You destroy more than than victory requires.

So you not only kill the 13 Taliban but innocent targets that were better avoided.

Or, as he said, you forgo some victories because they do not seem essential and the cost in terms of innocent lives (collateral damage) would be very great.

Alex: “Proportionality is not defined by approximately equal casualties on each side.” He’s not saying that it is. He’s saying that disproportionate use of force and the search for disproportionate victories is the very essence of military activity.

that is incorrect, and a distortion of the principle of proportionality– one which is routinely (mis)used to libel the IDF. Proportionality is not defined by approximately equal casualties on each side. Such a requirement for “jus in bello” would be retarding and retarded. What must be proportional is the strategic gain of an operation, to its likely civilian cost.

That is to say, that targeting of civilians is verboten. However, targeting a terrorist’s house, when it is likely that civilians around will be hurt or killed, requires some moral calculus. Essentially: do the strategic gains of killing this man justify the unfortunate deaths of innocents?

This is how proportionality was ALWAYS defined by legal theorists and students of war. It is only journalists and propagandists that imagine that when the Hatfields and McCoys have a feud, x or y from each family have to die for it to be a fair fight.

“We, Israelis, owe no explanations to the Europeans. They owe us explanations. The Taliban has not fired any rocket into any European city. Hamas shoots into Israeli towns. The Taliban does not proclaim a sacred desire to kill all Europeans. Hamas promotes the killing of Jews in its charter and Hamas leaders repeat this instruction religiously in their sermons. Yet Europeans continue fighting in Afghanistan, justifying their war on the grounds that they are at war against a central faction of Islamic fanaticism, just like Israel fights against the Hamas. Moreover, the Hamas’ threat to Israel’s security and future is far greater and more immediate than any threat the Taliban poses to Europe.

So why are Europeans allowed to conduct a war on territory that is thousands of miles removed from their homes, kill hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians and claim that their cause is necessary, while Israel cannot do the same? By what right do they absolve themselves while condemning Israel?

Proportionality

Thousands of Taliban fighters die each year as compared with “just” a few tens of European soldiers. Hundreds or thousands of civilians die in Afghanistan, as compared to zero civilian casualties in Europe. So you, in Europe, purport to lecture to us, Israelis, about war ethics and “proportional responses?” Are you for real?”

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/01/chapter-2-war-crimes-and-the-failure-of/index.shtml