on unraveling the logic of ¨collateral damage¨:
Foundational to the concept of collateral damage is the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). First developed by Catholic casuists during the Middle Ages, the DDE morally differentiates the intended effects of an act from those that are unintended, though foreseen. Further, by focusing upon the moral significance of intention and its relevance to moral agency and responsibility, the DDE morally distinguishes killing as an unintended, secondary effect - - collateral damage - - from murder, claiming only the latter as absolutely prohibited.
(...) While the instances of collateral damage are myriad, I will consider, as representative, the April, 8, 2003 US attack on the al-Sa’ah restaurant. According to American intelligence sources, Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, had been meeting with key aides in a bunker deep beneath the al-Sa’ah restaurant located in the densely populated Mansour district of Baghdad. Shortly after 3pm, an American B1 aircraft dropped four satellite guided bunker-buster bombs on the restaurant. Unfortunately, all four bombs missed their target, destroying homes and turning at least fourteen innocent people, three of them children, into what the US military refers to as a “pink mist.”
(...) If the Iraqi civilians had become aware that an attack was immanent and could not escape, would they have been within their rights to respond defensively – to shoot down the aircraft (killing the pilot) in self-defense. I think the answer is clearly that they would. Human beings do not loose their right to defend themselves because others have deemed their deaths to be inconsequential – necessary for some greater good. It is not the case, by the way, as a consequence of now being threatened by an Iraqi defensive response, that the pilot could have morally targeted and killed the Iraqi defenders – claiming self-defense. The Iraqis do not forfeit the very right they are justified in asserting. What is irrelevant in this hypothetical is whether the pilot has agency, whether the threat to the Iraqis is directly intended or unintended, and whether the Iraqi deaths are the primary or secondary effect of the act of bombing the restaurant. In other words, what is irrelevant is the application of the DDE. ...Clearly, the pilot’s liability is a consequence of his bombing (or threatening to bomb) the restaurant and killing (or threatening to kill) the Iraqis. Since acting morally and permissibly ought never warrant such sanctions, i.e., being the victim of the justifiable use of violence/deadly force in self defense, the Iraqi’s right to kill the pilot indicates the failure of the DDE to do the moral work alleged, that is, to render the bombing of the restaurant morally and legally permissible and the deaths of the Iraqis trivialized as collateral damage.
(...) The responders kill innocents knowingly and with free will and consent in order to achieve the goal or objective of ending terrorism (or eliminating the Iraqi leadership). In such cases, therefore, killing noncombatants is not accidental, but what I will term an “act of collateral violence.” That is, an act, motivated by military necessity, in which noncombatants are harmed or killed, perhaps not with direct intent nor as the primary goal or purpose of the act, but, nevertheless, knowingly and with as high a degree of probability as is the harming or killing of the terrorists. Consequently, the fact that a responder claims only to be targeting the terrorists (or Saddam and his sons) does not absolve him of causal and moral responsibility.
(...) A DDE justification in such cases and the alleged distinction between terrorism and a collaterally violent response to terrorism, between the attacks of 9/11 and the bombing of the al-Sa’ah restaurant, is misguided and merely a pretense or rationalization for retaliation and revenge. Both acts knowingly kill noncombatants to achieve some goal or objective. Both terrorists and responders violate the right to life of their innocent victims and fail to fulfill their obligation to respect such rights. Consequently, there is no moral difference between acts of terrorism and of collateral violence. They are morally equivalent. Neither are acts of war but of murder. Neither the terrorists nor the responders in such cases are combatants but brigands and murderers.