Israel: "Act of War" - Page 7

Switchcraft · 07-31-2006, 01:08 PM

But if Hezbollah is hiding among the places you mentioned, does that just give them a free pass?

There is plenty of reliable evidence that the UN position you mentioned was crawling with hezbollah. The residential complex you're talking about reportedly collapsed nearly 8 hours after it was damaged...is that really evidence of indiscriinant/negligent bombing, or foolishness of people staying inside a building in the middle of a neighborhood full of hezbollah fighters in a building that is severely damaged already?

xTYBALTx · 07-31-2006, 01:09 PM

I never said nor implicated that Israel is carpetbombing. Furthermore, Israel is in fact using many high-precision, high-cost bombs.

Please think before you get snooty. My post was extremely courteous.

**CingularDuality** · 07-31-2006, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xTYBALTx

I never said nor implicated that Israel is carpetbombing. Furthermore, Israel is in fact using many high-precision, high-cost bombs.

Please think before you get snooty. My post was extremely courteous.

Sorry, my post was not disagreeing with yours, merely adding to it. You might not have implied that Israel is attacking indiscriminately, but others have said it outright.

**CingularDuality** · 07-31-2006, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steeler

If they're hitting UN outposts after recieving warnings not to, and blowing up residential complexes full of women and children, then IMO they are bombing rather indiscriminately. Or at least negligently. To write these deaths off as simply broken eggs when the promised omelette is watery and ill-defined is morally corrupt. This idea of a "lasting peace only found beyond war" is a dangerous and almost always flawed concept.

No, and this is why:

Whether we're talking about Hamas or Hezbollah, this cartoon applies to the type of warfare that Israel is dealing with...

Steeler · 07-31-2006, 02:26 PM

There is some indication (according to UNIFIL) that Israel is beginning a program similar to the those of the previous occupation where they simply bulldozed or shelled into rubble entire towns. That would account for the continued bombing of Qana amidst rescue operations. If Israel wants to depopulate the border entirely, that's a brutal, but effective way of doing it.

Juan Cole offers an analysis of Hezbollah as a sub-nationalist movement, it's nature specifically within Lebanon, and the likely results of the current tactics being used against it. I'd encourage everyone to read the whole thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juan Cole

One hope the Israeli hawks appear to entertain is that they can permanently depopulate strips Lebanon south of the Litani river. Since most Shiites vote Hizbullah and offer political support and cover to it, fewer people means fewer assets for the party-militia. This project would require the total destruction of large numbers of villages and the permanent displacement of their inhabitants north to Beirut.

That is why the massacre at Qana occurred. The Israelis had bombed Qana 80 times. They were destroying all of its buildings. Therefore, of course, they destroyed the building where dozens of children and families were hiding. This tactic is both collective punishment and ethnic cleansing all at once. It is not only a matter, as the Israelis claim, of hitting Hizbullah rocket launchers. They are destroying all of the buildings.

The Israeli demographic project of thinning out the population of the far south of Lebanon will fail. They do not control that territory, and cannot stop people from coming back and rebuilding. The Israelis have an Orientalist myth that the Arabs are Bedouin and not attached to their ancestral villages. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon still around their camps in accordance with the geography of their former villages. The Lebanese Shiites will mostly come back.

**Rincewind** · 07-31-2006, 02:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

No, and this is why:

Whether we're talking about Hamas or Hezbollah, this cartoon applies to the type of warfare that Israel is dealing with...

Quote:

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to CingularDuality again.

Apparently, I don't give out enough rep... Is it me or is that terrorist holding the AK completely wrong?

icky · 07-31-2006, 03:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rincewind

Is it me or is that terrorist holding the AK completely wrong?

He must be new. That technique would be just one step up from the one-handed-reaching-around-a-corner method of precision shooting.

**leejo** · 07-31-2006, 03:51 PM

Interesting twist on the Qana story. I don't know what to believe yet, but I know who I trust least.

Wulfyn · 07-31-2006, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

This post exemplifies the attitude that technology has brought to warfare. And I suppose that it goes in cycles.

For a long time, killing people in warfare was a very specific and personal thing, you had to use your bare hands. Then came rocks, where you could do it at a distance. Then swords made it easier to close with and get up close and personal again. Then bows came along. Then black powder, and although things were relatively distant, you still saw who you killed. Cannons with high explosives and grape shot changed that, however, and during the US Civil War, it's estimated that the cannon cockers that never really saw their victims were the most efficient due to their detachment. Rockets, advanced artillery and aerial bombardment made it even easier. Now, with the pervasive media, we're back to having the deaths up close and personal, in a way.

Carpet bombing entire cities was once acceptable as a means of getting your enemy to submit. Burning villages was, too. I don't think that cromagnum had the means of blowing up each others caves, but if they could, I bet they would've done it...

Sure, civilian deaths suck, but it's part of war. It's a part of life. And life's not fair, don't you know?

When i first read this reply I was pretty upset. I was upset at just how ignorant a reply could be. But now I'm actually pretty pleased because your reply is completely right in everything but one thing - your conclusion.

