Israeli air attack kills 54 civilians, including 19 children

didn't I clearly say I condemn anyone who kills innocent civilians?

why it so hard for you to comprehend?

1 + 1 = 2.. its not the complicated you know..

 

First of all, let's get one thing straight. I know you learned alot of cute new terms since 9/11, but atleast try to use them correctly. The Hezbollah are not "Muslim extremists." They don't push any hard-line Islamic laws. I guess to people like you, any action by the Arabs short of collectively bending over for the Israeli-Zionist cabal is extremism, but no.

Their actions are very rational. And yes I condemn them. I don't support any type of violence, but I can understand why they would retaliate.

 

People like me consider Hezbollah suicide bombers to be extremists. You are going to tell me that they just happen to me Muslim and it is coincidental?

 

so you consider them extremists because of suicide bombing?

whats the difference of suicide bombing vs intentionally launching a guided missile to a civilian populated building?

 

There is nothing wrong with suicide bombing in and of itself as a 'tactical' weapon of choice, suicide bombing targeting civilians is what's wrong. An F-16 bombing civilians is what's wrong. Slamming an airliner full of civilians into a building is what's wrong.

 

There are 10 times more posts about whether a group is a "legal actor of war" or about the "intention" from "legal" or "illegal" actors in a war, than the ones about the actual dead civilians body counts. This is not rocket science, this is not even science or fact. Legal or not, it's perceptional, subjective, and simple lip service. Therefore, it's not verifible, it's anything BUT FACT. Yet, we are so busy at it. People who study science or technology, tend to look at actions, facts, and seek for cause. Common sense and logic are their favorite tools. But I could see some posters love to play the game or words, play with ambigious theories, and avoid simple facts.

Again, as a technology person myself, I put more value in actions and the way they are carried out, and the direct result. I assume all my developers, system admins, QAs, DBAs and technology staff have the good intention to deliver quality applications complying with all requirements. Any dection is unintentional; however, the result matters. The ratio between good and bad codes matters. Developers with overwhelming mistakes will have to improve, and even let go in worst case scenario. When I take medicine, I want it to cure disease. I accept accompanied side effects. However, those side effects have to be minor comparing to its ability to deal with sickness. Drug companies intention doesn't matter to me at all. If any company is going to announce some new drug to cure cancer, it will kill 1000 more health cells along side with each cancer cell it kills. One might not die because of cancer, but surely by that medicine. I am sure it won't get FDA approval, nor general public acceptance. No matter how the company lawyers spin their good intention.

Hezbollah killed 50 IDF soldiers and 30 civilians. IDF killed 60+ Hezbollah terrorists, but 10 times more civilians! If you call Hezbollah's killing civilian as colateral demage, I will be ok with it, according to the ratio. But to call IDF's civilian killing result as clateral demage, it's despicable. Because it's the main result from the sheer number. It does not matter what noble intention they claim, the dead bodies are FACTS and verifible. Motives or noble cause claimed on air wave or message board, are just speech, can't be verified.

No matter what you studied, if you are moving away from the simple numbers, evidents, and simple logic, you know you are moving away from facts. In this so-called information age, people tend to be busy with everything transpired from a simple subject, and forget about the subject itself. Terrorist or not, legal or not, democracy or not, religious or not, it's not going to change the simple fact, that hundreds civilians are dead. Many women and children among them! If it's truly regrettable, as some claimed, then shouldn't everyone of them stand up and say, stop shooting now, then we negotiate?!!! Isn't that a disgrace of human being, when people like Bush claimed, unless there is a long term solution blah blah (a plan we like), we are not supporting to stop the killing? Pretentious democrates, except for complaining this problem and that problem, do not have any backbone or guts to call out the Administration to stop the killing. They always support the wars, just they will be picky about how the war is executed. Do they really expect to be voted?

 

It's all wrong.

 

Ok. I appreciate that this is generally an overplayed issue, but when you use sinister absurd phrases like "Israeli-Zionist cabal" you begin to sound like people the who like to point to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as fact or people who can't understand why everybody is getting so worked up over what Mel Gibson said.

In other words, though I appreciate that the word 'anti-Semite' is used excessively and inappropriately, that doesn't mean that there are not virulent anti-Semites. In seeking to identify these people, one can look for specific key phrases a representative example being “Israeli-Zionist cabal” which implies some furtive group of supervillains operating in secret, like the Jewish Legion of Doom, in an evil plot to make the entire world grow peyes.

