This has nothing to do with mental gymnastics, both Russia and now the US have started wars of aggression, and you're seeing the results of those crimes, which are by their very definition worse than any war crime. From a moral point of view, every death that occurs as a consequence of these aggressions is the fault of the governments who started them and indirectly also on those people who enable these governments.
If you can't see that, your moral compass is completely broken.
But I'm not talking about morality or any of that, but targeting hygiene. Folks are viewing what is effectively the same kind of event through specific lenses colored by how they feel about who the aggressor/victim nation is. Both situations are using the same ISR and targeting platforms (who's sats and tech do think is running the show in Ukraine when it comes to the intel and targeting?).
In the past, when a friend of mine was in military targeting in the Middle East, they needed 3 separate human verifications before green light was given - it was pretty serious stuff. Seems like that is no longer happening - AI calling the shots, leading to collateral damage that humans could have pretty easily verified. Iran was a bit more difficult, but the data was certainly there.
Oh I agree, I didn't want to insinuate that war crimes on either side shouldn't be prosecuted, and the question is actually open whether using AI for targeting does not in itself constitute a war crime because it's negligent. When Israel first declared they used AI targeting for their fairly brutal (but also ineffective) initial bombing campaign, I was expecting a larger outcry.
I just wanted to challenge the one-sided focus on one incident by Ukraine in it's own occupied territory when in fact it's well-known that Russia has habitually committed war crimes in Ukraine right from the start in 2014. I mean, they shot down a civilian airliner killing 298 people and FSB officer Igor Strelkin bragged about it on VKontakte. And that was just the start of a long series of heinous crimes and mass killings. It's also worth noting that the ICC is officially investigating war crimes in Ukraine committed by either side but Russia does not allow them to investigate.
Unfortunately, it was clear with the success of drone warfare that automated killing by AI was going to be the future and it should have been banned internationally right from the start. They are already using autonomous killer robots and drones with integrated AI targeting in Ukraine on both sides.
