posted
Obama avoids both. He's too busy appeasing the Chinese and Muslims. He's the great uniter. In order to appease our enemies, he needs to distance himself from our allies.
The Dhali Lama and the leader of Israel have met with every president, except this one. His rebuttals are temporary. Israel knows the majority of Americans support Israel, just as the majority of Americans were against the health care bill. We have a temporary chief executive calling the shots. Our one term president is a speed bump.
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Blayne Bradley
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How are the Chinese enemies? Rivals maybe, competitors maybe, but enemies? Riiiiight in the same way a boy is the "enemy" of a girl in his class and dips her hair in ink and throw spit balls at her during lunch.
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"Israel knows the majority of Americans support Israel..."
This much is true. I would like to see a poll that asks if we support every single thing the Israeli leader does, however. In general I support Israel over the surrounding nations, but mostly I'm hoping for peace and Netanyahu's latest moves don't seem to be encouraging it.
"...just as the majority of Americans were against the health care bill."
Yes, they were. But a significant percentage of those against the health bill were against it because it didn't go far enough. I really don't think you get to claim those in your total. And support for the bill has gone up a bit since its passage.
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quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Obama avoids both. He's too busy appeasing the Chinese and Muslims. He's the great uniter. In order to appease our enemies, he needs to distance himself from our allies.
I'm sure Muslim Americans everywhere are thrilled at your categorization.
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Just to put this into perspective, how would the US feel if it were surrounded by huge nations that felt that the destruction of your country was not only a great way to unite their people's, but a way to show God that you were his loyal servant? Would we not be a bit worried about giving any strategic ground we had taken in any war?
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Lisa, lets try again.
You have very good and logical arguments for Israeli governance of East Jerusalem.
The Arabs who live in the surrounding area have arguments that they believe are logical and good.
First problem: you assume they have arguments that they believe are logical and good, as you understand the terms "logical and good". I don't think that's the case. I think that they believe they have the ability to defeat Israel and take that land. I think that they believe taking that land is one more step towards the ultimate dissolution of Israel, which they consider to be something that they want. I don't think concepts such as logical and good, as you understand them, are even on their radar concerning this.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: They hope to forge a country to call their own.
Second problem: I don't think this is true. I don't think that is in any way a goal of theirs. I think that the claim that it's a goal is something they use as a weapon. They've never had a state. They've never shown any inclination towards making one. The Fatah and Hamas factions, just to mention the two largest ones, are engaged in an on-again-off-again civil war, and both sides are as corrupt as any tinpot dictatorship. The only thing they agree on is hating Israel and wanting it gone. Do you know what a failed state is? That's the best that can be expected of an independent Palestinian state.
Nor has there ever been a nascent state which has as its highest aspiration the annihilation of another state. This would be a first in history. And a very, very bad precedent. It would, among other things, teach the world that terrorism is a legitimate way to achieve your goals. They pretty much created modern terrorism as a political tool. Fatah is the Arabic acronym for Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO. There's some expression about putting lipstick on a pig that would be appropriate here.
Nor have they shown themselves able to control their own people. Prior to 1967, Arab terrorists were constantly streaming over the border into Israel, and Jordan was "unable to do anything about it". Mostly because they didn't really care. The Palestinians are as bad if not worse than the Jordanians. There will be one attack after another, after another until Israel is forced to take action, whereapon the entire world will scream bloody murder about Israel invading a sovereign state.
The news doesn't mention it much, but since Obama has launched this recent diplomatic war against Israel, the Arabs in Gaza have restarted shelling Israeli towns. Because that's the way they think. They've already killed at least one person with these rockets (link). And I find it extremely telling that the US government spends its energy slamming Israel for building apartment buildings in Jerusalem, and ignores the Arabs firing rockets into civilian areas.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: They need a major city to have as their capital, one with a major Muslim holy site, and they see that in East Jerusalem.
They "need" this? No. They need food and water and housing and leaders who give a damn about them. They don't need a major city with a major Muslim holy site. For the record, the Temple Mount is in "East Jerusalem", and it's the single holiest site in all of Judaism. Bar none. Nothing is even close. Whereas Jerusalem was never holy to Islam until the beginning of Zionism. The Qur'an doesn't mention it; they only started calling it holy because of Jewish claims.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: There is continuous fighting between these Arab people and the Israeli people.
