the USA, Israel, and national interest

iatee, many Israelis are religious extremists too, but they don't blow themselves up. Have you ever wondered why?

Tracer, I think (and this /is/ Kantian influenced) that some actions are depraved no matter what the extenuating circumstances. It's never cool to intentionally, consciously, and willfully kill a child. No matter what the circumstances. Ever.

cause they realize that tanks and bombs are more efficient?

Because their religious beliefs say that suicide under any circumstances is a sin? And Muslim doctrine does not say the same?

Muslims invented martyrdom, that's a fact

Mind you, I don't think Jewish religious extremists or Christian extremists are good and Muslim extremists are bad. Fuck all religious extremists. (Again, no matter the circumstances.)

I didn't say they invented it? Wtf dude?

I didn't say you said it

It's never cool to intentionally, consciously, and willfully kill a child. No matter what the circumstances. Ever.

Do you think I'm arguing this??

Yes, I think you're trying to excuse Hamas murder of children (either Israeli children, or their own children by negligence) by citing their circumstances and desperation.

Also, martyrdom is dying for your beliefs. Not suicide bombing.

Many xposts

I would say the argument that Israel uses, which amounts to it refusing to take moral responsibility for its actions (and which Mordy has echoed here), is a clear example of "unconsciousness and thoughtlessness" leading to "depravity".

If you have the guts to say we are killing these children and it's worth it because it will secure Israel that's one thing, but if you say these are regrettable and unintended consequences of our other, more justifiable, actions, then it becomes a much easier argument to make. And because it's easier to think that way, evil actions happen.

Jamie, you're not addressing the argument I'm making in any substantive way. I said that we distinguish between murder and manslaughter. We understand there are differences in intention, in motive. That these things are important. We code our legal statutes to reflect this. I don't see how this is a misleading case to make.

I'm really not sure what the difference is, except "we are killing these children and it's worth it" probably doesn't sound so great on CNN

The difference is that Israel doesn't set out to kill children. If they could adjust their plans to not kill children, but still accomplish protecting their old children, they would. If I found out that an Israeli leader said that we SHOULD kill their children as retribution, and not as accident, then yes, I'd say he's evil. But I can distinguish between the two people.

their own* children

We could try some pathos arguments on each other, but it seems to me the logos really ends here. I think we can distinguish between the two, and you don't. I understand your position, I even sympathize with it. I don't agree with it though. If you'd like, I can try to better explain my position, but I think I've tried that already. I'm not sure where else this can go...

To Tracer: people use the tactics available to them. If you lined up in uniform and took on Israel you would die, quickly. If as a state you take on Israel, you will lose. Hence non-state actors emerge, and use non-traditional tactics. People call them "weapons of the weak". It's completely predictable and it has little to do with religious fundamentalism, as the same or similar tactics have been adopted in other contexts.

None of this makes it right, though, does it? Blowing yourself up on a bus full of ordinary people is plain wrong.

I suppose I'm just not very interested in the psychology of the individuals.

This could get circular, but it's not an accident if you KNOW it's going to happen.

posts that sum up threads

xpost to Mordy - I did say it could get circular, so I will leave it there.

xpost

Is killing children worse than killing other human beings?

That seems to be the consensus here

but only when israelis do it

They are the ultimate "non-combatants" I suppose

^^^^^ hahaha right

Some adults are non-combatants

Some children are combatants, and / or have strong political beliefs or passions

Don't even know why I'm spelling this out, but to: the pinefox, not necessarily. But thematically (and literarily) children are symbols for pure innocence. Obv, caveats apply: not all children are innocent, not all adults have guilt. It's just shorthand - a stand-in. I assume this is obvious?

I mean, do we need to start deconstructing all rhetorical devices we use when we make arguments? I assume we have a common language here.

No, it's not obvious at all, to me. I thought 'killing children' was meant literally. If it's being used as a rhetorical device to suggest an attack on pure innocence, then I think that's unwise and unhelpful.

Yeah killing kids is worse than killing other human beings. I'm gonna regret getting involved here but....

Regardless of whether or not it's being used as a shield - which, apparently, it wasn't - you don't bomb a school. Ever.

Dude, you're being ridiculous. XP

It's not a symbol to suggest pure innocence as some platonic form. It's a symbol to suggest those who are innocent. Jesus.

(Jesus as expletive, not Jesus as someone who is pure innocence.)

