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[jester]

Occupation isnt a war, and if there is another term for what is going on in afganistan, id love to hear it.  War has become progressively more dangerous to civis since about WW1 though.  Some places its actually safer to be a soldier involved in combat operations than a civi now.

[ChairmanPoo]

It's not like noncombatants were any safer in the past. The contrary is likely true

[Xeron]

Actually civis WERE safer in the past.There wasn't bombs ,tanks ,nukes and missiles back then.

[jester]

Nah, the ratio of civis killed to military personnel has steadily risen since about 1850 or so, mostly due to artillery and airplanes, but also more recently stuff like cluster bombs and bombing of cities.  Depending on who you ask, Iraq has had between 100000 and 1000000 civ casualties in the time it was occupied.  Even in some of the 'hot' areas it was alot safer to be soldier than a civi.

According to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the civilian to soldier death ratio in wars fought since the mid-20th century has been 10:1, meaning ten civilian deaths for every soldier death.[8] Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the number of civilian casualties as a proportion of total casualties has been rising.

ninjad

[scriver]

...What. How long ago are you talking here? Because, you know, before there were professional armies, every soldier was a civilian forced into service. And, you know, there were the usual plundering, ravaging and general marauding that followed every taking of a settlement, or you know, how the armies actually lived off plundering the farms, towns and holdings while they happened to pass by while they were in field.

[ChairmanPoo]

I grant you that modern warfare is waged at a larger scale than past wars, and thus there are more casualties than back then. But that's about it. I don't think that armed conflicts were any more civilized in the past or less likely to target non-combatants (the contrary is likely true because nowadays it's far more likely that it will get reported and raise public outrage).

For Tl' DR'ers: it's not that war has gotten less civilized, it's just that chasing fleeing peasants on horseback with an axe is harder and more tiresome than doing the same with a predator drone


Edit: also what scriver said. Except the bit about proffessional armies, as professional armies have been around in one form of another for a long while (the ancient Egyptians often hired mercenaries, for instqnce)

[jester]

Even with the ravaging, the civ:military ratio has steadily risen.  Back in the day, generally the armies would be nasty, but they couldnt be spread that thin, they had to be concentrated balls of nasty to be effective fighting forces.  For civilian death ratio  Crimean war<WW1<WW11<Vietnam<Iraq (thats the ratio, not actual deaths/comment on which war was worse etc, and the iraq one ill grant you is very debatable at this stage) but you get the idea

ninjaed again.

Modern weapons have also made massacres alot easier

[DrPoo]

Horrible crap that happening over there, my big bro is a soldier. I dont speak with him anymore, though.
His stories from Afghanistan.. jesus.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

But then again remind me which is the only country to nuke another ?

The nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved untold lives. If not for that, the USSR and the USA would have thrown millions of soldiers at the shores of Japan, and the Japanese would have fought to the last man, woman, and child. They truly, honestly believed that the Allied powers were savages of unmatched brutality and that surrender would mean torture and death for everyone. In the battles outside of the Japanese mainland, the ratio of civilians who surrendered to those who fought to the death with anything they could find was (going from memory) around 1:120. There would no longer be a substantial Japanese people if the mainland had been invaded conventionally, because so many would have died as to put the number of living Native Americans to shame.

Nuking Hiroshima showed that we could make nukes and were willing to use them. Nuking Nagasaki proved that we already had more than one at the ready.

It was the best available way to end WWII, and it kept the USSR from being able to have a say in Japan's new government, which definitely would have made things worse for them.

[Zangi]

*snip*

For Tl' DR'ers: it's not that war has gotten less civilized, it's just that chasing fleeing peasants on horseback with an axe is harder and more tiresome than doing the same with a predator drone

*snip*

  Forgot to add that its also easier to shoot fleeing peasants with a gun then it is with a bow or crossbow. 
But yea, it is easier to white wash it when a drone kills civilians then it is for actual soldiers to kill civilians...  whats up with that?  ...

[zchris13]

When a drone shoots somebody... the only thing you know is that a village exploded. Damn things are hard to track.

[Leafsnail]

But yea, it is easier to white wash it when a drone kills civilians then it is for actual soldiers to kill civilians...  whats up with that?  ...

You mean drone vs ground troops or drone vs manned aircraft?  For air attacks it's easier to claim collateral damage ("Yeah this attack killed 12 civilians but it also killed this fighter") or straight up mistakes ("We shot a wedding but we thought it was a militant camp") which ground troops really couldn't make.  I'm not sure I see any difference between aircraft and drones though.