<html> <head> <style> P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body { FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma } </style> </head> <body>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. <hr />Be one of the first to try <a href='http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d' target='_new'>Windows Live Mail.</a></body> </html>