I have a friend who's first year IDF, who's back in Israel and in Gaza right now. A week ago I asked him what the worst thing he'd been through was, and he said when a Palestinian kid pulled a toy gun on him, and he had to make the split second decision whether to shoot or not. Would be easier in a world where kids were always were non-combatants.

minus one 'were'

xpost: I don't get that, and don't think - especially on such an obviously contentious thread - you should assume that everyone shares your views or that your assumptions or 'rhetorical devices' or symbols are universally accepted and beyond question.

Sure, killing children sounds bad. Killing adults sounds bad also. Maybe it depends which adults. Maybe not.

Using children as a 'symbol' in discussions like this is unwise and unnecessary, I think, because they're not a symbol but are actually, empirically involved (as targets, fighters or whatever). It makes more sense to discuss them in those concrete terms than to view them as a rhetorical device to signify something else.

I'm not going to debate that here, pinefox, either way. If you want to discuss whether killing children is more or less wrong than killing an adult, I think you should start a new thread for it.

Killing people in general seems very bad, unless maybe they're bad people. But lots of people think that even killing bad people is wrong, and they could be right about that.

FWIW, I regret saying children. I just said "people" earlier, and should have stuck to that, but it's hard not to use emotive language, isn't it (and I think to most people, the fact that it is children dying does make it worse, whether that is right or not)? And there are specific actual children who are dead.

Would be easier in a world where kids were always were non-combatants.

Yeah, but most of the time they are. Most of the time kids, up to a certain age, make very few decisions for themselves and are, by and large, not responsible for where they are at any given time. Kids don't choose to go to school, they are taken there and if it was up to most of them they probably wouldn't go.Would be easier in a world where kids were always were non-combatants.

Yeah, but most of the time they are. Most of the time kids, up to a certain age, make very few decisions for themselves and are, by and large, not responsible for where they are at any given time. Kids don't choose to go to school, they are taken there and if it was up to most of them they probably wouldn't go because when kids do make decisions they are often not fully informed or wholly rational.

The above example is fucked up but even then you do what you can to avoid killing the child.

To Tracer: people use the tactics available to them. If you lined up in uniform and took on Israel you would die, quickly. If as a state you take on Israel, you will lose. Hence non-state actors emerge, and use non-traditional tactics. People call them "weapons of the weak". It's completely predictable and it has little to do with religious fundamentalism, as the same or similar tactics have been adopted in other contexts.

But this isn't exactly right -- not every desperate, oppressed people resorts to the same measures. Suicide bombing is certainly not something you find in most places in the world and it DOES have something to do with a particular kind of religious fundamentalism. The onetime Japanese version of it may not have been religious, but it was highly ideological and in fact seemed to have little to do with desperation.

and methamphetamines

Suicide bombing originated in Sri Lanka and had nothing to do with any kind of religious fundamentalism

xtreme sport?

tamil version of punk'd

This is starting to remind me of Nabisco's posts way upthread (which I criticized), where he talked about the need for symbolic representations of evil on the "other side" in order to justify the potentially troubling consequences of one's own actions.

Individuals can be "depraved", and so can governments. But it's a dangerous word to throw around, because one's actions in the face of true depravity (something like true evil) need not be held to the same standard as one's actions in the face of a morally comprehensible opponent. What we do to defeat the depraved need not conform to the standards that might govern us under more ordinary circumstances. As a result, accusations of depravity can become devices of moral and/or military convenience. The U.S. has struggled with this kind of thinking in its current "War On Terror".

By claiming that Hamas intentionally endangers Palestinian children in order to exploit their corpses when they die, we are making a at least two sub-assertions:
1) That this is not merely something that has happened, but a fair characterization of Hamas policy.
2) That we understand and have fairly characterized everyone's motives and behaviors in whatever did actually happen.

I'm not willing to grant either sub-assertion. I'm simply not willing to grant that Hamas, as policy, intentionally and directly murders Palestinian children in order to achieve its aims. I will grant that agents of Hamas have killed children. As have IDF soldiers. As have American soldiers and military contractors. I'm not trying to say that Hamas is "just like" the Israeli government, but rather the statement that HAMAS = TOTAL DEPRAVITY seem based on a bunch of shaky, self-justifying assumptions.

Also a lot of what Jeff Goldberg says in that article actually has to do with the moving of corpses for media purposes rather than actually putting anyone in harms way -- not the most noble practice but hardly on the level of using human shields.

mordy pinefox is making a pretty important point and its unfair of you to dismiss him out of hand like that