Europe more dangerouse than USA? (gunshots vs terror threat)

they do have an army, it just doesn't wear uniforms but it is hierarchal and has structure, just lacks the spit and polish of western armies

and after midway japan wasn't kicking our ***, it was a slow haul across the pacific but the outcome was never in doubt

the pacific war would have ended sooner but europe took precedence

the japonese military was never highly regarded in western circles, what they had going for them was they were prepared held ground we had to take with overwhelming force

and the fact that we were totally unprepared when war came

 

As long as the Israelis do it in defence, I say "more power to 'em". Some of their stuff has been proactive but always defence. Troy is on the money here. If the Israelis just start killing peoples for no reason other than where they live, that wud be another matter. One, or many, nice guys in Egypt , Syria, Jordan, Iran or anywhere else does not eliminate the problem. I hate it, but if you are going to win a war, civilians will be killed. It is perverse to equate Israeli measured attack with launching rockets at a girl's school. The big difference, notwithstanding the wars Vulkyn was just talking about, is that the Israelis are being constantly attacked. Even in the wars in '56, '67, '73 and others, the Israelis were not the aggressors. What would you people have them do? Pack up and move? Just take it? I cannot believe what I am reading. Those people are scrapping for their lives and with Iran constantly needling and supplying rockets to Hezbollah and others, and soon to have nuclear weapons and the stated intent to use them, it is about to get worse.
"Terrorism is okay and equal to bombing Dresden in defence" - did I just read that? Or you think "it was wrong to have bombed Dresden (or Hiroshima, or Nagasaki)"? Which is it? The latters were designed to stop wars. The former is a deliberate instigation of war. Put it that way - It's okay to lauch rockets at little girls if all you have is rockets shipped in on "aide" boats by Iran and Russia. It is not okay to attack a weapons manufacturing city of a country that just tried to destroy you. Yes, "two sides of the same coin" - we have crazies here, as well.

 

i wasn't moralizing on dresden, just noting that we have carried out indiscriminate bombing too

and the solution to their inaccurate rockets is to supply them with accurate ones, then would their rocket attacks be ok if they were more targeted?

 

You need a good dictionary. Terrorism is not just guerrilla warfare by another name. Shooting rockets into a country in the hope of randomly killing civilians, or sending suicide bombers into restaurants, marketplaces and public buses instead of up against military targets, is not guerrilla warfare, unconventional warfare, or any other kind of warfare. It's terrorism.

You and Wardd are both missing the point. The difference between military action and terrorism isn't the weapons or tactics used; it's the targets chosen. Blowing up a restaurant full of families, or a bus full of students, is not the same as blowing up a tactical or strategic target such as an enemy convoy, barracks or fuel depot.

"We did the same in the Revolutionary War?" The Hell we did. Tell me when and where George Washington and the Colonial Army resorted to murdering civilians en masse during the Revolution. Show me the history books that say we sent bombers to England to blow people up in the streets.

You're also spouting complete fantasy when you say Japan was 'kicking our ***' until we used nuclear weapons on them. My Gawd... have you ever actually read a history book? Go look at a map, and check out the high-water mark of the Japanese empire: what they had under their control from military conquests before and during WWII. Then look at what they had left by the time we dropped nuclear bombs on them.

We could argue all day and all night about whether dropping those bombs was better or worse than the full-scale invasion of the Japanese homeland our military strategists thought would otherwise be necessary. But those bombs weren't dropped to maximize civilian deaths in Japan, as an act of terrorism. They were dropped on carefully selected, strategically significant military targets.

During the Meiji period, Nagasaki became a center of heavy industry. Its main industry was ship-building, with the dockyards under control of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries becoming one of the prime contractors for the Imperial Japanese Navy, and with Nagasaki harbor used as an anchorage under the control of nearby Sasebo Naval District. These connections with the military made Nagasaki a major target for bombing by the Allies in World War II.

During World War II, the Second Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of military supplies, and was a key center for shipping.

