Reparations for civilian casualties and material damage resulting from erroneous bombings or attacks by a nation’s armed forces should be—at the very least– equal to the amount of money spent on the attack. For the purposes of this short proposal, the United States’ armed forces are used as an example, but the proposal applies to any nation with a modern, well-trained, and well-equipped army.
The United States armed forces are the best in the world– and they cost a lot more than that. Ordinary citizens probably have no realistic, non- budget numbers, detailed sense of how much money the U.S. spends on its armed forces, nor would they. One way of providing a snapshot of just how much it costs the U.S. military to wage war might be to adopt a simple reparations equation: When U.S. armed forces make mistakes that lead to the death of non-combatants or the destruction of property, any reparations paid should use as a baseline—not a total– the cost of the mission that made the error.
An example would be the erroneous October 2015 attack on the Medicins sans frontieres facility in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The baseline—not the total– reparations for the cost of rebuilding the hospital and “condolence payments” to victims should be the cost of the operation itself. How much did it cost for the transportation, munitions, equipment depreciation, targeting, communications, logistics, security, planning, salaries plus combat pay, and everything else that was required for that one mission? Once that figure is determined—which would probably, in itself, be a useful exercise—it becomes the baseline figure for any reparations. Not the upper limit, but the floor for determining payments.
The Kunduz attack was, of course, an accident, and any casualties and damage were unintended. It was also probably pretty cheap compared to most U.S. air attacks, since it appears to have involved one C-130 plane and relatively cheap munitions. Many missions involve numerous fighter/bomber jets that cost far more per hour to operate. They also often fire very expensive missiles. Missiles fired from ships or land are also extremely expensive.
Many missions are, of course, much less expensive. They might be a patrol of soldiers on foot or in a convoy of a few vehicles. Even these missions are more expensive than they might seem, however, as they, too, involve equipment, salaries, bonuses, training, munitions, planning, logistics, and many other costs.
U.S. military operations are very expensive—even those which cause unintended casualties and damage. Reparations for accidental death, casualties, and damage should at least be equal to the cost of inflicting them. Adopting this proposal would not only provide a minimum “killing floor” for compensation, but would also remind armed forces and citizenry alike just how much discretionary budget is spent on military operations.