Comment by frabbit

Comment by frabbit 3 days ago

22 replies

View on Hacker News

That's a good summary of the dangers of normalizing the actions that previously were the domain of only terrorists. The world works because most countries and people rejected amoral results-based reasoning and considered such actions in the light of another dimension: morality. It's difficult to define, but there was some sort of consensus. How long those agreements, formal and simply normative, will last remains to be seen. I do not look forward to their further erosion.

tptacek 3 days ago

It does not make a whole lot of sense to distinguish the explosives packed into the warhead of an AGM-114 Hellfire missile from those of an explosive vest or a compromised pager. What distinguishes terrorism from military action is target selection, not weapons choice.

Reply View 8 replies
  • frabbit 3 days ago

    I cannot see any comment in the immediate sub-thread making a distinction between explosives per se?

    Certainly to me I don't see the difference between explosives supplied in a missile produced with US tax-subsidies to arms profiteers or explosives produced by someone else. Except that in the first case US voters have some control over the supply -- not much, but some.

    The GP comment is clearly talking about the lack of precision or targeting. Here you may have a point if we consider absolute quantities instead of some relative measurement: a US-taxpayer-supplied-with-profits-to-a-private-company Hellfire missile fired into a refugee camp full of women and children might kill 10 obviously-innocent people for 1 presumed-to-be-a-terrorist-without-any-sort-of-trial person; whereas a pager bomb exploding might blow up the we-dont-know-yet-anything-but-he-was-in-Hezbollah and his ten-year old daughter.

    If I were a moral simpleton I might argue that the Hellfire missile murders were worse than the pager murders.

    But what do I know? After all hundreds of years of protocols and treaties and norms about this sort of thing are probably just old and in need of being re-envisioned by some clever code jockey.

    Reply View 7 replies
    • tptacek 3 days ago

      Do you honestly believe that "protocols and treaties" established "hundreds of years" ago have any bearing on modern conflict? Do you have any arguments that would be persuasive to those of us who believe them to be more or less irrelevant since the Franco-Prussian War? I'm an American. We firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, then got up the next day and made breakfast. Pick another major combatant nationality anywhere on the globe, and I'll tell you a similar story.

      By the standards of modern warfare, what happened today was probably weirdly humane.

      Reply View 6 replies
      • beaglesss 3 days ago

        I wonder what modern humane outcome plays out to a tiny nation state surrounded by arabs they're engaged in these kind of hostilities with. It seems this balance depends on large imbalanced external support, which will be called into question more and more as the USA loses global grip.

        Reply View 0 replies
      • juliusdavies 3 days ago

        It was astonishingly humane especially considering how effective it was:

        1.) Communication network completely destroyed (anyone with a working pager in Lebanon has thrown it in the garbage).

        2.) Most targets, while severely injured and even blinded, are still alive - I'm sure their families prefer this to them being dead.

        3.) If you are an enemy of Israel, what can you even do now? You cannot assume your phones or your furniture or even your cat is safe. Any one of these things could detonate and kill or maim you at any time. And you can't trust anyone in your organization either.

        I think this attack coupled with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Ismail_Haniye... Haniyeh assassination (in the presumably safest of safe places for him) has re-established Israel and Mossad as absolutely and utterly dominant.

        I deplore zionism, but that doesn't change how humane and effective and incredibly precise this attack was. Probably its humane-ness was not particularly on purpose, and was more a side-effect of the constraints they were working with (hiding explosives in a small pager while still maintaining its correct operation), but that doesn't take away from how much better this is for all the casualties compared to, for example, Hamas casualties in Gaza.

        Reply View 1 reply
      • mongol 3 days ago

        The peace of Westfalia established state sovereignity. That is a cornerstone of international relations, and when it is breached it is usually condemned.

        Reply View 1 reply
nradov 3 days ago

Historically there has never been any such moral consensus in the Middle East. It's been a continuous series of wars, massacres, and terrorism going back millennia — since long before Hezbollah or the modern state of Israel even existed.

Reply View 12 replies
  • frabbit 3 days ago

    [flagged]

    Reply View 11 replies
    • tptacek 3 days ago

      Israel's neighbors are all invited to the Eurovision, and decline to participate because Israel is involved.

      Reply View 6 replies
      • frabbit 3 days ago

        In a comment by _alphanerd_ in this subthread he points out that problematic states such as Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Australia are in the Eurovision.

        Maybe Israel's neighbors object to that?

        Or maybe they can't find bad enough musicians to get an entry together and are afraid of losing?

        Reply View 5 replies
    • alephnerd 3 days ago

      > Israel is in the Eurovision

      So is Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia until 2022, Turkey until 2012, and weirdly enough Australia.

      Reply View 3 replies
      • frabbit 3 days ago

        Exactly. You don't see them blowing up ten year old girls. It's the power of love.

        Reply View 2 replies