Military forces are required to cease or withdraw if the civilian casualties are disproportionate – and attacks which kill 13 civilians and at most 3 “insurgents” (there is no evidence that there were *any* “insurgents” in the area in fact) would be stretching proportionality to say the least. Or look at the January reports in which apparently 53 civilians were killed in ground raids with no “insurgents” involved at all.

And in fact, several months ago, US commanders in Afghanistan stated the they were revising their ROE to order withdrawal where they previously had not due to the disproportionate number of civilian casualties – they have not actually lived up to that but even they recognize the problem.

May I suggest another reading of the Fourth Geneva Convention -
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/…..Convention

Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
* violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
* taking of hostages;
* outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
* the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

and Spencer’s article – linked above – discusses their plans related to Afghanistan.

I can’t claim to be an international lawyer. But the above account of the Geneva requirements is misleading at best.

The conventions bar combatants from targeting or deliberately endangering civilians. But they do not require that combatants forego attacks on otherwise legitimate military objectives whenever an attack might kill civilians. If they did, the use of human shields would be far more common than it is.

Targeting civilians because they are civilians is forbidden by the laws of war–that’s clear enough. But some people seem to have trouble understanding that endangering civilians–placing them in harm’s way for your own military advantage or through failure to do due diligence (such as evacuating them from a battlefield)–is also forbidden. Endangering includes things like using human shields so that an enemy won’t shoot at you, using civilian clothing as a disguise for your troops, or taking up positions in civilian homes without evacuating the residents/owners to a safe area first.

This is why the missile strikes against houses in Pakistan are probably not violations of the Geneva Conventions or other laws of war. When combatants are making use of a building or vehicle, it is a legitimate military target. If riflemen are firing from civilian house or using it as a barracks, it is generally NOT a crime to destroy the house, even though civilians are likely to die.

If crimes are committed in this case, the perpetrators are not the CIA/Air Force drone operators, but the gunmen in th houses. The gunmen can use the houses as barracks as long as they move the civilians to a place of safety first. But if they make military use of the house while civilians are present, they–not the attackers–are responsible for the civilian deaths. The gunmen endangered the civilians. They knew the civilians were there and deliberately placed noncombatants in the line of fire.

From a practical humanitarian point of view, the above actually makes sense. The laws of war sanction those that take hostages AND deny them any advantage if they do. This is supposed to deter the use of hostages–and probably does. If enemies could mount successful attacks by strapping babies to their chests in the certainty that they could not then be shot at themselves, baby body armor would be the norm.

Providing arms to one of the groups doing the shooting (not the military in this case) doesn’t help prevent the overthrow, nor does it do anything at all to ensure the non-use of those very big weapons. And who knows, we may yet find out that we are also providing arms to the militants. That has happened more than once in the history of our dealings with countries like this.

What I do have a problem with is the US interfering in whatever ANY country is doing by providing either or both sides of any dispute with weapons.

We may not like what is going on, we may have an idea of what we’d prefer to see happening – but furnishing weapons does nothing for promoting that viewpoint, or for settling the disputes, or for the people of that country, or for that matter, for the people of this one (US)!