Is there a moral limit to collateral damage inflicted in self defense?

[XT]

[QUOTE=Dubious Weasle]
Minor nitpick. The decision -not- to use cluster bombs to take out the rockets has nothing to do with minimizing civilian casualties.
[/QUOTE]

I know its a factor in the US military for when you can and can’t use cluster munitions.

[QUOTE=Dubious Weasle]
Cluster bombs are good for taking out massed troops or occasional territory denial in open areas. They are fairly ineffective at taking out individual small targets in an urban setting.
[/QUOTE]

They are very good for taking out soft targets like trucks as well. I’m unsure if what you are asserting here is correct…I believe cluster munitions are very good at taking out small soft targets, and I don’t see why they would necessarily be ineffective in urban settings (leaving aside the effect they would have on the population). Oh, I’m sure they couldn’t be used in very built up urban settings easily (large buildings would probably provide odd dispersal patterns and shields), but I don’t think this would universally be the case…and not from what I’ve seen of the targets in Lebanon that have been engaged.

In addition, they are a hell of a lot cheaper.

[QUOTE=Dubious Weasle]
Precision weapons are used primarily because they hit their targets. The smaller the target, the more important accuracy is. If you’re trying to hit a factory, a bunker, large troop formations you can use less accurate weapons because you can miss by a bit and still achieve a lot of damage.
[/QUOTE]

Sure. But cluster munitions are also good for this as they scatter over a fairly wide area and each bomblet can essentially take out a soft target like a truck or jeep. Even against armor they can be effective I believe, though probably not the optimal weapon for that. But as counter battery weapons they are very good…artillary being generally soft targets (doubt HB has many armored self-propelled guns after all :)). Also, cluster fired artillary could be used in a more wide spread way…again, if you didn’t care about civilian casualties at all. All you’d need is rough coordinates and you could send a counter battery strike right back, with the initial punch using cluster munitions.

[QUOTE=Dubious Weasle]
To sum up, precision weapons are favored because they have a better chance of achieving their objective. The fact that they reduce colateral damage is just a perk, not a design feature.
[/QUOTE]

Well, thats true. But they aren’t the only system that could be effective in taking out even small targets. And I think their use in these situations DOES stem from the fact that they tend to hit what they are aimed out, without as much colateral damage…even taking into account the ones that go astray.

[QUOTE=Dubious Weasle]
Another minor point. There are many types of precision bombs with the “a ground troop paints the target with a laser” variety being just one. Many, including the laser guided variety, would not necessarily entail visual identification.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, I know…though admittedly not first hand, as I was in the Navy not the Army. But I watched the gun cam video footage Finn provided (I think it was in another thread) and clearly the pilot saw the target and was painting it himself to guild the bomb in. That it missed was not due to there being no target there at all but to some other factor.
Anyway, just wanted to respond as the thread seems to be pretty much dead. I appreciate the corrections though…always interesting to get another perspective on this stuff.

-XT

[FRDE]

A couple of points

Some people seem to think that the Lebanese Government is somehow complicit with Hezbollah.

Just because they have 14 Hezbollah representratives in a very shaky coalition, does not mean that the rest of the Lebanese Government does not loathe them.

My take is that they are sh*t scared of Hezbollah and would like to see the whole lot disappear.

Israel tends to get badly represented in the Western press, anyone remember Jeneen ?

• that was tantamount to photo shopping
• the Israelis were outraged - I know - they told me

As such, Israel is well aware that /any/ photo opportunities will count against them

• so rationally their best course of action is to avoid providing such pictures

Notice how they declared a 48 hour ceasefire as soon as those 50 got killed

• to make it perfectly clear that they want non-combatants out of there

Both sides are well aware of the public relations aspect of this scrap

• however much the average Israeli may not give a toss about the life of a Hezbollah wife, grandmother or daughter, they do not want to create pictures of them dead or maimed
• even though the motive may not be benign
• they are trying to keep their actions a lot more honourable than Hezbollah

Incidentally, I am pretty sure that the UN bunker was entirely deliberate, if Hezbollah realize that they can’t get away with using UN troops as sandbags, then the UN are a lot safer.