Technology does make killing very easy, but it also makes it very safe. Why mount any sort of ground offensive which risks your own troops when you can fly aircraft out of harms way and still kill people that way? There is where the point really is. Countries with modern warfare capabilities really only have one enemy - the media at home. That's what will beat you. And it is very easy to write off the killing of 50 innocent civilians of another nation, another religeon, and another set of values. The loss of even one of your own however is a great loss.

This is the point which you have completely glossed over or failed to see Cing. I'm not mad at Isreal for wanting to take down Hezbollah, and I am not naive enough that i think that people won't die. What I am mad about is that Israel knowns that they will be killing innocent civilians that pose no threat to them because they consider it a better option than risking more of their own troops in a ground offensive. They have no care about keeping the civilian casualties down because they have no regard for their lives. And they don't need to either, because with their technological superiority they never have to connect the pressing of a button with a first hand account of what they have done.

So please don't try and connect your historical accounts into some form of domino effect because it really has no validity here, and if you had any knowledge of this you would never have attempted such an argument.

But do you not agree that in any war civilian lives should be kept as low as you can possibly get them? Because if you do not I hear that Sadam Hussein is looking for a new lawyer, and I think you'd be perfect.

**CingularDuality** · 08-01-2006, 05:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wulfyn

What I am mad about is that Israel knowns that they will be killing innocent civilians that pose no threat to them because they consider it a better option than risking more of their own troops in a ground offensive....

...But do you not agree that in any war civilian lives should be kept as low as you can possibly get them?

I think that there's a compromise that has to be made. If you fight a war against terrorists that hide behind civilians and your goal is to kill absolutely ZERO civilians, well, you might look good in the eyes of the world, but you'll lose. If you fight a war against terrorists that hide behind civilians and you don't care how many civilians you kill in the process, the results are the opposite. What Israel is doing, and what I think is right, is somewhere in the middle...

And you're right, if our countries had today's media to deal with during WWII, we'd both be speaking German right now.

**WhiskeySix** · 08-01-2006, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

I think that there's a compromise that has to be made. If you fight a war against terrorists that hide behind civilians and your goal is to kill absolutely ZERO civilians, well, you might look good in the eyes of the world, but you'll lose. If you fight a war against terrorists that hide behind civilians and you don't care how many civilians you kill in the process, the results are the opposite. What Israel is doing, and what I think is right, is somewhere in the middle...

And you're right, if our countries had today's media to deal with during WWII, we'd both be speaking German right now.

good point... hell, many of use wouldn't be speaking anything right now, as our grandfathers would have perished in the invasion of mainland Japan.

SmokingTarpan · 08-01-2006, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

If you fight a war against terrorists that hide behind civilians and you don't care how many civilians you kill in the process, the results are the opposite. What Israel is doing, and what I think is right, is somewhere in the middle...

Personally, I think Israel doesn't actually care how many civilians on the other side they kill. Now, don't take this to mean that I think they're going out of their way to be bloodthirsty and slaughter everyone they see, or that they're attempting some sort of ethnic cleansing. I simply believe that they know civilians will die in this conflict and don't particularly give a damn. From the things that I've read so far, Israel is fast to say that Hezbollah was the one that killed the citizenry, not their own bombs. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually part of their grand plan to attempt to use civilian deaths to turn the lebanese populace against Hezbollah; though I think a plan like that is rather doomed to fail.

My main issue isn't that the civilians are dying, but rather that Israel is doing the pussyfoot song and dance to appease the world about it. I'd rather they just come out and say, "Yep, civilians are going to die, deal with it."

**leejo** · 08-01-2006, 03:33 PM

Another twist to the Qana story, and another cameo for the ubiquitous rescue worker.

Lots of bs flying around these days.

Wulfyn · 08-01-2006, 07:39 PM

As i said Cing, please put down the dominoes.

WW2 and the current Israel vs Hezbollah hostilities has pretty much nothing in common. With the blitz on London it is seen that the bombing of civilians was undertaken more by the Germans than by the allied forces, and yet they still lost. Where the Germnan civilians as the Blitzkreig bust through Belgium? Where were the German civilians as they marched into the Russian hinterland? Where were the German civilians as their U-boats and pocket battleships terrorised the merchant shipping lanes?

In fact that last point is important, as many German captains offered the merchant crews an option to surrender, capsizing their targets only after the people had been saved, and then deepositing them at a nearby port. Where's the neolithic cave bombing in that?

The problem with your arguments here are that you are considering this as a clean army vs army war. This is not a fight between nations but a fight between ideologies. You cannot bomb an idea into the the ground, it just does not work. Killing innocent civilians does not strengthen your cause, it weakens it, and it is totally immoral to boot unless you do everything reasonable within your power to prevent the needless loss of innocent life. Now I'm all in favour of Israel trying to protect itself, and if that means a war then that is what will happen. But this does not make killing innocents acceptible or legal if it can be prevented.

If the ends justify the means, and it is acceptible to kill innocents to force your message upon other people then you are the terrorist.

Switchcraft · 08-01-2006, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wulfyn

As i said Cing, please put down the dominoes.

