How 'bout a "principled" stand against killing innocents?

Brendan O'Neill has weighed in with some more thoughts on the political battle over civilian casualties in Afghanistan. He largely views this dispute as a diversionary one, because "instead of convincing political arguments for or against the war on terrorism, we end up with little more than a numbers game." He relates:

So sections of the left cite supposedly high casualty figures to express their opposition to the war in Afghanistan, while the right relies on exposing those casualty figures to express their support for the war in Afghanistan. The left claims the war is wrong because it has killed x number of civilians, while the right claims that the war must be doing some good because, in fact, it has only killed y number of civilians.

What ever happened to principled, political arguments?

Taken at surface level, this is a good point. In this blog, O'Neill cites Matt Welch - which is ironic, for me.

Here's why: this approach to the "debate" over civilian casualties reminds me of the article Welch wrote for Reason on the sanctions in Iraq. While he kinda conceded that "the truth is bad enough," the subtext to his article was that claims regarding the mortality effects of the sanctions have been over-inflated and, thus, the calls of the anti-sanctions crowd are not worth listening to.

Now, sure, Welch doesn't explicitly come out and say that (although he was damn close), but he excoriates political activists and left-wing luminaries for using spurious statistics, mostly because of what they omit, to justify their own political position. Surprise, though! Welch did precisely the same thing in his article, as Kathy Kelly of VITW (Voices in the Wilderness) pointed out.

While it is important to have accurate information on the sanctions and, yes, the statistics in regards to mortality estimates are often thrown around without adequate context, the heart of the matter still stands: innocent people died, in shocking numbers, for political purposes.

Getting back to O'Neill, he longs for "principled, political arguments" against war, but isn't the opposition to the death of innocents - in large numbers - a very principled reason for opposing war? The problem I have here is that there seems to be an underlying assumption that there is some number of civilian casualties - although it is never cited - that would be "acceptable". And that, of course, would never be said because we would all see it as barbaric.

So, in the end, does it matter much whether 4,000, 1,000, 8,000, or 20,000 civilians died in Afghanistan? Or if there were 100,000, 2 million, or 1 million "excess deaths" from the sanctions in Iraq? What's the purpose, beyond the admirable goal of simply knowing the "truth," of all the hand-wringing over these issues?

A lot is made about the chickenhawks and their calls for war (I even do it, right below). But I've long thought that nobody in this country has the right to argue for a sustained and crippling war against other societies. Truth be told, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the War of 1812, etc. were minor exhibits of violence. Until we have the experience of being under a relentless attack from a vastly superior military force, it is morally obtuse to call for such an attack on others. The above debate reflects this, partly I think. Only from a comfortable seat beyond the legacy of any significant destruction to our own homes and loved ones, it seems, can we turn the catastrophic devastation of other countries and the death of hundreds/thousands/millions into an exercise in rhetorical masturbation.