Frankly, the whle idea of having the UN in there ‘observing’ strikes me as utterly daft.
They could be in there repairing roads (which they are) and evacuating non-combatants (of which I’ve seen no evidence)

• but ‘observing’ is just … crazy

[Ale]

[QUOTE=FRDE]
Incidentally, I am pretty sure that the UN bunker was entirely deliberate, if Hezbollah realize that they can’t get away with using UN troops as sandbags, then the UN are a lot safer.
[/QUOTE]

Ohhh… give me a break, you can´t be serious. “We had to kill the UN observers to save the UN observers”" :rolleyes:

[FRDE]

[QUOTE=Ale]
Ohhh… give me a break, you can´t be serious. “We had to kill the UN observers to save the UN observers”" :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]

I am serious.

I’ve failed to find a cite about what happened last time round.

• a lot more Ghanains
• but UN ‘peacekeepers’ are, in Israeli eyes, animated sandbags

Ah, I just spotted the ‘We’

Well, what would you do if four of your mates were being used as a human shield ? Let alone four useless people who should not be there.

You know perfectly well that the two guys in the Lebanon will never come back alive, the best that would have come back from the ‘hospital’ raid was two bodies.

The only way of winning just about any war is to be more callous and brutal than your opponent - it is a bit tricky with the international press looking on - but in the long run the winner re-writes history.

[Clothahump]

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Israel has bombed an apartment building in Qana, Lebanon, killing 54 civilians, including 37 children. Late reports from Israeli military sources claim that Israel was responding to Katyusha rockets fired from near that location.

Is there any moral limit to the collateral damage inflicted when a country is responding to a military attack? If 50 is not wrong, is 500?
…snip…
[/QUOTE]

There is an argument to be made that there is no collateral damage involved. It must be considered that Hezbollah does what it does because the people allow them to do it. They are, therefore, accomplices in Hezbollah’s actions and therefore deserve the consequences.

I’ve seen this point of view kicked around in different places, so I thought I would offer it here for debate.

[Squink]

Human Rights Watch report:

The 50-page report, “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.

“The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military’s disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare.”

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims and witnesses of attacks, visits to some blast sites…

Actual report here For once it’s not a pdf.

[Gorsnak]

[QUOTE=Clothahump]
There is an argument to be made that there is no collateral damage involved. It must be considered that Hezbollah does what it does because the people allow them to do it. They are, therefore, accomplices in Hezbollah’s actions and therefore deserve the consequences.

I’ve seen this point of view kicked around in different places, so I thought I would offer it here for debate.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, that’s right. Those children are just as guilty as the leader of Hizbollah. Damn, but that’s an assinine thing to say.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

[QUOTE=Squink]
Human Rights Watch report:Actual report here For once it’s not a pdf.
[/QUOTE]

It’s not that simple. For some reason, RedFury’s post prior to yours has disappeared, but no matter. What he posted was similar in substance to yours, except that he asked (sarcastically) if HRW or Reuters were “left wing blogs” too.

Well, as with everything, that is a matter of debate. From the Wikipedia article:

Human Rights Watch has been criticized by various human rights activists, non-governmental organizations, politicians, and media as having an anti-Semitic or anti-Israel bias. This includes the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, the Anti-Defamation League, Honest Reporting, NGO Monitor, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), Abraham Cooper, Anne Bayefsky, Gerald Steinberg, Isi Leibler, Shimon Peres[citation needed], and Ana Palacio.

and

In a 2006 communiqué Honest Reporting wrote, “Human Rights Watch, along with many other organizations which claim to focus solely on human rights without a political agenda, have hardly proven themselves to be an “unbiased” source.” Furthermore, the communiqué asserted, “HRW is not held accountable to anybody but its own staff” and, “The organization’s bias against Israel is hardly new.”[6]