No. There are continuous attacks on Israel by these Arab people, and continual attempts by Israel to stop these attacks. There's no similarity or equivalence between the two. Israel never -- ever -- targets civilians, and the Arabs almost invariably do just that.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: The US has been asked by both sides to help stop that fighting.
Source?
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: While you contend that all Arabs just want to wipe Israel off the map and murder all Jews, Israel is getting the reputation that only by wiping out this hoped for state of Palestine, and removing or killing all the Arabs in it, will they be satisfied.
I don't care what the reputation is. I'm looking at facts. I'm well aware of the propaganda campaign against Israel.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: This is not a reputation Israel wishes, and asked its friend the US to help with these talks.
The US sends its number 2 man to start these peace talks.
On the day he arrives a major announcement is made that more permanent Jewish apartments are being constructed in what the Arabs hoped would be their capitol.
Again, wrong. The US demanded that Israel freeze construction in Judea and Samaria. Despite the outlandish and inappropriate interference in its internal affairs, the Israeli government issued a 10 month freeze. This did not include Jerusalem. None of the talks have ever included these parts of Jerusalem. I have friends who live in Ramot and can see Ramat Shlomo out their windows. This is not an Arab area. Even if, God forbid, part of Jerusalem were to be given to the Arabs, this wouldn't be part of it.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: From the time of Machiavelli (The Prince, Chapter 12 I believe), the secret to permanent conquest is not military but colonization. This is another colony going up in East Jerusalem. This is a change of facts on the ground.
Garbage. This is not a colony. You should really go there and see what you're talking about. I think you'd be very surprised to find out how misled you've been by the media. This is a neighborhood among other neighborhoods.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: This made the Vice President look impotent, and the US look untrustworthy and a mere lackey of Israel.
That's a bunch of bull.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: There were plenty of apologies for the timing. There were plenty of explanations. But they came too late and were not well received.
There shouldn't have been a single apology. But there were many, and they were profuse and groveling. But since that announcement was simply an excuse for the anti-Israel administration to go on a diplomatic offensive against Israel, no apology would have been enough.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: The US, not President Obama or Vice President Biden, but the US has to save face and prove that we are a neutral party for any negotiations.
Neutral. Neutral parties flip out over the building of homes and ignore the firing of lethal rockets. Right.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Otherwise there can be no negotiations.
Then the missiles and the suicide bombings will continue.
Blaming the victim. Israel okayed a bunch of apartment buildings (not built -- just authorized), and that's exactly equivalent with attempted mass murder. Got it.
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quote:Neutral. Neutral parties flip out over the building of homes and ignore the firing of lethal rockets. Right.
How much money does the U.S. give Palestinian groups? (Serious question, I don't know the answer). My understanding is we spend huge chunks of money giving Israel the means the survive, and I don't think it's unfair to ask that in return, Israel not undertake actions that provoke even more hostility (requiring even more money on our part).
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quote: And I find it extremely telling that the US government spends its energy slamming Israel for building apartment buildings in Jerusalem, and ignores the Arabs firing rockets into civilian areas.
And here's the point where Lisa and I agree. I have been in the neighborhood under discussion. I have looked out a window at the area that was recently approved for additional apartments.
It is not a colony or a settlement. It is a growing urban area.
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Our president is condemning the building of homes in a Jewish district. Maybe he should condemn the condominiums being built in San Antonio. Some Mexicans claim that Texas is really stolen Mexican land.
Israel isn't creating a new settlement and taking away from the Palestinians. They're building new homes in land that they already control. Of course many Mexican's can't accept they lost the Mexican American War over a hundred years ago. They might consider a house being built in Texas to be an intrusion.
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: There is continuous fighting between these Arab people and the Israeli people.
No. There are continuous attacks on Israel by these Arab people, and continual attempts by Israel to stop these attacks. There's no similarity or equivalence between the two. Israel never -- ever -- targets civilians, and the Arabs almost invariably do just that.
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Why should the Rape of Nanking be likened to rapes that occurred under US occupation of Japan?
