After seeing some of the ongoing fighting about the morality of knowingly targeting noncombatants between me and some of the Catholics at W4, a Roman Catholic reader sent me this Catholic view of it:
As I see it Zippy and Co confuse intention with consequence; If someone knows that what they are going to do has a bad result, then by their definition, someone has intended a bad result and therefore is guilty of sin.
So if for example, a man undertakes an action which will knowingly entail his death, he must have willed his death and therefore been responsible for it. So a man who knowling sacrifices his own life for his friends is guilty of suicide. The concept turns the whole concept on of Christ's death on the Cross upside down. Instead of his death being a sacrifice, it becomes a suicide. This is heresy of the first order, masquerading as official doctrine of the Church.
I have had a hard time believing that an institution as pro-life as the Roman Catholic Church would condemn abortion as murder, but say that a lawful government cannot kill some innocents to save others even in the case of that being required to prevent genocide. The position advocated by some of the Catholics at W4 would essentially allow evil men to use human shields to accomplish any crime or any atrocity they wished as long as they had a human shield or were close to innocent people.
Not having read the links, I'll venture to say that pointing at the targeting of a target with noncombatants in the vicinity and calling that a sin is a bit problematic.
You could say the same about all of the smiting that God did in the OT. Men, women, children, livestock. It all died.
I personally have no issues with letting it rip, as long as the loss of life is proportional. And the enemy would be at fault for bringing non-combatants into the line of fire.