Car bomb kills Hamas operative in Syria - Israel claims responsibility; Hamas vows revenge
Not that it’s particularly concerned about world opinion at this point, but using car bombs to kill opponents? How are you going maintain the moral upper hand when you do stuff like that?
How is a bomb in a car any different morally from the same bomb dropped from an aircraft or the same bomb on the end of a missile? I don’t see delivery systems to be a matter of morality.
Actually, come to think of it, putting a bomb in the guys car is somewhat more precise and discriminate than trying to drop it on his house from an airplane would be.
So Hamas and others using Suicide Bombers doesn’t have a negative moral dimension? It’s just a “delivery system”?
Unless you can suggest a reason why it does?
Yes, because of who they target. Intentionally killing random civilians is morrally wrong regardless if it is a car bomb or fighter jet.
Exactly. If the Palestinians used suicide bombers to attack Israeli military assets, they’d be on much firmer moral grounds. Instead, they send them into pizza parlors to kill as many innocent men, women, and children as they can. They’d be just as morally wrong if they intentionally targeted pizza parlors with F-16 strikes, if they had F-16’s.
As a good example, no one considered Japan’s Kamikaze attacks as morally wrong - just a sign of desperation.
the title of this thread asks “is it ok to use car bombs to kill opponents”
maybe if you re-named the thread to say “is it ok to use car bombs to kill terrorists” you wouldnt have to ask.
If we find Osama B. Laden in a cave in Afghanistan, would you ask “is it okay to kill him” with a car bomb ?
The OP presupposes that killing the people in question is ok, but just seems to be questionning the means as morally dubious. Which seems the wrong way to be looking at it to me.
Well if we’re discussing the morality of real world targeting objectives, and not the delivery systems, IIRC there are often significant bystander casualities when Israel uses a helicopter gunship or something similar to blow away a Hamas operative in crowded residential areas. Is this sloppy cost/benefit targeting calculus that tacitly accepts significant civilian casualities, significantly more “moral” than the suicide bombers exclusively civilian targets?
are you aware of what you just said?
Your example compares a helicopter killing a known terrorist with blood on his hands (who happens to be hiding among civilians, and who are not intentionally targetted ), versus a terrorist murdering children at a pizza parlor who are the ONLY targets he is aiming for.
let’s see–by your logic, we should never have gone to Afghansitan to hunt OBL, because we “tacitly accept” collateral damage . But OBL is perfectly entitled to use suicide bombers at “exclusively civilian targets” .
HuH?
Yes – but it’s still a weapon that could harm innocent bystanders. Or somebody who is not a terrorist at all but just, for some reason, happens to get into the terrorist’s car at the wrong moment.
I’m not asking about the effectiveness of tactics. An army will usually kill their opponents when and where they can, given the opportunity to do so. I’m asking about the relative morality of the specific targeting of civilians vs the killing of an opponents in situations where civilian bystander casualites are a near certainity.
Of course. However the OP is (apparantly) suggesting that it this method of delivery is somehow morally ‘wrong’ while presumably dropping the bomb from a plane would be ok.
Whether the use of the actual weapon or the killing itself is morally justifiable is probably a different discussion to the one astro appeared to want to start here.
Why do think Israel would be particularly interested in maintaining the moral upper hand in a targeted bombing such as this, if in fact it was officially confirmed to be invoved, which it hasn’t?
Ok, maybe it isn’t…
Read the OP – Israel has claimed responsibility for the car-bombing.
The war against terror is just that–a war.Not a police procedure where you have to get a search warrant signed by a judge before you enter Osama BLaden’s cave or Saddam’s spider hole
And in war, unfortunately, innocent people get killed along with the legitimate targets. We call it “collateral damage” . It’s a blood-soaked tragedy when an innocent child is killed because he is sitting in the car next to his father who is a terrorist. But Sept 11 was a blood-soaked tragedy too. And none of the innocent victims were sitting next to terrorists.
Let’s keep perspective here.Some concepts really are so simple that they can be reduced to black and white, good and evil, with no middle ground. Terrorists are evil, and we are the good guys
.
Is that you George?