What Am I Missing? - Israel and Hamas (Palestinians)

[Ronin13]

Thanks for the shot across the bow. I appreciate the education on WW2 history too. I wonder what the Japanese perspective would have been...

Your statement was "The perspective of the world is that killing innocents to gain ground on a political means is wrong." Are we now qualifying that with "unless it probably save more lives than we take"?


Well the Japanese perspective really doesn't matter because I'm sure they'd say it wasn't right, but would see the reason in the end if they actually thought about it. It ended a war that could have gone on for many more years, so anyone's logical perspective would be that it did more harm than good. It's a shame that innocents had to die, but if you look at the actual facts Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to the Japanese war machine in the same regard that Henry Ford was to the auto industry... doing what we did, innocent casualties aside (although the entire country was being groomed to kill as many American invaders as possible if we entered the mainland) would have brought the Japanese war industry to it's knees, so the target wasn't civilians, it was both their military industry and their psyche which worked pretty well because they signed an unconditional surrender- then we went in and rebuilt their nation! How's that for integrity?

Who are we talking about? Are we back to Israel/Palestine or is this a terrorism in general kind of discussion?

I was speaking on Israel/Palestine, since you know, Jewish and Christian holy sites in the region are, as I said, older than Islam as a belief, not just the Islamic holy sites.


BINGO. The US also has alliances with Arab countries and we require their cooperation to maintain the status quo. Isolating ourselves from them over Israel would not be in our interests.

I never said we didn't have Arab allies- in fact, we've been friends with the Kingdom of Saud since the early 1930s. The bare bone facts are, terrorism and freedom fighting (and American Revolutionary Patriotism) are separate things. I saw in another post you're in Afghanistan, so you of all people know who the real enemy is, and you know it's wrong to say that terrorists have any "just" means to achieving their unjust ends.

[Mick-Boy]

Well the Japanese perspective really doesn't matter because I'm sure they'd say it wasn't right, but would see the reason in the end if they actually thought about it. It ended a war that could have gone on for many more years, so anyone's logical perspective would be that it did more harm than good. It's a shame that innocents had to die, but if you look at the actual facts Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to the Japanese war machine in the same regard that Henry Ford was to the auto industry... doing what we did, innocent casualties aside (although the entire country was being groomed to kill as many American invaders as possible if we entered the mainland) would have brought the Japanese war industry to it's knees, so the target wasn't civilians, it was both their military industry and their psyche which worked pretty well because they signed an unconditional surrender- then we went in and rebuilt their nation! How's that for integrity?

The Japanese perspective doesn't matter? Interesting. Is that because we were saving American (and Japanese lives) and we won?

How does Dresden fit in here?

I was speaking on Israel/Palestine, since you know, Jewish and Christian holy sites in the region are, as I said, older than Islam as a belief, not just the Islamic holy sites.

Ah. You threw me when you included AQ since they have nothing to do with Israel/Palestine. So your perspective is that having an older claim gives the right to take and hold land?

I never said we didn't have Arab allies- in fact, we've been friends with the Kingdom of Saud since the early 1930s. The bare bone facts are, terrorism and freedom fighting (and American Revolutionary Patriotism) are separate things.

Again, this depends on your perspective. Would you consider the Haganah to be a terrorist organization? What about the Lehi or the Irgun?

I'd be willing to be Israelis consider them freedom fighters but their tactics sure sound like tactics of a terrorist organization.

I saw in another post you're in Afghanistan, so you of all people know who the real enemy is, and you know it's wrong to say that terrorists have any "just" means to achieving their unjust ends.

I see we're back to a general discussion of terrorism now. OK.

On the contrary. I would say that most terrorists are using unjust means to achieve what they view as just ends.

Underestimating these people's belief in the inherent righteousness of their cause is a very, very foolish mistake.

To quote a man I like to read;
"So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself."

Understanding perspective is key. Failure to do so is ignorant and dangerous when lives are on the line.