Bombs, war crimes and our diminished sensitivity

The recent bombing of a hospital in Kunduz highlights a decline in Western efforts to make wars less brutal.

 

"What has not remained intact is the basic repugnance towards aerial bombing which made it, even in the old empires, an unpopular last resort. Today, aerial bombing fails to generate the outrage that Guernica did, despite its inordinately more destructive effects. Of course, this is partly because the West now feels it will not itself be the target, which was not the case in the 1930s. But it is also because the great internationalist enterprise of which the Hague Conventions were a part - which included making war less brutal, and, if possible, ending it - has fallen into cynical disrepair, and one of the results is the diminished sensitivities of our era."

read the article by Rana Dasgupta >>

Bombs, war crimes and our diminished sensitivity - Al Jazeera English