Liberation doesn’t come cheap

It should be written into the Geneva Convention that any country that wages war on another country should be held accountable for maimed and killed civilians. This accountability would include top quality medical care and financial compensation.

The coalition forces could say that the Iraqi military are using civilians as human shields and are placing weaponry in residential areas as an excuse to avoid compensation. It’s called passing the buck, but when the coalition forces attack first and without support from the UN then any excuse for civilian causalities, whether true or false, will always go against them, and because of this, all civilian causalities (dead & maimed) during the war are the responsibility of the acting force. They have no argument to support their claim of innocence if they started the onslaught, and so must take responsibility for their actions.

I have suddenly realised that there are flaws with my thinking on this matter. If the opposing forces knew that compensation for civilians was to be implemented, then a lot more civilians would probably die during a conflict. The opposing forces would purposely kill the civilians as a method of bankrupting the attacking forces. Though with the case of Lockerbie compensation is being negotiated to the tune of 2.7 billion dollars to the families of the people who died in the attack so why not in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s an awkward situation where compassion says that compensation should be given but this compassion could be abused. Compensation might not be such a good idea, though it still could show that the coalition forces genuinely care for human rights, but quality medical care should be there for all civilian causalities.

One thing that bothers me about medical care, say, for example, the USA with their glorious compassionate stars and stripes heart, decided to ship maimed civilians and their families to the USA for quality medical care, would the USA people stand for it? I sense if the maimed were shipped to Kuwait for treatment paid by the American taxpayer, there wouldn’t be too much of a hoo haa, but taking them to the states where health care is so expensive and helping them for free would really start to show the colours of the American skin as it does in the UK for asylum seekers

This essay is based on what should be done, but in reality the odd couple of causalities who catch the public eye, like the poor boy who lost both his arms, are receiving proper treatment but god knows what’s happening to the rest of the maimed, when it seems as if the hospitals have been looted and there’s no proper water and electricity supplies as of this moment.

So in conclusion, the “coalition” should take responsibility for their actions and by doing so could turn an illegal war into a justifiable war, if only they could find those pesky weapons of mass destruction and they left the Iraqi’s without a huge debt to pay for their liberation, via cheap oil and the like. I can just imagine some US general saying, “Liberation doesn’t’ come cheap”