"The CIA has a Job to do,"
"War is dirty, and people die in war,"
"Guerrilla warfare is dishonorable,"
"The cowardly insurgents hide in populated areas,"
If we ever face these situations, you'll see these people change their tune, and Justify what they do and condemn what is being done to them.
It'll be more excuse making up the wazoo.
Their level of hypocrisy and double standards are absolutely nauseating...
All those statements are true. Nobody is suggesting the American military is a display of perfection on the battlefield, and nobody is suggesting the CIA is innocent or perfect. It many cases it comes down to intent. In the case of guerilla warfare, especially the urban kind, civilians are shields. That is the point of hiding among them. No matter how much restraint a conventional military may exercise, eventually the hammer will drop. Sometimes that hammer drops on the wrong spot, and civilians are killed. You don't "justify" it, you rationalize it. In war civilians will be killed, sometimes it is intentional, like the Dresden firebombing, or the atomic bombs in Japan, and sometimes it is a product of bad planning or faulty intelligence. Nobody is safe from war, especially not civilians.
Again, the issue is intent. No sane pilot is hoping that when he pulls that trigger his munitions will blow up a civilian complex. They are either following coordinates given to them by command, or they are going by radar blips that show the source of rocket or missile fire. Then it goes back to the other side. Why are the these guerilla fighters firing rockets from a civilian apartment complex? The answer is two fold. Firstly, they are hoping that their enemies will restrain themselves from firing upon a civilian area even though they are taking fire from a civilian area. Secondly, they are hoping that if their enemies do fire upon them in the civilian areas, these attacks will kill civilians, creating bad PR for their enemies. That is guerilla warfare 101.
As I stated earlier, the hammer will eventually fall. There is no way around it. Civilians die as a result. Who is the good guy? Nobody. Who bears responsibility? Both parties. However, since most people see the world as "us vs. them", each side will rationalize and attempt to justify their mistakes and deliberate actions. Those guerilla fighters who took up residence in the civilian areas bear obvious responsibility. Those forces who opposed them bear responsibility for rationalizing the benefits of killing those guerilla fighters regardless of the civilian cost.
