Oh good, and now Jackmannii and FinnAgain play good cop/bad cop. Always convincing.
I’m not retracting any damn thing. You really think war should be conducted according to Miss Manners’ Rules of Wartime Etiquette? Wow. Next you’ll want Star Trek disintegration booths. So clean and tidy.
If those other countries are hosting legitimate military targets, then they are involved. For example, if the US were at war with Country X, and Country X attacks the US military base in Bahrain, I don’t see any special problem with it and I doubt you would either.
Your own hypothesis is that diplomats are legitimate military targets, so by your hypothesis, why should diplomats be treated any differently?
Ahhh, but you probably think diplomats are different. When a country accepts diplomats from Country X, it’s completely different from hosting a military base of Country X. We want countries to receive diplomats without fear that they are entangling themselves with other countries. We don’t want diplomatic personnel from two warring countries to get in a gun battle in the streets of a third country. And I would agree with all of that. Which is why diplomats should not be seen as legitimate military targets.
Israel could take the same view of countries associated with Iran and engage in the same rationalization. Israel could easily send a few F-16s to Damascus and reduce the Iranian embassy to a heap of smoldering ruin. And they could park a truck bomb in front of the Iranian embassy in Azerbaijhan.
I would say it’s not a matter of blame so much as pragmatics. A nuclear-armed Iran is bad news.
I have provided citations and proof of the fact that civilians involved in military projects are legitimate targets of war.
You have not and now refuse to provide citations or proof that consular agents are legitimate targets of war, and you refuse to retract your claim despite lack of supporting proof and presence of counter evidence.
So noted.
So noted, you have no actual answer to the logical inconsistency in your position (or you actually have no inconsistency and do support civilian-targeted military actions) and will only respond with nonsense about “Da Jooz”.
If you can’t even lay out what you think the rules ought to be, your claim about the morality of Israel’s actions is not very credible. Basically you are saying that what Israel (allegedly) did is just as bad as what Iran (allegedly) did but you refuse to say why.
I take it you are not from Thailand then? Because it seems to me that an Iranian bomb exploding in Bangkok is just as reprehensible as an Israeli bomb in New York.
Yes, of course. (Assuming for the sake of discussion that they have justification at all for going to war against Israel.)
Your cite does not say what you say it says. In fact it has nothing to do with military targets whatsoever.
Likewise. People are not objects.
ETA: not that the Geneva Convention applies since there is no war between Iran and Israel.
I think they’re both fair game.
If I were Thai, I’d be pissed that Iran conducted an operation in my country. I wouldn’t really care that the target was a diplomat.
Ok, I suppose I just don’t see why diplomats should be off limits from a moral perspective.
When Israel is consistently sanctioned with vote totals like 97-4 (where Israel, the US, and island nations like Nauru are the only countries vetoing), I’d rely on Occam’s Razor to guide you to the answer.
There is an old Yiddish saying: “If one person calls you a donkey, ignore him; if two [or 97?] people call you a donkey, buy a saddle.”
Presumably the same “readers” will note that you’ve not provided a single cite in your OP that makes for a case-closed imputation vs Iran. By the same token said readers would, by now, be savvy to your rabid defense on any matter regarding Israel. Point being, the case against Iran in that particular case was not just unproven, but made laughable by the lack of evidence behind the charges.
Once more I am providing yet another cite full of details to back my assertions:
Debunking the Iran “Terror Plot”
That said, it is not up to me, ‘the writer’ to do the reading either for you nor anyone else here.
I understand that – but what about a hypothetical Israeli attack on Iranian diplomats? If blowing stuff up is a problem for you, let’s assume that Mossad agents storm the Iranian UN mission and shoot everyone there dead. Just as immoral as the other conduct we’ve discussed?
But what about the morality involved? Do you think it would be just as immoral for Israel to blow up a couple Iranian embassies as it would be for Iran to assassinate an Israeli weapons scientist?
Given the additional facts that countries like Syria, Iran, and Lebanon engage in some serious human rights abuses (far worse than anything Israel has been accused of), the simplest explanation is politics.
Really? If I give you those three, how would you explain the other +/- 90 nations that oppose Israel’s politics?
Given that Israel’s technique for blunting Iran’s military capability is to cause harm, destruction, and terror to its enemies, I am having trouble seeing the “contrast.”
Probably the reason you are having trouble is your mistaken assumption about Israel’s intentions.
But let me ask you this:
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Do you agree that it would be at least as easy for Israel to assassinate Iranian diplomats outside of Iran as to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists within Iran?
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Do you agree that it would be very easy for Israel to blow up Iranian embassies?
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Do you agree that it would be easier for Israel to assassinate large numbers of random civilians within Iran than to pick off particular nuclear scientists (who are being watched and guarded carefully)?
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If so, and if Israel’s goal is simply to cause harm, destruction, and terror, why hasn’t Israel done these things?
Alternatively, they may have actually read the OP and its citations and noted that such proof was provided and quoted.
[QUOTE=RedFury;14788223
[Debunking the Iran “Terror Plot”]
(http://www.merip.org/mero/mero110311)
[/QUOTE]
Readers will note that you have yet again provided a link with zero quotes or analysis. Readers will also note that your cite does not prove what you claim it does, which may be the reason you have only provided a fetch-quest and have not actually done the work of holding up your side in a debate. Readers will also note that your author is not a poster on the Straight Dope and that in Great Debates of all places, one is expected to actually debate. Readers may further note that providing a 5000+ word article and refusing to quote, discuss or analyze* a single particular *contained therein strongly suggests that the person providing it is unable to support it.
Further, readers may note that your author, Gareth Porter, is the same Gareth Porter who claimed that the Khmer Rouge was not, in fact, eliminating classes of people. Of course as he is not here, and you are providing this work, it falls to you to defend it should you be providing it as a citation. Are you able to do so?
Not only does exactly it say exactly what I said it did, you are ignoring that civilians lose their protection if they are engaged in military work. You can not simply handwave away cites you not like. The citation about objects proves that one can indeed attack targets if they have military use. Your parsing is also spurious, as the allowance is not to attack targets so long as one does not harm the inhabitants of said targets.
And yes the Geneva Convention applies. Even if we were to ignore your claim that no war is involved, if a nation were to start a war their actions would be governed by the GC. Further, of course there’s a state of war given that Iran has repeatedly attacked Israel through Hezbollah and Hamas.
Not assuming that your analogy is factual, but a reason could easily be a desire to retain victim status.
That runs into the same problem. You can’t conduct war and/or commit crimes in a country without it getting pissed off.
More broadly, I’d say there is a duty to limit yourself to military targets if you can achieve your aims that way.
Assuming that Israel’s war to stop Iran from getting nukes is just, then yes, if their best option for success was to blow up a bunch of embassies, then they are justified in doing so.
If only we could learn to much as much creative energy into avoiding war as we put into justifying it. There might yet be some hope.
Identify the manual of international law which states that one may engage in deliberate targeting of civilians if it is their “best option” for war.
Further, identify how blowing up civilians hundreds or thousands of miles away from military research and development targets aids in stopping military research and development.
I think I’m with brazil84 on this one. Civilian scientists, when working hand-in-hand with the military, should be targeted because they are basically military by proxy. Diplomats on the other hand should be totally off limits because they can bring about the peaceful means to end ongoing conflict. Killing diplomats says that you have no intention of seeking a peaceful solution, and it endangers your own diplomats assigned to other countries.