1621

Sounds like a lot of hypothetical hogwash to me, shit like that just doesn’t happen.

1622

Look at how much hostility there is to Mexicans/Latinos in Arizona. That’s hostility to an “outside” cultural group moving into the area. And that’s hostility without an official pronouncement that Arizona is now the officially designated Latino cultural homeland and is no longer part of the United States.

1623

Sorry I didn’t get this and don’t want to post something wrong if I misunderstood. Can you clarify?

1624

I’m not sure how it’s related to the pro and anti-graph sides, but I presume the original cartoon is related to media coverage in Israel during the Gaza war.

While television screens around the world display grisly scenes from Gaza of blood-smeared hospital floors and critically wounded Palestinian children, Israelis are watching a very different war. Here, images from Gaza are relatively scarce, while the plight of Israelis injured or killed during the war is covered around the clock.

Of the 13 [Israelis killed], four were killed by the persistent rocket fire from Gaza that Israeli officials say prompted the war. But even rockets that cause no injuries – as is usually the case – get extensive play on television. Benziman said that Channel 10 has camera crews stationed across the south, chasing down the remains of every rocket and going live when they find them. With an average of 30 or more rockets landing daily, rocket-chasing is a fixture of the prime-time schedule.

“Every minor injury is emphasized,” said Arad Nir, foreign editor and anchor with Israel’s Channel 2, the country’s largest private broadcasting station. “Every incident that the soldiers are involved in is discussed at length.”

[S]tation executives here say, there is not much interest in documenting how Palestinians are coping amid Israel’s relentless bombardment.

An anchor at Channel 2 recently became the target of an online petition seeking her dismissal because her tone was considered overly sympathetic to the Palestinians. Nir said any additional coverage of the lives of Gazans “would just make people angry.”

1625

Yeah, I think making it about our disagreements about graphs is a way of adding some comic relief to a rather heavy thread.

1626

A key point here. When you lose the war, you don’t get to dictate the terms.

1627

The flip side is that if you won a war, and the country that you defeated offered to make peace with you, under the condition that they would claimed in perpetuity all the best land, the water resources, the strategic positions, and the places most important to us culturally, you would laugh in their face and tell them to go fuck themselves.

1628

True enough, and if you claimed the land by right of conquest and force of arms, you would also have to accept the consequences, including terrorist attacks on your civilian population. You either set your position based on force of arms or rule of law. If you’re basing your claims on force of arms, then don’t go crying when someone else uses the same rules of the jungle against you. If you take someone else’s land and you declare that you are going to hold it permanently you should expect permanent hostilities and a permanent Casus Belli against you.

Regardless, my main point was that Dr. Gonzo and Murbella’s “The US would have done so-and-so” in the same situation is a complete red herring. Yeah, the US might very well act as Israel does in the same situation (particularly under a Republican administration). But flip the situation around and place us in the Palestinian situation, and the US would probably act the same way as the Palestinian’s do. In any case, as we saw under the Bush administration, acting like the US would under stress is hardly a claim to high morality.

1629

No, but if the winner isn’t careful on the terms they dictate they can set the stage for the next war, just as the Treaty of Versailles set the stage for WW2, so has the Israeli’s insistence on permanently claiming parts of the West Bank set the stage for their current problems.

1630

It’s worth remembering that the Palestinians are currently occupied as a result of the 1967 war, which was started by Israel, citing Egypt’s blockade of their Red Sea port as justification.

1631

Wasn’t the war of 1967 more or less precipitated by skirmishes between Syria and Israel, then a massive mobilization of Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies along the Israeli border? I know Israel made a preemptive strike against Egypt, but I thought it was in reaction to these mobilizations along their border, not over a blockade.

I’m not entirely sure why it matters, though. If Israel wants these lands by right of conquest, these people need to be integrated into their country, along with voting rights, and I just don’t see that happening.

1632

There were some events leading up to the war. It had been very quiet for years after the Suez Crisis, and then the Syrians tried to build a dam on the Jordan that would have restricted Israeli water supplies. Israel blew it up. Following that were tit-for-tat exchanges, mostly involving the air forces, until Egypt blockaded the port of Eilat. And yes, strategically Israel probably started the war because of the build up of forces on its border, but that isn’t enough of a cause to start a war. They used the blockade of Eilat as their casus belli.

I think it made rational sense for Israel to react the way it did, but it’s a bit of a different situation to “Palestinians attacked Israel, lost and got what they deserve.”

1633

Nobody said such a thing actually. Your are referring to that one I suppose, which is spot on.

Also, it never matters who started the war.

It

Never

Fucking

Matters

1634

I’ll be sure to bring that up at the local VFW post* next Pearl Harbor day. They seem to be suffering under the illusion that the Japanese surprise attack was dishonorable. Also next time someone mentions how honorable US actions during WW2 were, I’ll be sure to mention that morally there is no difference between the aggressor and the defender and that it just doesn’t fucking matter that the Axis powers started the war.

  • For any non-US people unfamiliar with them, VFW = Veterans of Foreign Wars.
1635

Did the US give Grenada advance warning before invading?

1636

Anyone who thinks the winner takes all in this day and age needs to get their head checked. Same for aggressors not mattering.

1637

I am not sure if this is just an extreme case of apples v. oranges or some kind of weird non-sequitur.

1638

Claiming offense at a surprise attack is ridiculous, that’s what.

1639

So you think it is unhonorable when soldiers of one nation are killing soldiers of a hostile nation by attacking a military harbor by surprise?

I think, that is a perfectly valid tactic.

You know what’s dishonorable? Throwing A-Bombs at cities, murdering (see the difference?) hundreds of thousands of children, women, grandmas, grandpas, civilians within moments.

There are honorable US actions during WWII?

Never heard of those, maybe you can name a couple of examples?

During World War II, some United States military personnel mutilated dead Japanese service personnel in the Pacific theater of operations. The mutilation of Japanese service personnel included the taking of body parts as “war souvenirs” and “war trophies”. Teeth and skulls were the most commonly taken “trophies”, although other body parts were also collected.

American soldiers in the Pacific often deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered.

Nice. haven’t wee seen the same in Korea and Vietnam.

A tradition maybe?

In 1963, the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the subject of a judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State.[60] The District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found that “the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war.”[61] Francisco Gómez points out in an article published in the International Review of the Red Cross that, with respect to the “anti-city” or “blitz” strategy, that “in examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property.” [62] The possibility that attacks like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings could be considered war crimes is one of the reasons given by John R. Bolton (Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (2001–2005) and U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2005)) for the United States not agreeing to be bound by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.[63]
War is never honorable and the USA are no exception to that rule.

The sooner you learn about this very truth, the sooner will you stop burning the world.

US soldiers are as human (or rather inhuman) as any other soldier out there.

Why would a civilized human being want to kill other human beings?

Insanity?

1640

What the hell are you on about?