G.G.: Traditional theory also holds that only soldiers, not civilians, are legitimate targets in war. How has this standard fared in discussions of modern warfare?
C.F.: Many contemporary conflicts are, in terms of conventional war, fought between vastly unequal belligerents. The weaker side often has little option other than to hide themselves among their own civilians in order to make it very difficult for the enemy to kill them, or to pretend that they are civilians in order to better approach and kill the enemy. So some modern theorists have questioned the strict exclusion of attacks on civilians.
.. G.G.: It seems, then, that for practical purposes your view amounts to a kind of pacifism.
C.F.: It’s a form of what has come to be called “contingent pacifism,” for which (at least in the present historical period) wars are almost never justified because they seldom really meet the conditions for a just war.
ISIS Leader Is Delegating His Powers in Case He Is Killed
“ISIS has learned from that and has formed a structure that can survive the losses of leaders by giving midlevel commanders a degree of autonomy,” the diplomat said. In that structure, the overall operation would not be immediately affected if Mr. Baghdadi were wounded or killed, he said.
.. It is unclear who would replace Mr. Baghdadi as the self-declared caliph if he died, a Kurdish official said. But the official said it could not be Mr. Afri, assuming he is alive, because he is an ethnic Turkmen, and the caliph must be an Arab from the Quraysh tribe of the Prophet Muhammad, as Mr. Baghdadi claims to be.
.. But other analysts said that Mr. Baghdadi’s religious credibility was more significant than any operational prowess.
“Baghdadi is to a certain extent a religious figurehead designed to grant an aura of religious legitimacy and respectability to the group’s operations, while the real power brokers are a core of former military and intelligence officials,” said Matthew Henman, managing editor of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center.
Donald Trump: on his Draft Deferment
Asked about his own military draft status, Mr. Trump, 69, said that he received medical deferments from the Vietnam War because of a bone spur in his foot. Mr. Trump could not recall which foot was afflicted.
Carthaginian peace
Modern use of the term is often extended to any peace settlement in which the peace terms are overly harsh and designed to perpetuate the inferiority of the loser. Thus many (the economist John Maynard Keynes among them[2]) deemed the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles to be a “Carthaginian Peace.”