Comment by pdabbadabba

Comment by pdabbadabba 3 days ago

37 replies

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I have no doubt that innocent civilians have been injured. But it's also worth noting that there are thousands of Hezbollah members, so the number alone doesn't necessarily tell us much about the number of civilians injured. (Similar to the casualty figures that come out of Gaza.)

I hate the idea of any innocent civilian being injured. But it might also be instructive to consider the alternative: if Israel wanted to achieve similar results via a conventional war against Hezbollah, it seems virtually guaranteed that far more innocent people would have been injured and killed—not to mention the Israeli civilians on the other side, whose lives also matter.

random_upvoter 3 days ago

> if Israel wanted to achieve similar results via a conventional war against Hezbollah, it seems virtually guaranteed that far more innocent people would have been injured and killed

"It's OK that Israel causes excessive amounts of civilian casualties, because in the alternative scenario Israel would also cause excessive amounts of civilian casualties"

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  • pdabbadabba 3 days ago

    I don't find it very persuasive to simply assume that the casualties are "excessive." Whether they are actually excessive is really the whole issue. As of right now, there is no strong evidence that I'm aware of that the injuries from today's attack are "excessive" much less those of a different purely hypothetical attack.

    And even then: to judge whether casualties are excessive requires an understanding of the goal to be achieved, which is almost completely absent from this discussion.

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    • digging 3 days ago

      I think the problem many people have is that Israel's goals entirely revolve around killing people.

      That is: If your goal is to murder someone, and you accidentally kill an innocent bystander in committing that murder, the number of civilians killed is infinitely too high. The number of acceptable total deaths is 0.

      I understand this is idealistic. But it's the judgement many will choose to make. For the record, no I don't only think it's bad when Israel murders people.

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      • pdabbadabba 3 days ago

        I don’t understand. It seems clear enough to me that Israel’s goal is to prevent Hezbollah from continuing to launch rockets at Israeli towns in the north. Killing is a means to that end. One may disagree with that choice of means, but I don’t see how you can claim that “Israel’s goals entirely revolve around killing people.”

        That being said, you might think that killing is never an appropriate means of achieving anything. If so, fair enough. But I think that’s a tough position to maintain when you are actively under attack.

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      • raxxorraxor 2 days ago

        At some point you have to ignore these perspectives because they are wrong. Look into the founding of Hezbollah. It isn't a secret, their stated goals is to expulse Jews. It cannot get much more plain as that.

        The positions in this war are not equal.

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    • RIMR 3 days ago

      [flagged]

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      • pdabbadabba 3 days ago

        The right number? Zero. An acceptable number to help stop Hezbollah from routinely firing rockets at your northern towns and villages? That’s a harder question. Unfortunately, the hard question is the one that’s relevant.

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  • ineedasername 3 days ago

    Why isn't it better to cause fewer civilian casualties &/or those of lesser severity than a shooting fight or missile attack?[1] Given the situation has already degenerated to its current state where fighting is the status quo and all options lead to innocent casualties then minimizing those is the horrible "OK" option. Not okay in the sense of desirable, not okay in the sense that things should never have degenerate to this level to begin with, only okay as the less horrible option.

    [1] Videos show the explosions highly limited in their ability to cause injuries as bad as a bullet to anyone ever a foot or two away from the explosions, much less than I would expect from anything more conventional.

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  • energy123 3 days ago

    Israel isn't causing any civilian casualties in South Lebanon. Hezbollah declaring war on Israel by firing rockets onto civilian areas since the 8th of October caused them.

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  • plutokras 2 days ago

    People keep bringing up the same argument about dropping nukes on Japanese cities, and it seems like the world just accepted it.

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  • Beefin 2 days ago

    my family was evacuated due to incessant rocket fire in the golan heights, hezzbollah has been firing indiscriminately since 10/8 do you have any alternative?

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  • dmitrygr 3 days ago

    [flagged]

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    • snapcaster 3 days ago

      "Its war on terrorists" sure. by framing what's happening in that way you've already excused away most of the things people are upset about

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      • pdabbadabba 3 days ago

        I agree that the framing is tendentious (though not necessarily false). But I don't think much actually hinges on that. The point is still worth considering even if it's just a "war" rather than "war on terrorists." The linked article is a study on wars in general, not just wars "on terror."

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      • dmitrygr 3 days ago

        [flagged]

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        • squigz 3 days ago

          I doubt that's what GP meant, and I don't think one has to think either of those things to not buy into the "war on terrorism" rhetoric that is used to excuse all sorts of atrocities.

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  • beaglesss 3 days ago

    [flagged]

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    • pdabbadabba 3 days ago

      > Who cares what is right or wrong

      Kind of an odd thing to say in a conversation with a bunch of other people who clearly care what is right and wrong.

      > 400 years ago you'd have owned slaves and not think twice about it.

      An oversimplification, to say the least! This is only even a little bit true if we limit ourselves to the small number of nations with chattel slavery (but why would we do that?), and actually not even true of Americans, many of whom were opposed to slavery even 400 years ago.

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cpill 3 days ago

I guess the real advantage for Israel here is that they attack in a country they are not at war with without starting a war with that country.

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  • BurningFrog 3 days ago

    Israel is definitely at war with Hezbollah.

    Hezbollah is of course not a country (though they're a proxy for Iran), but they occupy parts of Lebanon, so you can't attack them without attacking Lebanon.

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whoitwas 2 days ago

Terrorism isn't okay. We should have that standard. Just as violence against in general isn't okay.

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