 

You're doing exactly what I thought you would do: performing intricate dance steps to avoid condemning suicide bombings. You simply refuse to admit that deliberately trying to kill as many civilians as possible, preferably in a gruesomely bloody manner, is morally and legally wrong.

You keep carrying on about international law, and you're big on using it to slam Israel. So tell me: why are you completely ignoring what international law says about killing civilian noncombatants, including mothers and children?

 

One of the aims of war is to demoralise the enemy, so that peace or surrender becomes preferable to continuing the conflict. Strategic bombing has been used to this end. The phrase "terror bombing" entered the English lexicon towards the end of World War II and many strategic bombing campaigns and individual raids have been described as terror bombing by commentators and historians although, because the term has pejorative connotations, others have preferred to use other terms such as "will to resist (by which I mean morale)".[1]


and the night fire bombing of japanese cities

i'm not getting into a blame america shtick, just pointing out it has been done before

who said, war is hell?

 

you're still misreading what I say

what i'm saying is every bodies hands are dirty and to just point to one side is not going to solve the problem

the blame one side was tried in 1919 and only led to 1939

 

There you go again, trying to spread the blame around and distract us into what other people have done in other times or places. You're apparently incapable of admitting that it's wrong to send suicide bombers into public places packed with civilians. Period. What's so hard about that it? It looks like an easy call to me...

I ask again: why are you citing international law to slam Israel, and completely ignoring what international law says about Palestinians targeting civilians?

 

is it wrong to tear down a house because someone there may have commited a crime

is it wrong to deny well drilling permits so some palistinian can water his crops while isrealies fill their swimming pools

what's not really understood why this drags on is water, or the lack of it and the fact that a lot of the water in the area is under palistinian land

when the jews started turning a desert into farm land they started pumping the water out of the ground and now the end of that is in sight,

in that region water is as or more valuable than oil

the dead sea is almost gone because of pumping water out of the ground

isreal has economic and strategic reasons for retaining suzerainityty over the palistinians

as i've said isreal has deep seated problems that will be better solved sooner than later

if they wait too long and feel threatened enough, well they have nukes

 

More rhetoric and smokescreen. I ask again: do you believe it is morally and legally wrong to target and blow up a family restaurant packed with customers?

Judging by the way you keep tap dancing around the question, and trying to deflect the discussion into a discussion of Israel's sins instead, it looks to me like you don't have any problem with it at all -- as long as it's Palestinians doing it.

edit: by the way, you're talking ill-informed nonsense when you blame Israel's pumping of underground water for the Dead Sea shrinking. It's shrinking because of the diversion of irrigation water from the Jordan River, not because of wells.

 

im not sure about the legality

i stay away from moral judgements

we are talking about asymmetrical warfare, and arguing the means of delivery of violence

it is neither less nor more moral than for someone sitting in a jet to bomb a house with innocents in it, i give them equal ethical standing

i am against violence of any sort so i'm not going to sit here and say which violence is more moral

 

http://www.haaretz.com/

 

You stay away from moral judgments? I don't. I think some killings are justified, unavoidable or at least explainable, and others aren't. If a bomb maker doesn't want his supposedly innocent wife and children to die, maybe he shouldn't be building bombs in his living room.

And no, we're not arguing the means of delivery, no matter how many times you try to change the subject to that. We're arguing the intended targets of bombs, not how they get there.

I think I already said that... ah. Here we go:

You and Wardd are both missing the point. The difference between military action and terrorism isn't the weapons or tactics used; it's the targets chosen. Blowing up a restaurant full of families, or a bus full of students, is not the same as blowing up a tactical or strategic target such as an enemy convoy, barracks or fuel depot.

Post #186 of this very thread.... and I believe that international law you were so fond of just a page or two ago (before you mysteriously stopped mentioning it) will back me up completely.