I am not making any disparaging comments about you particularly, but rather suggesting that if you don’t want to look like an ardent admirer of Alfred Rosenberg, you should consider eliminating such silly melodramatic phrases from your polemic vocabulary.

 

While I'm on your side of the argument, the other side is saying that Hezbollah hides among the civilians while Israeli soldiers do not.

My contention is that Israel has a responsibility in minimizing civilian casualties when engaging Hezbollah. After all, they are engaging an enemy on the soil of a 3rd party, and the 3rd party is receiving pretty much ALL of the confirmed damage.

If Israel had international support, an assault with ground troops or commando teams can be justifiable if they can limit the damage to Lebanon's people and it's infrastructure. However, the bombing of confirmed civilian targets is despicable and it is an extreme sign of cowardice.

 

It's alright.

 

What's all wrong? I understand and respect your stance that violence is wrong. I was merely addressing your 'cultural sensitivity' to suicide bombings. Most Americans don't understand it, don't comprehend it, because they're used to hearing about tanks and bulldozers and fighter planes bombing the hell out of people, but they can't relate to the use of suicide bombing, but that doesn't make it any more or less 'wrong' simply because it horrifies the average American.

That's all I am saying...

 

I understand it fine. You kill yourself and others to go please your god to your heaven etc. There is something very wrong with that.

 

However, you must appreciate the fact that by using the phrase "Israeli-Zionist cabal", only a selected group is labeled as supervillains operating in secret. It is not as if the whole Jewish or Israeli is labeled as such.

Is it ok if we replace the phrase "Israeli-Zionist cabal" with "Likud"? Is that more PC for you?

 

There's a difference between an extremist and a fundamentalist. Al Qaeda consists of people that are both extreme in tactics and are also fundamentalist in terms of their worldview of islam and the world.

Hezbollah on the other hand carries much less of the religious baggage. Nasrallah is a politician that made an idiotic move in trying to capture two soldiers and probably never counted on this type of response. His tactics were extreme but he's not engaging in this war for purely religious reasons.

Consequently, the fact that Nasrallah and Hezbollah are muslim is irrelevant. Hezbollah was formed in response to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, not for some ultra-religious crusade. There's much more of a political element to Hezbollah which has been seeking greater political influence in Lebanon than other terrorist groups which focus more on ideological issues.

 

I see it now... as long as you kill others to please your god to your heaven etc without killing yourself, then the action is justifiable.

 

Well, Hamas would probably disagree with that when suicide bomber blows himself up on a civilian bus inside Israel, which happened to have two or three Israeli soldiers on it.

It's a dangerous logic, that way one could justify the killing of as many innocent people as it takes just because there happened to be a 'terrorist' or a 'soldier' amongst them, forcing them to pay with their lives.

It's a very, very dangerous precedent which could give so-called 'terrorist organizations' all the fuel they need to carry out similar 'justice' on their enemies.

I hope everyone can see that...

 

but you're combining the method to the reasoning..

what if a nation's leader launches war because God told him to, that's extremism according to your standards right?

 

Call them whatever you want. It has nothing to do with PC, but with how honest you are with your arguments.

When gwayneco calls this Jihadfans.net, does it say anything about clutchfans.net, or does it speak to the idiocy of gwayneco? Do you really think that Likud is operating as some sort of secret conspiracy?

 

Umm...not really, you have a twisted understanding of the whole concept of suicide bombings. They are 'tactical' in nature more than anything else. Those who employ suicide bombings understand the 'psychological' effect it has on the enemy, and view it as the 'great equalizer', since there is no use in trying to match their enemies' superior weaponry...they have no F-16s or M1A1 tanks or satellite-guided missiles or 'bunker busters', but they know that they have a weapon their enemy fears and can't deter.

So suicide bombings are a tactical weapon used to devastating effect by its proponents. The 'martyrdom' part of the whole equation is understood as a consequence of exacting vengeance on the enemy, defending your land and your people, not the goal in and of itself. The goal is to inflict harm on your enemy and affect his psyche.

Beheadings are done for the same reason: to strike fear in the enemy.

From my perspective, however, it's very difficult to rationalize suicide attacks from a theological viewpoint, although some have tried to do just that, but their arguments have been -- at best -- unconvincing...IMO, of course.