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SoaPiNuReYe: I'm trying to temper my knee jerk reaction, because I agree rape in any context including Okinawa is absolutely disgusting.
But you don't seem to realize that the rape of Nanking and rape in Okinawa are two very different things.
To me, it's the difference between a bully beating you up pretty bad, and a bully beating you up really bad, raping you, and flaying you alive.
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Soap is trying to say that only pointing to the atrocities one side commits in a conflict is disingenuous - it implies that the other side is free from atrocity, which is false.
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If that's what Soap was trying to say, then I agree. But I don't think Soap did a very good job of saying that.
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quote:Our president is condemning the building of homes in a Jewish district.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the problem this time was that they are trying to build in a historically Palestinian part of Jerusalem.
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Could someone please provide information on how many Palestinians were living in that area prior to the creation of the Zionist movement and the immigration of Jews back to what is now Israel?
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: But I don't think Soap did a very good job of saying that.
Nope. OTOH, if he was trying to demonstrate the tendency to take very non-equivalent acts and equate them, he did an excellent job.
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posted
Also, for the record, war is not war. All wars are bad, it's true. All wars are not, however, equally bad. It's a common mistaken belief that the truth lies in the middle.
That's often true, but not always true. Sometimes one side is just outright, totally lying and the other is telling the truth. And just because neither side is clean does not mean one side isn't much worse than the other. The United States and Japan serve as good examples of this idea.
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This cartoon from The Economist made me smile.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Also, for the record, war is not war. All wars are bad, it's true. All wars are not, however, equally bad. It's a common mistaken belief that the truth lies in the middle.
That's often true, but not always true. Sometimes one side is just outright, totally lying and the other is telling the truth. And just because neither side is clean does not mean one side isn't much worse than the other. The United States and Japan serve as good examples of this idea.
The Master says that if he believed in war he was in the right he would "go forward even against thousands and tens of thousands."
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quote:Our president is condemning the building of homes in a Jewish district.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the problem this time was that they are trying to build in a historically Palestinian part of Jerusalem.
They are not. However, the land they're building on was on the Jordanian side of the border prior to 1967. Then again, so was the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: There is continuous fighting between these Arab people and the Israeli people.
No. There are continuous attacks on Israel by these Arab people, and continual attempts by Israel to stop these attacks. There's no similarity or equivalence between the two. Israel never -- ever -- targets civilians, and the Arabs almost invariably do just that.
Oh, seriously. That's the most blatantly dishonest piece of tripe I've ever seen. You know very well that if any of that garbage were true, or if they could even find bad evidence to support it, it would be all over the mainstream media.
Amnesty International is actually an interesting case. They've been slamming Israel disproportionately for decades.
quote:Originally posted by SoaPiNuReYe: toprovidesources. War is war; it brings out the worst in humanity and you cannot compare one side to saints and the other to demons without sacrificing credibility.
When I was in the IDF, during basic training, they brought us into a room and talked to us about the different types of orders in the army. Basically, there are three kinds of orders, they told us. Legal orders, illegal orders, and patently illegal orders. A legal order is any normal order. An illegal order is something that the ranking officer has no right to demand. Like having you sleep outside without blankets in the middle of winter. Both of these, you have to obey, or you can be prosecuted for disobeying orders. In the case of an illegal order, you still have to obey it, but you can bring the officer up on charges for issuing it.
And then there are patently illegal orders. Such as "Shoot that civilian." If you obey that kind of order, if it were to be given, you go to jail.
They told us a story which is considered the prototype example of patently illegal orders and let us discuss it. But they slammed the story into us over and over and over.
Anyone who believes the crap in those articles you've cited is a credulous fool.
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Yes, they were. But a significant percentage of those against the health bill were against it because it didn't go far enough. I really don't think you get to claim those in your total. And support for the bill has gone up a bit since its passage.
