Dana Shilling wrote:
If one reflects that (1) the terrorists consider themselves at war with the West generally, and the US specifically; (2) the entire idea of non-combatants in war is both very recent historically, and Western in origin;
I don't agree--I would say that certainly ancient and medieval, and some early modern warfare was quite limited in geographic scope and the number of people involved; the vast majority of casualties were due to disease and wound infection rather than direct interpersonal violence-- basically, you'd have a small bunch of guys on horses trying to knock each other down and a larger bunch of guys hitting each other with clubs. The longbow and crossbow improved the ability of soldiers to kill other soldiers but didn't lead to civilian deaths.
I didn't say civilians died in battle; that would be a bit oxymoronic. Countless civilians died in sieges, countless more died or were brutalized as a result of raping and pillaging as spoils of war, and then there's plain old ordinary raiding a village. The ideas of chivalry and 'civilized warfare' that set civilians aside as not legitimate targets do indeed go back some hundreds of years in Europe - but are still fairly recent as the long span of history goes.
Mistral