 

a little study about what an army is and what war is meant to accomplish is in order here

no matter who the enemy is, to end hostilities you have to negotiate

when fdr made his off the cuff comment about unconditional surrender nobody knew what he meant and when japan surrendered there were negotiations in that the office of the emperor wouldn't be touched

vilifying your enemy no matter how much they may deserve it doesn't bring peace

eventually in afghanastan we will have to negotiate with the taliban

so sitting here and moralizing about the palistinians will accomplish what?

and no having studied up on the history of the area each side has a claim

isreal began as terrorists, can anybody say king david hotel

the history of the region didn't begin with the latest round of violence

in todays haaretz

One law, for Palestinian and Jewish terrorists alike
The ongoing damage to the olive groves and disruption of the harvesters' work harm the livelihood of thousands of Palestinian families. A state that respects the rule of law cannot abandon them to extremists whose goal is to dispossess their neighbors of their lands.

Haaretz Editorial


The start of the annual olive harvest has been the signal for an onslaught of violence against Palestinian farmers by groups of settler thugs in recent years. Over the last few days, human rights activists - who, as they do every year, have mobilized to protect the harvesters and deter the criminals - have reported countless incidents: torched groves, chopped-down trees, stolen olives, vandalized tools and even physical attacks on farmers. These incidents join a long list of crimes, including torched mosques and vandalized gravestones, euphemistically known as "price tag operations." There have also been a few reports of settlers' groves being vandalized.

Four years ago, the High Court of Justice noted that the military commander of the territories and his agents - Israel Defense Forces soldiers, border policemen and regular policemen - are obligated to ensure the safety of Palestinian farmers both en route to their fields and while they are working there. Specifically, the justices said, the military commander must allocate forces to protect the farmers' property. The court rejected the army's tactic of declaring certain areas closed military zones in order to protect the Palestinians from settler violence. Nevertheless, the IDF restricts the harvesters to certain hours, saying it lacks sufficient forces to offer full-time protection.


The police have also proven impotent in enforcing the law against Jewish hoodlums. Statistics compiled by the Yesh Din organization show that more than 90 percent of investigations opened by the police's Shai (West Bank ) unit into crimes by Jews against Palestinians have been closed on pretexts such as "insufficient evidence" or "perpetrator unknown." The lesson for the criminals is that they can continue running wild without let or hindrance, and with no fear of the law.

The ongoing damage to the olive groves and disruption of the harvesters' work harm the livelihood of thousands of Palestinian families. A state that respects the rule of law cannot abandon them to extremists whose goal is to dispossess their neighbors of their lands.

The government, starting from the very top, must make it clear to the security forces that as long as Israel controls the West Bank, it is responsible for the welfare of all the area's inhabitants - and that there must be only one law, for Palestinian and Jewish terrorists alike.

 

In other words, you still refuse to admit that Palestinians blowing up Israeli civilians is contemptible. Instead, you keep changing the subject to how despicable Israelis are, as though it excuses what the Palestinians are doing.

And you claim to be 'neutral'? I hope you're never a referee in any game I'm playing....

By the way, the King David Hotel wasn't a random civilian target; it was being used as a major British military headquarters. And the Irgun telephoned multiple warnings before the bombing, which should have given plenty of time to evacuate the hotel. No one seriously denies that.

There are two common explanations as to why the hotel wasn't evacuated: either the warnings weren't passed on to someone with sufficient authority to order an evacuation; or the British disregarded the warnings, because they believed their security was so tight a bomb couldn't have been planted. I can believe either; military minds are sometimes rather rigid.

Begin claimed in his memoirs that the British deliberately allowed the casualties so they could vilify the Jewish militants. I doubt that, and hope it isn't true.

Now, compare that bombing with the typical Palestinian suicide bombing, where the targets are generally groups of civilians, and no warning at all is given -- because the whole idea is to kill or maim as many civilians as possible.

It's either rather ignorant of you to compare Palestinian suicide bombers to the King David Hotel bombing, or rather cynical of you. Or I suppose it could just mean that you honestly don't have any moral standards.....