[lbo-talk] We're all Hezbollah...

www.leninology. blogspot.com leninology at hotmail.com
Tue Jul 25 15:59:23 PDT 2006


Bryan wrote:> Take Juan Cole's argument about this issue:> > "Some readers have asked why I characterize Hizbullah's rocket launches> as war crimes. It is because the Geneva Convention requires that in war> you have to aim at enemy combatants. You can't deliberately target> civilians, and you can't endanger civilians unnecessarily. The Hizbullah> rockets have poor targeting, and so just firing them endangers> civilians. The rockets themselves have apparently killed almost no> Israeli troops, and almost all their victims have been innocent> civilians, like that poor man who was just driving along in or near> Haifa. That is, the Hizbullah rockets have been fired indiscriminately> (the only way they can be fired) and mainly hit civilian targets, which> a prudent person could foresee. Bingo. War crime.

I would expect Cole, whom I think is generally brilliant, to take this position. I take the view that it's a bad strategy and nothing will come of it. On that, if I'm wrong, then I take the view that it is defending civilians in Lebanon. I really don't think, however, that attacking civilian targets is the way for any resistance movement to proceed and I am encouraged by the repeated reports that the Iraqi resistance by and large does not target civilians.
> btw...Fisk also says that the the original capture of the soldiers was a> cross border infiltration: "The original border crossing, the capture of> the two soldiers..."
I know, and Fisk has been as critical of Hezbollah as anyone. I have read a number of reports contradicting this claim, and to be honest I am so cynical about the Israeli PR machine that I can't begin to take the latter reports at face value. I am a bit concerned that people keep saying that "Hezbollah should have expected this". This is to normalise what Israel has done. Hezbollah should *not* have expected this (and they claim they didn't, which I think is in fact highly plausible). No one should have.

Anyway, I don't want to keep banging on sterile debates when we are unlikely to coalesce on this specific issue. _________________________________________________________________ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060725/c8687914/attachment.htm>



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