(Split) Should we feel sympathy for Iraqis (or other non-Europeans/non-"whites") killed in warfare?

[Saturni]

Why would that be?

Xtians.

I feel sympathy for dogs, which requires no conception that dogs are my "equal", merely the assumption that they have roughly the same capacity for pain.

Actually, I prefer to be around dogs and cats more than two-legged vermin.

[Saturni]

Yes and no, but there was always a form of ethics in warfare. It might have been a more primitive form than the current one that is hold universal and in fact is based on Christian morality.

Ethics is warfare? So is it more ethical to shoot someone in the head or drop a 2,000 lbs bomb on their house in the middle of the night? Again, is it more ethical to hit them with a flamethrower or run them through with a bayonet?

Everyone agrees that Dresden and Hiroshima/Nagasaki were war crimes. As the majority of the people who suffered were clearly the innocents.

I don't agree, so that means there is no "everyone." I don't know where this idea of "civilians" came from. There are no such things in war. Every man, woman, and child is a war resource of the enemy nation. Destroying the "home front" is just as important as destroying the military front.

True, though the move is very much unethical and almost semi-genocidal in this case.

The ultimate aim of war is genocide.

I see, it makes sense since you don't feel sympathy to others, you don't require it from the others.

I don't feel sympathy for humans, no.