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POP has it...your ultimate responsibility is to your own troops. They have familys back home who love them no less than the children in the hospital. Your nation is not responsible for the safety of citizens from the nation you are at war with. Proportionality has nothing to do with it. The job of your armed forces are to defeat the enemy any way that they can. Timing also has nothing to do with, hoping that you can mimimize collateral damage. Anytime you let your foot off an enemies throat is giving him another chance to take a shot at you. Wars are lost on such thinking.

On of the unhearlded theaters of the war in the Pacific during WW2 was the US subramarine campaign against Japan. Everybody knows about McArthur going through the Central Pacific while the Navy conducted an island hopping campaign, but few know that the US Navy conducted UNRESTRICTED subramarine warfare against Japans merchant fleet. THe USN was so successfull that by the end of the war there was NOTHING left to sink. The Nurnberg War Crimes Trials wanted to proescute German Admiral Doenitz for Germanys unrestricted subramarine war against the Allys, however US Admiral Chester Nimitz told them the US did the same thing to Japan. The charges were dropped.

Wars are a dirty business, things happen that are not controlable in the heat of action. To second guess a soldier or commander after the fact is delusional and usually is a political ploy. Wars are fought on the primal level and have nothing to do with rationality or logic. That is the fallacy that Liberal apologists just don't fathom.


"Since that isn't an option in the hypothetical question (it's an either-or - either their people die or your people die), I say you let their people die. Your ultimate loyalty/responsibility is to YOUR people."