I found that interesting. I heard that stat quoted on NPR- I think the poll was done by MSNBC, is that right? When they figured the totals of "for" plus those who responded against but answered: "because it did not go far enough," the total was a majority- I think in the mid to high 50s. Now if you could dial in those polls to get an accurate representation of the number of people actually in favor of this kind of reform, whether or not they agree with the precise direction this bill went, I think you'd be seeing numbers in the 60s. Maybe more importantly, the support among future first time voters (16s and up) and the younger generations in general is likely much higher. I imagine the polls show the least support among the wealthy or among the self-employed, mainly over tax concerns, and probably a slim minority over outright disagreement with "socialism."
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quote:When I was in the IDF, during basic training, they brought us into a room and talked to us about the different types of orders in the army. Basically, there are three kinds of orders, they told us. Legal orders, illegal orders, and patently illegal orders. A legal order is any normal order. An illegal order is something that the ranking officer has no right to demand. Like having you sleep outside without blankets in the middle of winter. Both of these, you have to obey, or you can be prosecuted for disobeying orders. In the case of an illegal order, you still have to obey it, but you can bring the officer up on charges for issuing it.
And then there are patently illegal orders. Such as "Shoot that civilian." If you obey that kind of order, if it were to be given, you go to jail.
They told us a story which is considered the prototype example of patently illegal orders and let us discuss it. But they slammed the story into us over and over and over.
Anyone who believes the crap in those articles you've cited is a credulous fool.
One could use a parallel argument to "prove" that Abu Ghraib and the Mahmudiyah murders never happened. But they did. Soldiers and the officers they follow will sometimes disobey directives from on high and commit atrocities. (Especially when those directives offer mixed messages rather than firm guidelines about right and wrong, which the US ones under Bush certainly did.)
I don't believe, as some people seem to think, that the IDF has an unofficial policy of encouraging war crimes, or not doing its part to prevent them. But you can't deny that they occasionally happen, perhaps despite the top brass's best efforts.
There are Palestinian Arab civilians and groups of them, many suspiciously closely connected with the ruling political party, who do much much worse things than any Israeli soldier ever has. So there are Palestinian groups that should in no way be considered morally on a par with the Israeli government. Whether the Palestinian Authority, insofar as it is a functioning government, is on a par with Israel is a tougher question.
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It doesn't seem like a particularly tough question to me. The PA had as its leader Yasser Arafat, for pity's sake.
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I'm thinking in terms of what these govts have actually done, not what their leaders have done prior to their government service.
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Making its leader a known terrorist and specific targeter of civilians seems to be something that government has done.
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Yeah, fair enough, that was a bad idea. But the Irish Free State did much the same thing when they elected de Valera as their first prime minister. That guy was a serious terrorist. But the Brits worked with him and his successors, and things turned out OK eventually.
Not a perfect analogy of course, but there is no perfect analogy.
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posted
I'm not suggesting that the PA making Arafat its leader absolves the Israelis from any moral obligation to work with him, or that doing so makes it impossible for there ever to be any sort of peace.
I was just pointing out that doing so in the first place is a pretty emphatic, visible example that the PA is really not equivalent to the Israeli government when you're making the kinds of comparisons we're talking about here.
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I'm wondering if we need to stop talking about Palestinians as a monolithic bloc. I know Lisa would prefer it if we didn't use the term Palestinian at all, but without an alternative phrase, I'm not sure what we're left with.
Regardless, Palestinians in the West Bank and Palestinians in Gaza are living practically in different worlds, and certainly under different leadership. A lot of articles have come out recently describing lessening security woes and attacks out of the West Bank, as well as marked improvement in services, reductions in corruption, and a rapid increase in GDP. By most measures, despite the recent closing of West Bank borders, the West Bank appears to be on the mend, to the point where Abbas has started pushing Israel and the UN to officially recognize a Palestinian state even before negotiations are officially finished (or begun, for that matter). This, by the way, is a point I think Lisa sometimes misses when she says that Palestine can declare a state whenever they want. It's true that they can. But if no one recognizes it, there isn't much tangible benefit.
Gaza is still a den of corruption, poverty, and, far more so than the West Bank, is rife with violence and attacks on Israel from Gazan territory. They effected their own political separation years ago. At what point do we start to discuss them separately? I see a lot of promise in the West Bank right now. I don't see much in Gaza.
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The Palestinian Arabs, at about the same time the Jerusalem municipality was approving a block of apartments in an urban area, were going to be naming a public square after the woman who committed the coastal road massacre.
