I gather a high value target would be the person or persons designated for death in this new kind of military conflict that is called a “war” only when the flags are flying. The news that there may exist ratios at play when it comes to determining how many innocent civilians can appropriately die along with the mystery high value target person is something new in the lexicon of possible obscenity. I won’t name names in this contemplation on culpability, because nations right now involved in “military actions” claiming not true for their nation. 

Clearly innocent civilians have been and are dying in Ukraine, Iran, Gaza. With the advent of drones, the incidence of civilian deaths can only increase beyond reasonable accounting.  Innocent children and adults are dying and there is no question about that.  There will be much written about this newly discovered ratio, but at of the bottom it all, anything less than the passionately dedicated commitment to spare innocent civilians from being killed in the new form of war is simply wrong. To conceptualize hard numbers and formulas of appropriate innocent deaths is systemic evil.  There can be no ratio of sufficiency relating the killing the innocents to the “high value target”.  This dark ratio of death, even in the speaking of it, is bona fide immortal.

Urgent Suggestion for Good

There can be no ratio to justify the decided intentional death of innocent civilians in a war. To massacre civilians is a war crime.  We have in this country operators whose job it is to control and operate drones.  The assumption has always been that Americans will do what is necessary to avoid innocent civilian deaths.  Never until recently had I ever heard on the international scene of war that there are target-to-acceptable-collatoral damage ratios participating in the world’s decision processes. We have even heard our leaders in this country write of ending civilizations, and this dark poetry of death and destruction must end. We have the means to move toward peace or self-immolation. Let us begin the right line of good decisions toward peace for death seems to have the stronger bias in this new age of autocrats.  An absolute international commitment to protecting the innocent civilians in warfare would be profoundly good. A renewed commensurate commitment to prosecuting war crimes against the innocent, could lead to justice which also would be good.