The Anti-Defamation League, in response to coverage of the alleged, but never proven “Jenin Massacre”, stated that Human Rights Watch was among the groups that, “Pre-judged Israel’s behavior.” The Anti-Defamation League also wrote, “Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch charged Israel with violations of international law and war crimes. Neither discussed the international law violations involved in arming a refugee camp, or demanded the United Nations be held in any way accountable for its lack of oversight in the camp. While Human Rights Watch acknowledged in a May 3 report that there was no evidence of a massacre and that Palestinian gunmen had contributed to endangering Palestinian civilians, they continued to emphasize that there was prima facie evidence Israel committed war crimes.”[7]

So yeah, it is disputed. Of course, the groups that dispute their claims of impartiality are themselves in dispute, and so on and so on, so it’s left to the reader to make their own judgment as to the veracity of HRW’s claims.

[Squink]

[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
So yeah, it is disputed. Of course, the groups that dispute their claims of impartiality are themselves in dispute, and so on and so on…
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, stunningly unsurprising, isn’t it?
Perhaps the UN will be able to sort it out equitably once they get 30,000 peacekeepers in there.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

Ah, that’s why it “disappeared”. I was reading this at the same time and I mixed them up.

Ah well. These all blur together eventually anyway. An anti-Israel thread always has the same result.

[LonesomePolecat]

[QUOTE=Ale]
It´s not morally correct to kill the hostage to get to the bad guy, specially if the innocent to guilty ratio is so skewed as it seems on the case under consideration.
[/QUOTE]

What if the hostage taker is firing at other civilians from behind the hostage? Is it not at least conceivable that the life of the hostage might be less important than restoring order?

I think you’re basically demanding an impossible standard of moral purity from Isreal. No matter what Israel does, innocent people are going to suffer as a direct consequence. There is no painless and bloodless way out of the mess.

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

Hezbollah is doing all it can to destroy Israel. They are just very very weak. Films are showing neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Bridges, factories, roads, airports flattened. Israel is not caring about civilians .It is just saying it cares. This is a one sided slaughter.

[XT]

It is?

HAIFA, Israel (CNN) – Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 160 rockets Thursday, killing seven Israelis and injuring several, Israeli police said, after Israel resumed airstrikes on Beirut’s suburbs.

Maybe your definition of ‘one sided’ is different than my own. Or maybe the difference between deliberately firing missiles with the intent of killing civilians is equal in your mind to the accidental killing of civilians while trying to hit paramilitary units or targets hiding among those civilians.

But Hezbollah’s press officer told CNN that a cease-fire will not stop the militant group from fighting Israeli soldiers “on our soil” – land that the militant group defines as encompassing the disputed Shebaa Farms region, occupied by Israel.

“No one can stop us from fighting the Israeli soldiers on our soil as long as there is one occupied meter of land,” Hussein Rahal said. “Even if there is a cease-fire.”

Hezbollah has stated in the past that it will not disarm until Israeli troops leave Shebaa Farms, a small sliver of land near the Lebanon-Syria border that Israel seized from Syria during the 1967 Middle East War.

Yeah, that Hezbollah…poor little lambs. Of course, you keep forgetting that THEY are saying no ceasefire until their own conditions are met. But I suppose in your own mind all that counts is that Israel stops the shooting. If Hezbollah wants to keep tossing rockets at Israel…well, they are only jews after all. They probably deserve it.

-XT

[Fear_Itself]

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
What if the hostage taker is firing at other civilians from behind the hostage? Is it not at least conceivable that the life of the hostage might be less important than restoring order?
[/QUOTE]
So let me pose another hypothetical: suppose God grants you the power to kill, with one fell stroke, every Muslim extremist who is plotting or supporting terrorism; but the price for this power is the annihilation of every man, woman and child in Israel. Is that a fair exchange, to rid the world of Muslim terrorists once and for all?

[spingears]

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Israel has bombed an apartment building in Qana, Lebanon, killing 54 civilians, including 37 children. Late reports from Israeli military sources claim that Israel was responding to Katyusha rockets fired from near that location.

Is there any moral limit to the collateral damage inflicted when a country is responding to a military attack? If 50 is not wrong, is 500?