They postponed it (officially, though dignitaries showed up to do it anyway) for what they claim were technical reasons, but said "No one in the world can prevent the Palestinians from being proud of their history and heritage. This history and heritage is part of our life."
This is the "West Bank", btw, and not Gaza. This woman murdered 38 innocent civilians and wounded 71 others, deliberately targeting them as civilians. She's a hero to the Palestinian Arabs.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: The Palestinian Arabs, at about the same time the Jerusalem municipality was approving a block of apartments in an urban area, were going to be naming a public square after the woman who committed the coastal road massacre.
They postponed it (officially, though dignitaries showed up to do it anyway) for what they claim were technical reasons, but said "No one in the world can prevent the Palestinians from being proud of their history and heritage. This history and heritage is part of our life."
This is the "West Bank", btw, and not Gaza. This woman murdered 38 innocent civilians and wounded 71 others, deliberately targeting them as civilians. She's a hero to the Palestinian Arabs.
If true, still doesn't disprove my point.
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quote:This is the "West Bank", btw, and not Gaza. This woman murdered 38 innocent civilians and wounded 71 others, deliberately targeting them as civilians. She's a hero to the Palestinian Arabs.
Indeed. In times of war, killing of enemies becomes viewed as a heroic act...this is hardly a rare phenomenon. Admittedly, in this case, the ones killed weren't part of the military, but to the Palestinians-- who have been driven from their country, killed and displaced, with now a generation of people who have never known anything but oppression and displacement--the distinction isn't as obvious. Every Israeli, especially those who try to encroach on the few areas Palestinians have left, can be seen as a hostile perpetrator of what's been done to the Palestinian people, or at the very least a willing member and beneficiary of a the system that hurts them. This is sad, but understandable.
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quote:This is the "West Bank", btw, and not Gaza. This woman murdered 38 innocent civilians and wounded 71 others, deliberately targeting them as civilians. She's a hero to the Palestinian Arabs.
Indeed. In times of war, killing of enemies becomes viewed as a heroic act...this is hardly a rare phenomenon. Admittedly, in this case, the ones killed weren't part of the military, but to the Palestinians-- who have been driven from their country, killed and displaced, with now a generation of people who have never known anything but oppression and displacement--the distinction isn't as obvious. Every Israeli, especially those who try to encroach on the few areas Palestinians have left, can be seen as a hostile perpetrator of what's been done to the Palestinian people, or at the very least a willing member and beneficiary of a the system that hurts them. This is sad, but understandable.
When Dr. Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Arabs who were planning an attack on Jews in 1994, the entire state went into a frenzy. People were arrested for even speaking on his behalf. His memorial was taken down by the Israeli government.
Ami Popper killed seven Arab civilians at a bus stop in 1990. He'll be in jail until at least 2023, if he even manages to get out then.
Meanwhile, the Arabs laud murderers of civilians. Not "enemies", sinflower. Civilians. And not as collateral damage, either. They deliberately target civilians. And you making excuses for that makes you a moral viper. Scum.
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quote:When Dr. Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Arabs who were planning an attack on Jews in 1994, the entire state went into a frenzy. People were arrested for even speaking on his behalf. His memorial was taken down by the Israeli government.
Ami Popper killed seven Arab civilians at a bus stop in 1990. He'll be in jail until at least 2023, if he even manages to get out then.
Meanwhile, the Arabs laud murderers of civilians. Not "enemies", sinflower. Civilians. And not as collateral damage, either. They deliberately target civilians. And you making excuses for that makes you a moral viper. Scum.
But that's central to my point. The Israelis and the Palestinians are in completely different situations. The Israelis have had, and continue to have, the superior power militarily to defend their people. They have a stable and relatively safe state, compared to the Palestinians, who have had decades of displacement and refuge status in states that are not their own-- as well as the cultural memory of ONCE having had what the Israelis now have, their own land, but having that taken away from them. The cultural psyches are completely different, and that's been shaped by the different past experiences and continuing experiences of the two groups with one another. The advantaged group, and the group that has experienced gain, can afford to be magnanimous (understand that I'm not talking here about individual people "choosing" to have a certain mindset--I'm personifying a group to illustrate my point). The disadvantaged one, and the one that has experienced loss, naturally experiences more frustrated rage and resentment towards the other group, which leads them to depersonalize members of that group.
