Do what our forces currently are doing in Afghanistan. Warn the village of the upcoming attack, give them a chance to flee the area, and those left are potiential enemies. Even if the enemy leaves the village during this time, that would mean we can easily roll in with even less resistence and thus, they lose controlled territory. In past reports by our own forces, and in the news, lines of civilians are seen leaving with their belongings and the Taliban don't force them to stay as human shields.
So you easily roll in? Now what? Now you in point blank range of their soldiers when they come in at the same time as the civilians. If you return fire, you STILL mangle civilians. Those lines of civilians you see INCLUDE taliban. The Taliban aren't stupid. They go where the shields go. If you stick around while the civilians come back, they come back too, and shoot you.
They aren't retarded, and while they are willing to die to kill you, they aren't willing to die just for target practice.
Now why would they do this against us, but then use human shields against the US? Probably because the "Human Shield" Excuse works well when they want to level an entire area.... not to mention that the US seldom warns a village of an upcoming attack, and their excuse is normally "Well it would warn the enemy as well and they would flee" ~ So what? If you can control the area easier, push them out faster, reduce civilian casualties, and remove their bases of attack, all the while leaving much of the civilian's village intact for the civilians to return to.... then isn't it worth it?
Well then you haven't solved anything. They go with the civilians, if you stay there, they return with the civilians and kill you as you are now in range of them, and you still can't return fire. If you leave and move on, they just come back with everyone else.
There is a reason that combatants are treated as criminals and executed if they are caught outside of uniforms.
Some people like to deal with an issue rather than push it back and forth pointlessly while you suck up landmines.
Go in with a special forces unit with a couple of snipers and blow your brains out when you pass the window.... far better then bombing the whole area and guessing if you killed them or not.
Well, in the magic land of make believe special forces troopers are all super elite and have no problem pulling this off day in day out.
If the military were infallible, then you wouldn't have missiles that go off target and hit civilians.
Special ops forces have their own blunders, wrongful killings, etc that get their own condemnation AND they risk your own mens lives to a far greater degree.
Then again, by your own explained situation, if we don't stop you, 2 million die.... if we try or do stop you, 4 million die, so logically doing nothing would save more lives and if I bombed your arse to the stone ages, I would have by my own actions, killed many innocent civilians around you, along with you, and you would have still killed 4 million more people, thereby blood would be on both hands, and I wouldn't be any better then you.
Very true, so you stand by and let someone be murdered. Except thats never been the way humans operate. If I go to the police and say "Im going to murder 2 people, and your gonna let me otherwise I'll murder 4", they don't sit back and let you murder 2 people.
Because then everyone would do it, and no one would be safe. People have to make stands.
The ends never justify the means, ever.... when people hold their actions to those beliefs, then there is no stopping just how evil one can get, so long as their belief in their ends are met, even when their means outweigh any benifits of those ends.... see Iraq..... and soon.... see Afghanistan.
But the ends ALWAYS justify the means. Everything in our day to day life is run by that belief.
When we go through something as simple as punishing a criminal, we cause that person to have a worse quality of life because it results in a better quality of life for everyone else.
We send an officer to arrest him, knowing he might attack and kill the officer, because if we don't, things will only get worse.
Hell even self-defence is the ends justifying the means, you kill someone because if you don't you die.
Human civilization is built upon the ends justifying the means.