The civilians on Earth are considered already dead, as previously stated by Marlene. The people on Earth will be killed off by the Blue one way or another, so they are considered inconsequential due to the greater objective of taking back the planet from the Blue.You must remember that Second Earth has limited resources, as a result they cannot incorporate the people left on Earth into their planning. If they get in the way, the plan will not change. This is also the reason for leaving the soldiers behind on the planet. Remember, we know Second Earth can hold 100 million people. Thus, in the greater play of things, three or four soldiers left behind are probably considered acceptable losses. And if those soldiers do not recover any Sleepers, then they will likely be left behind. As we see over and over again, the Blue are simply overpowering the limited number of forces Second Earth is able to send to the planet. Couple that with the quick evolutionary rate of the Blue, add in a limited number of spaceports able to accommodate the transport of troops and resources between Earth and Second Earth, and you soon realize the limited scope of the operations on Earth, at least in this point of the story.As for the Sleepers, we later learn that Marlene originally had no idea why Yuji or any of the other Sleepers were important, or how they would play into the greater scheme of things. She too only finds out later in the series. Perhaps the commanders of these advanced scouting units tasked with recovering the Sleepers knew, but I doubt that the high command would have informed every single soldier of the purpose for recovering the Sleepers.   See 5 other replies

Well, part of that strategy makes sense. If soldiers in the field do not return to the pickup point at the designated time, then they have to assume that they are dead. They cannot wait indefinately, especially with limitations on resources and the Blue breathing down their neck. Given that Blue evolution seems to adapt with every generation they make, any advantage Second Earth comes up with is only good for a limited time. This means that they cannot maintain standing forces on the planet, it has to go in "bursts" of quick opperations before pulling back out to re-adjust their doctrines and weapons for the next opperation. Unfortunately, this also means that any new advantage they have does not get any "field testing" before deployment, so a lot goes wrong, but to field test before hand would be playing their cards too early and cause the Blue to adapt by the time they arrive in force, negating the advantage. As for Marlene's training, I see the sense in it. First of all, given the nature of the conflict I think that the rules for "war crimes" have gone right out the window. They cease to apply because the war is not being waged against another nation that has agreed to follow certain war-time protocol, the war is being waged against an inhuman force that is driving the species into extinction. And harsh as it may be, the landers are endangering themselves by getting between the business end of a weapon and its target. Collateral is inevitable in such a circumstance. The soldier in question has to evaluate what will happen if they do not take the shot. If the Blue make it past them, more people will die, people in their squad, people behind the lines, and an entire opperation could be botched, making all the lives spent in it sacrifices with no meaning. In such cases, the "right" thing to do is often hard to tell.   See 5 other replies

Second Earth provides no medics, and not only do they abandon their wounded on the battlefield, but Marlene warns Yuji that they also abandon able-bodied soldiers who are unable to reach rendezvous points by the predesignated deadline. The Blue and the people in charge of Second Earth seem to be remarkably similar in the way they value human life, almost as if the Blue were created or invited to force participation in a global eugenics experiment.During her retraining, Marlene is punished for failing to commit a simulated war crime, She was supposed to fire through the fleeing civilians to kill her simulated target.   See 5 other replies

I think that you are missing my point. Even viewed through a lense of cold detachment, soldiers are just resources to be husbanded and spent like any other kind of wartime supply such as ammunition or vehicles. One needs to have a little of that mind set to maintain one's sanity when planning opperations, lest the reality of knowing that your orders will cause your people to die overwhelm your judgement. That said, to spend lives unnecessarily is wasteful of resources and harmful to your ability to conduct future opperations. Yes, they do train their soldiers to leave wounded comrades behind, but that is why modern militaries have medics and corpmen. The reason for this is threefold. First, it allows soldiers to press on without the wounded, knowing that experts will be following in their wake to care care of them. Second, soldiers who know that they will be getting instant medical attention as soon as they get wounded will be a lot more bold and confident about facing danger than soldiers who know they will be left to bleed to death. Third, a wounded soldier who can recover and eventually return to duty is a better use of resources than one who could recover but is not given a chance to. Given how limited Second Earth's resources are, I would think that they would have a better understanding of this. Even if the samples were meant to die, there has to be more reason for it than just to make them combatents. They lose more people recovering them than they gain. No, they need them for some higher purpose, even if that purpose requires their death. As I said, command does not need to give the soldiers the full details of what will happen to the samples. They could leave out the death part. But they still need to stress the importance of retriving them during the mission briefing if they expect the soldiers to carry out the mission when it hits the fan.   See 5 other replies

Sleepers are probably intended to become expendable cannon fodder, and it would be unwise to inform samples, even unintentionally by a slip of the tongue during a mission, of their short life expectancy. They're not going to waste any resources on curing his disease, because he isn't expected to survive long enough to die from it.Second Earth seems to be losing the war against the Blue precisely because they train soldiers to become unemotional automatons that abandon their wounded comrades.   See 5 other replies