I'm not going to argue the civilian vs. soldier case here in detail, but I'd like to add that both sides have killed civilians on the other side, and the numbers are hardly unequitable. Once again, the Palestinian cultural psyche is one of desperation. They don't HAVE traditional military might-- they CANNOT counter Israel's traditional military with their own. In that situation, they take what weapons they can get, and use what strategies they can implement with their limited resources. This involves methodologies that more powerful and industrialized nations view as "terrorism"--naturally--because we'd prefer if they fought on our terms, by which they would very quickly lose, and be unable to inflict any damage on us in the process!
So in summary--I'm saying that the attitudes and mindsets of these two ethnic and national groups have been shaped by their differing experiences and situations. You seem to be saying that Arabs are just inherently immoral people compared to Jews. I think my view is more reasonable.
posted
Sinflower, they aren't "inherently" immoral people. But taken as a whole, insofar as they support the actions of the militant terrorist groups that ostensibly speak for them, the Palestinian people have chosen to be immoral. "Inherent" smacks of some kind of nebulous racism, that they're immoral because they're genetically predisposed towards it. That's not the case.
quote:I'm saying that the attitudes and mindsets of these two ethnic and national groups have been shaped by their differing experiences and situations.
I think this is accurate. And the attitudes of the Palestinians, insofar as they are one generalized group of people, has been shaped towards immorality.
Explicitly targeting noncombatants is immoral. Put more simply: Murdering civilians is immoral. You're explaining a potential reason for their actions, which is fine. You could be right. Understanding why they choose to commit or support immoral actions doesn't make those actions acceptable.
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On the other hand, the firebombing of Dresden targeted civilians as did the atomic bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing magnitudes of civilians more than this coastal massacre.
However, the US does name and commemorate the air crews and Truman. Not that I'm particularly upset by that, Americans are entitled to their opinion. But I do find it difficult to sympathize when the shoe is on the other foot such as in the case of this attack.
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quote:I think this is accurate. And the attitudes of the Palestinians, insofar as they are one generalized group of people, has been shaped towards immorality.
Explicitly targeting noncombatants is immoral. Put more simply: Murdering civilians is immoral. You're explaining a potential reason for their actions, which is fine. You could be right. Understanding why they choose to commit or support immoral actions doesn't make those actions acceptable.
You're drawing a very arbitrary line in the sand and saying, "step past this line and it's immoral. Irrefutably. Incontrovertably. It's just wrong." But what is your line in the sand? "Civilian." "Someone who's not part of the military forces."
But it's not that simple. What about the politician that commands the general that commands the military? Is he not as responsible for the military's actions? What if a particular powerful businessman is funding, in great part, some hypothetical military force and enabling its existence and operations? Would he be a civilian? I would view him as a hostile nonetheless, for he is enabling the hostile actions of the military. And so stretch that a little bit more. What if it's a society that's enabling and supporting a military force's existence, and it's the society's will-- including the "civilians" within it-- that dictates in great part what the military does? Well, it's not that much of a stretch to view those members of the society as hostiles as well, is it? If they are, in part, the creators of the situation I find hostile.
The line between "military" and "civilian" is not so clear cut. We normally draw the line at "hurting civilians" because it's not viewed as a reciprocal exchange-- civilians are "innocents." But military forces don't exist separately from the "innocents" whose will they enforce.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: On the other hand, the firebombing of Dresden targeted civilians as did the atomic bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing magnitudes of civilians more than this coastal massacre.
However, the US does name and commemorate the air crews and Truman. Not that I'm particularly upset by that, Americans are entitled to their opinion. But I do find it difficult to sympathize when the shoe is on the other foot such as in the case of this attack.