WW2 and the current Israel vs Hezbollah hostilities has pretty much nothing in common. With the blitz on London it is seen that the bombing of civilians was undertaken more by the Germans than by the allied forces, and yet they still lost. Where the Germnan civilians as the Blitzkreig bust through Belgium? Where were the German civilians as they marched into the Russian hinterland? Where were the German civilians as their U-boats and pocket battleships terrorised the merchant shipping lanes?

In fact that last point is important, as many German captains offered the merchant crews an option to surrender, capsizing their targets only after the people had been saved, and then deepositing them at a nearby port. Where's the neolithic cave bombing in that?

The problem with your arguments here are that you are considering this as a clean army vs army war. This is not a fight between nations but a fight between ideologies. You cannot bomb an idea into the the ground, it just does not work. Killing innocent civilians does not strengthen your cause, it weakens it, and it is totally immoral to boot unless you do everything reasonable within your power to prevent the needless loss of innocent life. Now I'm all in favour of Israel trying to protect itself, and if that means a war then that is what will happen. But this does not make killing innocents acceptible or legal if it can be prevented.

If the ends justify the means, and it is acceptible to kill innocents to force your message upon other people then you are the terrorist.

Hezbollah is an organization with an ideology, not an idealogy. Fro someone so quick to tell a Marine he has no concept of the cost of war, you should at least know who is fighting.

Israel is taking reasonable steps to ensure a minimization of civilian casualties under the circumstances. The idea that a major ground offensive would somehow lessen casualties on either side is ludicrous. As long as Israel is not occupying Lebanon, the other countries in the area will tolerate a limited war to remove hezbollah. This is someting most of them want. But since Israel cannot afford to take all of Lebanon without putting themselves in danger from others, they are limited in their options. With thousands of missiles flying in from Lebanon, they cannot afford not to strike where the missiles come from. And since hezbollah sometimes puts those launchers on top of apartment buildings, of course there are going to be civilian casualties. But blaming Israel for those casualties is ridiculous. They didn't put the launcher there. And they have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from murder...the United Nations has had years to enforce its resolutions concerning the disbanding of hezbollah, and instead has done more to help hezbollah kill Israelis than anything else.

And your last comment, about "forcing your message" seems totally out of place, unless you think that "don't cross our border and attack us anymore" is simply a competing ideology.

07-31-2006, 01:08 PM	#91 (permalink)
Switchcraft Join Date: May 2003 Location: New York, NY Age: 31 Posts: 1,096	Re: Israel: "Act of War" But if Hezbollah is hiding among the places you mentioned, does that just give them a free pass? There is plenty of reliable evidence that the UN position you mentioned was crawling with hezbollah. The residential complex you're talking about reportedly collapsed nearly 8 hours after it was damaged...is that really evidence of indiscriinant/negligent bombing, or foolishness of people staying inside a building in the middle of a neighborhood full of hezbollah fighters in a building that is severely damaged already?

07-31-2006, 01:09 PM	#92 (permalink)
xTYBALTx Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 3,919	Re: Israel: "Act of War" I never said nor implicated that Israel is carpetbombing. Furthermore, Israel is in fact using many high-precision, high-cost bombs. Please think before you get snooty. My post was extremely courteous. __________________ A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy. -F.A. Hayek "$250,000 a year won't get me to Central Park West."

07-31-2006, 03:51 PM	#98 (permalink)
leejo Join Date: Sep 2003 Age: 39 Posts: 7,839	Re: Israel: "Act of War" Interesting twist on the Qana story. I don't know what to believe yet, but I know who I trust least.

08-01-2006, 03:33 PM	#103 (permalink)
leejo Join Date: Sep 2003 Age: 39 Posts: 7,839	Re: Israel: "Act of War" Another twist to the Qana story, and another cameo for the ubiquitous rescue worker. Lots of bs flying around these days.

08-01-2006, 07:39 PM	#104 (permalink)
Wulfyn Join Date: May 2005 Location: Norwich, UK Age: 29 Posts: 4,236	Re: Israel: "Act of War" As i said Cing, please put down the dominoes. WW2 and the current Israel vs Hezbollah hostilities has pretty much nothing in common. With the blitz on London it is seen that the bombing of civilians was undertaken more by the Germans than by the allied forces, and yet they still lost. Where the Germnan civilians as the Blitzkreig bust through Belgium? Where were the German civilians as they marched into the Russian hinterland? Where were the German civilians as their U-boats and pocket battleships terrorised the merchant shipping lanes? In fact that last point is important, as many German captains offered the merchant crews an option to surrender, capsizing their targets only after the people had been saved, and then deepositing them at a nearby port. Where's the neolithic cave bombing in that? The problem with your arguments here are that you are considering this as a clean army vs army war. This is not a fight between nations but a fight between ideologies. You cannot bomb an idea into the the ground, it just does not work. Killing innocent civilians does not strengthen your cause, it weakens it, and it is totally immoral to boot unless you do everything reasonable within your power to prevent the needless loss of innocent life. Now I'm all in favour of Israel trying to protect itself, and if that means a war then that is what will happen. But this does not make killing innocents acceptible or legal if it can be prevented. If the ends justify the means, and it is acceptible to kill innocents to force your message upon other people then you are the terrorist. __________________

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