Re: McCain on Iraq - Withdrawl will lead to civil war
In which case you are asking the wrong question. The issue at hand is killing or persecuting a small fraction of the population because the proven alternative is even more massive bloodshed and chaos. No one ever mentioned killing half.
You mentioned 50% of all children were killed, in your earlier example about UK's massacre of Dutch settlers in Boer-war.
Anyway, I don't think there is any "proven alternative" of "more massive bloodshed". This is just a BS argument to support killing more and more people indiscriminately. When can we, as a species, grow up and mature to accept, that people should have a right of self-determination. Killing/silencing big groups of people who want a separate homeland, to keep artificial geographic boundaries is not the right answer.
This is a moral question, we are discussing. Is mankind maturing or not? Do we still believe the bloodshed of middle ages, and as late as 20th century continues to be our ONLY answer, when we disagree? Kill more people? Brutal dictatorship?