Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Expressed myself poorly

re: Expressed myself poorly
Tom Brosz — (archived)

I understand the point was that if the west loses its will to brutalize our perceived enemies, it could fall at the hands of those who have no such qualms about brutality.

That's close to what I'm getting at, but I'm not even talking about brutality. I'm talking about almost any military action at all by Western societies becoming impossible. Have you noticed that our military is being called on the carpet for military actions that would have been considered routine and morally acceptable even as recently as Vietnam, and certainly during WWII?

Somewhere there may be a case in WWII of an Allied commander refusing to bring artillery to bear on a village full of civilians that was also occupied by Nazi troops, but I've never heard of it.

Now, in Lebanon, Hezbollah forces based themselves in civilian areas from which they fired missiles. These missiles were not aimed at Israeli troop positions in Lebanon, but beyond, into towns and cities in Israel itself. Israel then bombarded these positions, an action that would have been unquestioned in every major war in our history, civilians or no civilians. And for this the Israelis were declared war criminals, treated no differently than if they had gone into villages with no enemies at all and put the citizens against the wall to be shot.

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