The distinction is not about killing civilians, it's about targeting civilians. Civilians can and do die in war. They died in larger quantities when our weapons had less sophisticated targeting capabilities, but they still die today. But the Palestinians intentionally target civilian areas where they can maximize the number of innocents killed.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not strictly civilian targets. Furthermore, we warned the inhabitants of both cities (and many other cities, of course, since otherwise we would have given away our specific target and made the entire operation impossible) prior to dropping the bombs, so that civilians could flee the cities and avoid the destruction. The goal of the bombings was not "kill as many civilians as possible." Anyone who thinks it was needs to revisit their history books.
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quote:So in summary--I'm saying that the attitudes and mindsets of these two ethnic and national groups have been shaped by their differing experiences and situations. You seem to be saying that Arabs are just inherently immoral people compared to Jews. I think my view is more reasonable.
Your view would be more reasonable if it didn't basically amount to, "Get angry enough, and it's acceptable to view a child eating pizza in a restaurant as your enemy."
The truth is, there are several methods by which the Palestinians might fight the Israelis without explicitly resorting to continually targeting civilians. Guerilla forces have done this effectively throughout history, as have protesters.`
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quote:Your view would be more reasonable if it didn't basically amount to, "Get angry enough, and it's acceptable to view a child eating pizza in a restaurant as your enemy."
As far as know they haven't been specifically targeting children, which I would view as a different matter.
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: On the other hand, the firebombing of Dresden targeted civilians as did the atomic bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing magnitudes of civilians more than this coastal massacre.
However, the US does name and commemorate the air crews and Truman. Not that I'm particularly upset by that, Americans are entitled to their opinion. But I do find it difficult to sympathize when the shoe is on the other foot such as in the case of this attack.
The distinction is not about killing civilians, it's about targeting civilians. Civilians can and do die in war. They died in larger quantities when our weapons had less sophisticated targeting capabilities, but they still die today. But the Palestinians intentionally target civilian areas where they can maximize the number of innocents killed.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not strictly civilian targets. Furthermore, we warned the inhabitants of both cities (and many other cities, of course, since otherwise we would have given away our specific target and made the entire operation impossible) prior to dropping the bombs, so that civilians could flee the cities and avoid the destruction. The goal of the bombings was not "kill as many civilians as possible." Anyone who thinks it was needs to revisit their history books.
That's a pretty thin line. We didn't warn Toyko before we firebombed a city largely made of wood with millions of incendiary bombs. It's hard to argue that they weren't specifically targeting civilians when it's a night raid, there's no warning, you know the city is going to turn into a massive bonfire, and you do it anyway. They could have done night raids with explosive ordnance on the weapons factories, which were the only structures unhurt by the fires, but they didn't.
Pilots said they could smell human flesh cooking from thousands of feet below in the city.
To Lisa, I wasn't trying to provoke an argument on moral equivalence earlier, by the way, I was just pointing out that the situation in the West Bank is dramatically better than at any point in the last couple decades. You might not like who they're deciding to canonize, but attacks from West Bank territories are down, school enrollment is up, GDP growth is healthy, economic activity is comparatively brisk, and their government and security forces have been totally revamped. Criticize what parts you still don't like, but I don't see how you can argue that progress hasn't been made.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: ... Furthermore, we warned the inhabitants of both cities (and many other cities, of course ...
I find your line of reasoning very unconvincing. This could easily be used to justify an atomic bombing of Israel if the Palestinians ever got ahold of an atomic weapon. After all, the Palestinians have warned Israelis to leave their cities. It is also virtually assured that there will be targets of military value in and amongst the cities in Israel as well.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
I may further add to this that the focus of my statement was supposed to be on the memorializing, both of allied air crews and of Truman.
The original argument seems something like, "the people in the West Bank are crummy since they name stuff after this terrorist." Thing is, you could easily flip this around and say "Americans are crummy because they name stuff after these war criminals."
Additionally, I would also note that when the US is *not* involved, say when South Koreans protest the memorializing of WWII war criminals in Japan, the typical response is not that Japanese people are crummy, but some variant of "get over it."
Well, why is is not "get over it" in the case of this attack? Thats why I find that kind of reasoning very perspective-dependent and non-objective.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Were there any world leaders who weren't war criminals in WWII, Mucus?
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sinflower, if you're not aware of Palestinian terrorists specifically targeting children as well as women, old people, adolescents, and people just minding their business getting some lunch, you're simply not paying attention.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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