sure to destroy the other evidence of american torture programs. But torturing prisoners of war is not a real war crime after all just like murdering civilians isn't either.
Other than the 196 signatories of the Geneva Conventions
