Soldiers’ lives were redefined as citizens deserving protection above enemy civilians.

Evidence

Their aim was to revise, from top to bottom, the established principles underlying the ethics and law of armed conflicts. The most radical of their attacks concerned the principle of noncombatant immunity: “According to the ordinary conception underlying the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, the former have a lighter package of state duties than the latter. Consequently, the duty to minimize casualties among combatants during combat is last on the list of priorities… . We reject such conceptions because we consider them to be immoral. A combatant is a citizen in uniform… . His blood is as red and thick as that of citizens who are not in uniform. His life is as precious as the life of anyone else.” From this, one was supposed to conclude that the preservation of the lives of the subjects of the nation-state is the supreme duty, which must in all cases and at whatever cost be placed above the duty to minimize the losses of noncombatants in the enemy camp. This meant that in a war situation, minimizing risks for an Israeli soldier took precedence over the duty to minimize “collateral risks” for a child in Gaza. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 439

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Kasher and Yadlin formally ranked national soldier lives above enemy civilian lives; Protecting national lives in war increases those lives’ social precariousness; Hyperprotecting soldiers shifts the burden of risk onto civilians — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 300 (+3 more)

Related

• Kasher and Yadlin formally ranked national soldier lives above enemy civilian lives (similarity 0.95)
• A state can prioritize its own soldiers’ lives over unlimited foreign civilian casualties. (similarity 0.92)
• US ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq also privileged soldier protection over civilians. (similarity 0.88)
• Protecting national lives in war increases those lives’ social precariousness (similarity 0.86)
• Israel formalized the doctrine that protecting Israeli soldiers outranks enemy civilians. (similarity 0.85)
• Hyperprotecting soldiers shifts the burden of risk onto civilians (similarity 0.85)
• Just-war theorists reject prioritizing own soldiers’ safety over enemy civilians’ safety. (similarity 0.83)
• NATO prioritized pilot lives over the civilians the operation claimed to protect (similarity 0.80)
• Preserving one’s own soldiers has become a quasi-absolute imperative excluding sacrifice. (similarity 0.80)
• Israel formally codified combatant-immunity doctrine first developed in the 1990s (similarity 0.79)
• Combattant immunity for one’s own soldiers replaced non-combatant immunity as the top norm. (similarity 0.79)
• Removing risk reduces the soldier to a mere executioner in need of new victimhood (similarity 0.79)
• Combat indifference to killing spread to accept civilian deaths by mistake (similarity 0.78)
• Protecting national lives through drones increases their social precariousness. (similarity 0.78)
• A sui generis principle of imperial-combatant immunity emerged above the law of armed conflict (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• A state can prioritize its own soldiers’ lives over unlimited foreign civilian casualties. #corroborates (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 441
• Israel formalized the doctrine that protecting Israeli soldiers outranks enemy civilians. #exemplifies (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 437
• US ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq also privileged soldier protection over civilians. #exemplifies (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 436