Paz on 26/7/2006 at 15:56
(none of the below is a direct reply; any use of "you" is entirely general - thought I'd best point that out)
I'm guessing this has been said before, but it's probably worth repeating again and again until everyone develops a Pavlovian response to it and we can control the world with a small series of bells.
Anyway.
It's pretty easy to sit around and go "Well, gosh, you know, it's terrible but Israel simply have to do this. We all feel terrible for the deaths you know." when you aren't living in Lebanon. You do not feel terrible for the deaths. They are happening to strangers thousands of miles away - you may feel a pang of "ooh, that's pretty bad" (to a greater or lesser degree, I obviously can't know for sure, but let's say no-one starts mourning) but it is nothing more. There's nothing one can really DO about that, except be aware that they do not, in fact, really know what people living in that country are going through. Hopefully none of us here ever will. I'm not fully sure what point I'm trying to make, other than I think this gulf in actual feeling is worth weighing up before making any statements about necessity of action.
Likewise, it's pretty easy to dismiss a whole bunch of rockets falling on a town or decades of wondering whether when you go to town today you might get blown up in the marketplace by a religious loon. Again, I highly doubt anyone here knows what that's like. Nor could you, it's a totally alien feeling. Sticking to "oh well, they wouldn't be doing this if x y z historically nasty things hadn't happened" doesn't really justify anything.
All I can see is that NONE of these actions are doing anything to make the region safer, none of them are dispelling fear, hatred or doing anything to improve the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who get inadvertently caught up in this shitfest and none of them are likely to provide any kind of solution. To me, that makes it completely pointless. When you add the death toll, it makes it horrific.
What pisses me off is the lack of unequivocal condemnation coming from the international community (except down the obvious "lol terrorists" route; we get it, terrorism is bad) AND the unbelieveably slow reaction. How long has this been going on for now? Oh, and they've managed a conference and a bit of a visit to nearby locations from various dignitaries WELL FUCKING DONE.
If Iraq had somehow managed to form a self-determined national army and decided to stroll into Iran in the search for terrorists we'd have been on DIPLOMACY OVERDRIVE. I know that's obviously not a direct comparison, but the sloth of the international response is pretty much an outrage. If the US were dragging their heels any more there'd be grooves in the atlantic five hundred fathoms deep.
Urg, it's all so frustrating and fucked up.
SubJeff on 26/7/2006 at 16:32
It's true that unless you have been in the situation you cannot know what it's really like, but that doesn't mean that you cannot be sensible, logical or compasionate in your examination of it.
And FYI the last time I was in Israel there was a lot of unrest and we had to evacuate an area that was believed to be immently under attack (near the Golan Heights/Lebanese border natch). It's not the same as actually being shelled but it was pretty scary. And in the last year I was in Africa the county I was in was in a state of political unrest with a lot of fighting going on and the country near to civil war. For weeks on end one could hear light and heavy machinegun fire, interspersed with the odd explosion (grendades? RPGs?), all night long whilst the warring factions within the government (the army, the police and the "redshirt" militant private army to the president or whatever they were) sorted their differences out. Alot of this fighting was going on less than a kilometer from us and if you really wanted you could get close enough to see the tracers or even the odd dead guy/shot-up house (and some idiots did). I'm not saying that it gives me a realistic perspective on the Lebanon situation, but the whole thing went on for months - I'm well aware if what it's like to be in the middle of a volatile situation because in the Africa case we never knew who was going to go where or do what and everyone was very worried for their own and their family's safety.
SD on 26/7/2006 at 17:40
Quote Posted by Paz
If Iraq had somehow managed to form a self-determined national army and decided to stroll into Iran in the search for terrorists we'd have been on DIPLOMACY OVERDRIVE. I know that's obviously not a direct comparison, but the sloth of the international response is pretty much an outrage.
I think now would be a good time to remind ourselves how we invaded Iraq because we
thought Saddam Hussein
might have weapons of mass destruction that he
might use against another country.
Fast forward three years, and not only is Israel bombarding another country with WMDs on a daily basis, killing civilians at a rate at which Saddam would have been disgusted, but our glorious leaders have been barely able to summon up the effort to even reprimand Israel, even though you
know that had Iran or Syria or North Korea even
looked like doing what Israel is doing, they'd be halfway back to the Stone Age before you could say "mushroom cloud".
And then these cunts will act all SHOCKED and OUTRAGED when people start flying planes into our skyscrapers or blowing themselves to smithereens on our public transit systems, and you just have to sit back and wonder how idiots like these manage to make it to the summit of power when they haven't got the first fucking idea about justice and fairness and even-handedness.
It makes me sick, it really does.
TheGreatGodPan on 26/7/2006 at 17:58
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
Israel bombarding another country with WMDs
What? I thought they were using conventional artillery and missiles.
Turtle on 26/7/2006 at 18:00
Yeah, WMDs are Chemical, Biological and Atomic weapons.
StD's high.
SD on 26/7/2006 at 18:02
Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan
What? I thought they were using conventional artillery and missiles.
Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons."Obviously the US military isn't a bunch of revisionists like the US government!
Turtle on 26/7/2006 at 18:04
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
wonder how idiots like these manage to make it to the summit of power when they haven't got the first fucking idea about justice and fairness and even-handedness.
It's because people from other countries can't vote for our president.
I think we'd get a much higher class of leader if they could.
jprobs on 26/7/2006 at 18:23
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
"The US military refers to WMD as:
Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons."Obviously the US military isn't a bunch of revisionists like the US government!
Us military found artillery shells and coventional bombs in Iraq....
DING! Invasion of Iraq justified!
Paz on 26/7/2006 at 19:24
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
For weeks on end one could hear light and heavy machinegun fire, interspersed with the odd explosion (grendades? RPGs?)
Oh no, bombarded with d20's and magic armour!
Sorry, I couldn't resist. You have to left me off that one. As I said before, my post wasn't a direct reply to yours - despite being underneath it. I'm not saying "YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT THE DEATH, MAN" to anyone in particular, just that ... hmm, I don't even know myself, but when the debate swims off into the realms of everyone being ever-so-rational and postulating their theories or, the worst thing on any message board ever, deciding how THEY would run the military campaign because they read a book about helicopters once, it starts coming across as really distasteful and utterly detached.
Something like that anyway.
And you get people who type (or say) "oh these deaths are extremely regrettable" and put on their care face, but you know in an hour they're thinking about whether to have chicken for tea, because if they were REALLY considering the implications they'd go insane with grief.
Also I hope those stories about Israel/Africa are true because I remember that shit with the bokken!
Agent Monkeysee on 26/7/2006 at 21:48
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
Fast forward three years, and not only is Israel bombarding another country with WMDs on a daily basis, killing civilians at a rate at which Saddam would have been disgusted...
Over half a million people died in the Iran-Iraq war which Saddam started, many of those from chemical gas weapons employed by Saddam's army. Saddam wouldn't give a shit about the "rate" at which Israel is killing Lebanese and throwing that little aside in there does nothing but piss people off, distract from your actual point, and raise the question as to whether you actually understand anything you're saying.
I don't understand why you keep derailing your own arguments with these asinine equivalency arguments. You're like the walking embodiment of Godwin's Law.
