I am old enough to have read too many times leaders claim that their War is a proportionate response to an act of aggression.
I am also old enough to have read every time criticism of the claimed proportionate response as being to great or too little.
So let us take Israel and Hamas. It has been alleged that this War is not proportionate. So what would the civilised proportionate War have looked like?
Would it be for the United Nations to identify and verify the precise number of victims of the Hamas attack and how they were killed, wounded or taken hostage and then issue a certificate to Israel setting out these details and Israel then killing, wounding or taking hostage exactly the same number of random innocent Palestinians to balance the books?
This is an outrageous, grotesque idea without merit and particularly so for the random Palestinians but in my mind it makes clear civilised War is a complete myth.
The reality is once War is the solution there is no civilised way in which it can be conducted.
