Aren't your standards for morality of target selection unrealistically high? I don't think US had a better one in any conflict it participated. It went as far as defining "enemy combatant" as anyone within blast radius. War is brutal and messy. Atrocious things always happen. It's very hard to take any moral stance except blaming the one who started killing and waiting till the matter is resolved. It's not perfect, but this world is very far from perfect in every aspect.
Maybe? Maybe not. I'm not an American and my statement is no stronger than condemnations I have made throughout my life about the US' conduct throughout the War on Terror (in both the Bush and Obama years and beyond). I believe that drone-bombing weddings in Pakistan creates more terrorists than it kills, and that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake from day one. I believe the war in Vietnam (and the bombing of Laos and Cambodia) was an atrocity and without it there would have never been a Khmer Rouge. I also decry the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Dresden, but I am more willing to accept that that kind of murderous excess can happen in a total war for survival against a near-equal.
What I am sure of is that Israel's situation is not a war against a near-equal. The kind of rules of engagement I'm talking about are par for the course in peacekeeping operations, and there's no reason Israel cannot be employing them. Israel is shooting fish in a barrel, and if there's not enough time for them to double-check their homework on a missile strike then they have plenty of time to wait for a cleaner opportunity to take a shot. More importantly, I think that being extremely delicate is not only a moral imperative but a strategic one. Realistically, bombs dropped on Gaza can do more damage to Israel than to Hamas, both by causing fresh grievance in Palestinian hearts, which is the sustenance on which Hamas feeds for support and soldiers, and by gaining them sympathy abroad. I've been watching this happen in real time and it's playing out like clockwork, and I am sure that Israeli strategists see it too. But I also think Israel's loss is Netanyahu's win, and the stronger Hamas gets, the more justification Netanyahu has to push things further. So I see a feedback loop playing out in which Netanyahu and Hamas are on the same side, buffing each other while Israelis and Palestinians both lose.
(It also goes without saying that I also, obviously, denounce Hamas and the Oct 7th attacks, just like I denounce Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Un, Putin, and other villains. But I rarely see any point wasting breath on that kind of denouncement, at least not until I meet someone who thinks otherwise.)
Fair enough. Personally I don't believe taking life is ever moral, but I accepted that the world doesn't share my morality and I don't anticipate it's going to in my lifetime.
