What can I say, I love quoting movies.
Anyway, a real-life example of disproportionate response is shooting someone in self-defense or in defense of your home. Surely attempted rape doesn’t merit taking a life, does it? And yet, the more people who understand that trying to steal from or rape another might result in their death, the fewer people there are who will be inclined to try.
You know there might be technological fix to this.
I remember reading in Popular Science about using high powered lasers for ground based defense. Lining the border with a set of these programmed to zap anything with a rocket’s thermal signature would render Hama’s rockets nothing but a fireworks show.
I’m not sure that’s true.
But anyway, once again, analogies based on human relations do not work on the national scale. This is basic, and very important. Just think it through for a bit.
True, international relations are nothing like street fights. Street fights have rules.
And *proportionate *respoonses escalate conflicts - disproportionate responses end them.
A government is still a body of people.
You don’t want person-to-person analogies, fine. Whether or not you approve of the bombs that fell on Japan, I don’t think you can deny that they sure as hell ended that conflict on the international scale. (Not that I recommend dropping such a bomb on one side or the other in this conflict. But disproportionate responses can and have worked in the past.)
I remember this thing where a guy used a snub fighter to shoot rockets down the ventilation shaft of this huge space station, blowing it up… maybe they could try that?
i think this thread is turning into a Game Theory debate.
What the equal response people are proposing isTit For Tat. What Alessan is proposing is basically Two Tits for Tat. Two negative responses for one initial negative. Hamas since their core religious beliefs include the destruction of Israel are using a Grim Trigger. Where in one negative action results in every response ever being negative.
I wonder if Israel is going to send troops into Gaza. It looks possible, but I hope for everyone’s sake that things quiet down before that becomes necessary.
I was just watching a Palestinian spokesman. He notes the Israelis have a captured target. They have made it difficult to get food and now have bombed the fishing villages. They have bombed schools. The idea that they can target Hamas leaders is a joke. Bombs kill whoever is near. They create replacements every day.
Will these countries ever negotiate earnestly?
I’m not entirely sure this is true. There is a a good deal of evidence that violence that is perceived by its victims to be indiscriminate or wanton actually inflames the side being attacked, and can further mobilize and unify them. A good article on this is Stathis Kalyvas, “The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War.” (.pdf) I’m not an expert on this, but it seems far from obvious that *populations *react to disproportionate retaliation the way individual persons (like the one in your fistfight example) do.
Not sure if/when I can return to this thread; I’m fighting a (losing) battle with a migraine which believes in disproportionate attack. But there’s my $0.02.
I know with all that scifi you appearently watch you don’t have time for real applied science but: Tactical High Energy Laser - Wikipedia read up on it. The technology is shown to work and they already have designs for fixed location models.
Israel has tried a few times. Palestine isn’t a “country” per se, but I get your point. Who’s the current public face of Hamas who could engage in negotiations, a la Arafat?
Well, we’ve got an experiment running to test this claim. Israel’s just done a disproportionate response. You say it will end the conflict.
If the conflict’s still in progress a year from now, would you concede that your proposition flunked the test?
It is just no way to live. The people know that, But when you keep dropping bombs on them you create hatreds. What is going on now will do no good at all. If your buildings were getting destroyed and your people killed, you would surely learn to hate. If your city was being hit by bombers ,your reaction would not be we deserved it. That would never happen. It is a death spiral that will consume them all.
true enough. Thanks for the correction. The civilian casualties are estimated to be 51 in the Palestinian side by the UN (Although that’s a conservative number, the total should be larger).
Either Khalid Mashal or Ismail Haniyeh. It’s not going to happen, though. Any official negotiation with Hamas would be a really bad idea.
Maybe. Except the last time I did something like this on these boards was when Euty’s GF died. He couldn’t go to the services, I sent him an email saying " there’s a ticket waiting for you at the airport". he went to the airport, there was a ticket waiting, he got to go to the services. So…maybe not.
Frankly, I’m not surprised that DtC is weaseling, for him to do what he proposed would be suicide. I know it, he knows it, you know it. I just so happen to think that America would be a much better place without Dio in it, so I’m willing to finance his suicide. Frankly it’s win/win for me. If he takes me up on my offer, he’ll be dead and the world will be a better place. Win. If he doesn’t, he’s proven once and for all that he’s a craven coward and an online blowhard, robbing his future mouthbreathings of any credibility whatsoever. Win again. No matter what happens, I can’t lose. It’s a nice spot to me in. 
Now that isn’t very nice! I disagree with DtC on many things, this topic being one of them, but I wouldn’t wish death on him, nor would I accept a trip to the Middle East to my certain death from a complete stranger on the internet, either (however, I’m also on your side of the argument so I wouldn’t do that anyway, even if I lived over there!).
I’m not wishing death on Dio. He’s stridently taken a position that would result in his death if he actually did it, I’m just holding him to it. It’s easy to say anything and everything online, it’s a lot harder to live up to it. All I’m doing is financing the “live up to it” part.
Can’t you just set him up with travel expenses and a bungalow in Canada?