Quote:

posted by Jack, the Little Death:

Israel launches a missile at an apartment building, killing civilians (including children) and one terrorist leader. Was it worth it?

Knowing only what we know right now, I'd have to say it wasn't, just like I'd say it isn't worth it to drop bombs on little girls in Afghanistan (especially considering we have yet to kill a single terrorist leader that we're aware of).



The terrorist Hammas leader killed was indisputably involved in countless previous suicide bombings, and was in the process of orchestrating even more suicide bombings. I think he definitely had to die, from the Israeli viewpoint.
But they could have picked him off anywhere. Israeli helicopters use very precise missiles with relatively low explosive force, that are frequently used to target Palestinian soldiers in cars while driving, and often kill them on an open street with very little if any "collateral damage" to buildings and people on the street, unless someone happens to walk close to the targeted car at the moment of impact.

My point being: Israel could have targeted this Hammas leader anywhere. Even Hammas was rumored to have been on the brink of negotiating an end to the suicide bombings.
That is, before this building was destroyed, killing the Hammas leader, 9 Palestinian children, and injuring 100 or so other civilians. The assasination was personally approved by President Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Defense Minister. They KNEW the assassination and widespread damage (called a "massacre" by Palestinians) would put a halt to the negotiations, and it's believed that's what Israel actually wanted. Israel's present hardline doesn't believe in negotiation with Palestine, and if they DID negotiate with Palestine, the radical conservative powerbase who elected him would call for Sharon's resignation for betraying what they elected him to do.
This is exactly what happened to Netanyahu in 1998, when Netanyahu negotiated with the PLO, and his powerbase abandoned him, screaming for his resignation.

And that loss of support resulted in Yehud Barak being elected, who pursued negotiation again. And when the relentless suicide bombings continued, Israeli people again got scared and elected Ariel Sharon, who is about the most hardline conservative militarist that Israel could have elected.

Sharon's government doesn't trust Palestinians to keep any promises made in negotiations. They believe the only way to stop the terrorism is to decisively neutralize them in an all-out war. And it's believed this messy assassination was deliberately done to undermine the peace process and continue that policy.

Certainly, Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 would support the contention that Palestine will not honor a peace agreement. Instead of respecting Israel's peaceful withdrawal, Palestinians saw this as a sign of weakness on Israel's part, and began the current ongoing campaign of suicide bombings and violence to force Israel to give them what they want.

Much of the language Palestinians use toward Israel is also used against the United States. If we send in peacekeeping forces to stop slaughter and establish peace and stability, we're labelled as tyrants. If we withdraw troops from any Muslim area (such as Somalia, or 1983 Beirut, similar to Israel withdrawing from southern Lebanon), we are labelled as cowards on the run, and that just emboldens terrorists (whether they are Hammas, Islamic Jihad, PLO or Al Qaida) to bolder acts of destruction and violence.

So the current Israeli government seems to believe that, despite the bloodshed, they are pursuing the only policy that will bring long-term peace to Israel.
And perhaps they're right.

* * *

Regarding the other issue about the war in Afghanistan:
From the news I've read and watched, most Afghans seem to welcome the U.S. forces, and recognize that U.S. involvement is Afghanistan's last/best hope for a stable centralized government and lasting peace, after 20 years and more of Afghan wars and ethnic internal fighting.

And I hasten to add that a number of deaths in Afghanistan have not only been Afghan civilian deaths, but also included U.S. and Canadian soldiers killed in similar friendly fire incidents.
Accidents of war are just that, accidents, not to be confused with senseless slaughter.

I don't buy into the idea that we shouldn't go to war if it means the death of even one innocent person.
That's a good ideal, but it's just not realistic. By that standard no war is justifiable. Using that standard, the U.S. never would have fought in World War II, Germany would have won, the entire population of European Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and others deemed by Nazis as racial inferiors, numbering well into the hundreds of millions, would have been exterminated. And we'd be having this online conversation in German.
Innocent deaths are, regrettably, the price of war. Sometimes a necessary price, to save millions of other lives.