Will this strategy of defense make Israel more secure, or less? Does destroying a rocket launcher weaken Hezbollah, or does it make them stronger by galvanizing support for their cause from moderates in the Arab world who previously did not sympathize with them?

If Hezbollah is deliberately launching rockets near civilian shelters, do they hope that it will deter Israel from retaliating, or are they counting on it, to foment public outrage and garner support? Isn’t Israel playing right into their hands by destroying the source of a rocket attack at the expense of of the lives dozens of women and children?

I support the right of a country to defend itself, but there must be a line somewhere, beyond which the wanton loss of innocent life is not justified. If it has not already crossed it, Israel is perilously close to this line, and beyond it, she will find the world losing patience, and sympathy for future rocket victims in Haifa.
[/QUOTE]

A principle is laid down in the OT: Deuteronomy 25:11 When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.
It is not so much the fault of Israel as civilians being used as human shields.
The accuracy of media reports to the contrary is much in question. Not being there it is almost possible for you or I to know for sure.

[RedFury]

If you have a couple of hours available, I highly recommend you watch the following documentary:

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East

If and when you do so and if there’s enough interest in discussing it, I’m willing to open up a thread for those of you that would like to debunk it.

Mayhaps matters in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are not as binary as so many of you appear to think. I know it helped me understand a bit better my own prior question: why is it that the US population is, almost as a whole, so blindly pro-Israel.

The rest of you can take from here – provided you have those two hours to give…

[FinnAgain]

[QUOTE=RedFury]
If you have a couple of hours available, I highly recommend you watch the following documentary:

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East
[/QUOTE]

I’ll consider watching the rest of it, but so far I’m disgusted by the spin and bullshit that just the first few seconds of it have. They make the (correct) claim that UNSC resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw.

But, I suppose, by ‘accident’ they neglect to mention the context of that statement, or the other condition that went with it.

[

The Security Council,

Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,

Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,

Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,

Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

    Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

    Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

Affirms further the necessity

    For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;

    For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;

    For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;

Requests the Secretary General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution; 

](http://www.mideastweb.org/242.htm)

First, Israel tried to return the territories, but was met with the Three Noes. So not only did Israel try to meet the first of the two requirements, but they could not specifically because the Arab states refused to comply with the second.

“Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”

The resolution called for a Special Representative who would “promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution”

Israel attempted to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accord with the provisions and principles. The Arab states responded with the Three Noes.

Such willful distortion of history does not bode well as it’s the opening salvo of your youtube video.

Maybe I’ve got more time to waste later, who knows.

[XT]

And I think right there Finn you touched on Reds question…why do most American’s support Israel over guys like Hamas and Hezbollah (not to mention most of their happy go lucky neighbors).

I haven’t looked over your video yet Red, as frankly I’m exhausted…I’ve been up continuously for 36 hours now with only a few brief naps on the floor of a computer room thats about 88 degrees. I’m going to crash soon so the prospects of me getting to it anytime soon are about nill. I will see what Finn has to say about it though, assuming he finds the time to slog through it. And in theory I may have the energy tomorrow (whenever ‘tomorrow’ is for me…I’m having trouble remember what today is. Not as young as I used to be).

-XT

[RedFury]

XT,

I’d much rather read what you have to say about it for on this mattter, as much as you may agree with (and defer to) Finn, he’s just waaay too rabid a pro-Israelite for me to give any weight to his screeds on this issue.

You, OTOH, although we disagree on probably 90% of our political views, I’ve seen retract and change your mind at least once – IOW, there’s still some hope left.

And I do mean left.

Trust you get your much needed rest.

[RedFury]

Oh and BTW, I do acknowledge the following:

Semantic dispute

Still, occupation remains just that, occupation. Thus a rose would smell as sweet by any other name"…nah, not really…finely defined as is:

oc·cu·pa·tion (ŏk’yə-pā’shən)*:

3-

a-Invasion, conquest, and control of a nation or territory by foreign armed forces.

b-The military government exercising control over an occupied nation or territory.

**The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2004, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. *