Israeli airstrike kills a top Hamas leader

reply to post by jam321

---

---
Pretty-good question and I feel simply-simple. Don't all men defend their families at all costs? Death is for us under extreme circumstances, not our Children.

reply to post by alyosha1981

---

No I had not heard. I don't go to fox news regulery.
Am sure I would have come across it at some point though.

reply to post by dooper

---

I don't know dooper that seems like a pretty barbaric theory to me I am not discrediting the means for eliminating targets of oppertunity though I just think your theory needs "tweaked" abit at least to the extant to factor collateral damages as well as civillian or "non-combatant" factors.

[edit on 2-1-2009 by alyosha1981]

reply to post by alyosha1981

---

alyosha, I swear I don't mean to sound harsh with that principle. Unfortunately, this is a very basic principle of warfare that haven't changed since time began.

"Those things which your enemy perceives you to hold valuable, and in turn threaten to either harm or withhold, must be eliminated that you may destroy your enemies in turn without hesitation. Family, finance, peace, and even the comfort of habit are weaknesses your enemy can leverage against you to your defeat. Use his weaknesses to his defeat." Michael Riggs

To be most merciful, one must be most ruthless. To place political or moral considerations into the equation during conflict is to lose. One mistake that is a very recent consideration is the primary concern with collateral damage.

This concern has diluted the effectiveness of warfare. So rather than a war being the bloody excess it is designed to be, by taking in ancillary considerations such as civilian deaths, conflicts go on and continue without resolution. No resolution means that both sides, over time will increase the suffering by both parties, as well as increase the total deaths.

Thus, one must be most ruthless up front, completely break the will of the foe, destroy everything they hold valuable, completely break their hearts, and the war is over. Done. Finished.

To drag out a conflict is the real sin.

reply to post by dooper

---

I believe that type of thinking to be antiquated, in that when you must take a life in combat you do it as if yours is on the line but to knowingly kill 18 people to get to one man? If the U.S were to nuke Afganistan because they "thought" Osama Bin Ladden was hiding somewhere in the country, would that be right? remember all things considdered, is the weight of one life lost less then the weight of many lives lost, life is life , and I do understand your logic I just think it needs to be enlightened by the fact that yes war is hell but a war that is fought by a force that carefully weighs it's options before striking will be a war followed by many more survivors.

reply to post by alyosha1981

---

Had I found Osama bin Laden hiding behind Mother Theresa, I'd have blown a hole right through her, and not hesitated.

There are no innocent civilians in a conflict. There are, however, enemy enablers.

When you war, either war all-out, or stay home. Otherwise, you'll just spend blivets of blood and millions of dollars to reach - right where you started from.

War is two sides killing each other until one side cannot kill any further or is unwilling to be killed any further. At that moment, when that number is reached, whatever it is, then the fighting will stop.

There never should have been a 6-day War, nor a 100-hour War. Clever names for unfinished business.

"So the most important thing in a miltary operation is victory, not persistence." Sun Tzu

George Patton repeated the words of Alexander when he said, "There is only one tactical principle that is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the greatest amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time."

And I would add, "with the greatest efficiency."

By wiping out Tyre, Alexander was able to offer generous terms to other cities he approached, and many thousands of lives were saved. Ruthless one, single time. No one else wanted a dose of that.

So whether one likes the realities of war, there are certain principles that if followed, on the surface seem barbaric, but the net result is the minimization of destruction and saving lives.

Counterintuitive, to be sure.

This unfortunatly is true! In conflict you ca not worry about the civilans as anyone of them you turn your back on is capable of stabbing you in the back. To make matters worse it just happens to be muslims these days that send their wife and kids to do the suicide tatic. If they cared about their families why would they do this?

Another sad fact is if you dad or other family member was just killed would you not in fact try in some way to retaliate? War sucks plain and simple and with our society supposadly being advanced and all for some reason still does it, so unless you can stop it there is no point in bashing them for defending themselves.

If these people cared about their lives they would not have elected a terrorist party or allowed weapons to be smuggled into their country instead of food. It's easy for you or myself to sit on the other side of the world and be judgmental on your computer safe in your home in a place that's not being bombed, but if it was you being shot at with missles you would react the same way and nothing you can spew out on here would change my mind in that. Instead of griping about some other country and their repeated attrocities they choose to do, people need to figure out how to fix their own so that shamless crap like this will stop, until that happens welcome to reality.

reply to post by Aleksander

---

As far as the father's sending their children on suicide missions goes , it's not in the best intrest to "kill the lot of them" because they do such things, the origional point I was trying to make clear is that you don't bomb an apartment building full of people ( of which all cannot be verified as ememy soldiers) to kill one man while calling the other side terrorists, and as far as the evolution of war goes we at present have knowledge of limiting civillian casusalites, however some countries don't choose to utilize this knowledge, Israel being one.

And I am aware of the "reality" of things and the reality of this is Israel is using terrorist tactis to slowly defeat an enemy they are more then capable of defeating in a ground campagin with less innocent lives lost.

This isn't the first time that Isarel has killed children, obviously they don't care,

reply to post by alyosha1981

---

I would say the reality is you do not know that for sure as far as you know sending in the ground troops would just be Iraq all over again as in there is a good chance that even the civilans would turn attacker or be a human shield. How many of these innocent civilians do you think have gone out of their way to stop this thing and hand over the targeted parties? I get your point but alas it's a war and in war there are no innocents just opposite sides of a conflict that would not be happening if they would just try to get along with one another.

The fact is they are knowingly harboring these targets knowing at any time their going to get bombed or attacked in some way. Why do they do this? Maybe out of love for their family or fear, either way they are and they got bombed. Fact is you just don't know which tactic would cause less death as most terrorist use civilians as human shields. Yah it's a sad thing to kill so many women and children but as previous posted their enablers and a ground assault would have the potential of being worse.

Say what you will but the fact and reality is you have no idea which strategy would cause less death. Iraq would be a good example of that.

reply to post by Aleksander

---

True, of course I don't know which tactic would yeild the most combatant kills and least civillian kills, I'm not a battlefield analyst and certainly would not consider myself a military expert, I do know being a soldier once, that before any airstrike/ fire mission was called that the target had to verified so as to not do exactly this.

reply to post by alyosha1981

---

There are a lot of pro-israeli propagandists on this site.

It is good that so many are showing there true faces, thanks to threads like yours.


To Dooper,

What will you do when martial law is declared in your own country?
What will you do if they come for your guns?

First of all I am not attempting to spread any type of propaganda my friend, I am simply disagreeing with the way Israel went about killing this piticular target. i do however accuse them of employing terrorist tactics as part of this campagin and will continue to do so.

reply to post by alyosha1981

---

again how do you know that this wasn't done first? How do you know for sure they didn't go through all the options and felt this was the best way to cause the least amount of casualities, keep in mind that their going to be worried about themselves more then the enemy? That being said how do you know this was the only option that was going to cause the least amount of damage to both sides? Again you just don't know cause your not there just like I am not there it just seems silly to come on here and condem someone for their actions and not know all the details.

It just seems like all ya seem to care about is getting the righteous point across to make yourself feel better and slam some people while your at it but you are being one sided as both sides are guilty. I am not trying to attack you personaly all this is is pure speculation on my part which has no relevence on anything and am just trying to figure out why Isreal takes all the blame and Hamas gets none?. Both sides can easily be accused of wrong doing but the so far most of the posts on ATS seem to be one sided and blame Isreal for everything thing...true they are not saints but neither is opposition.

For all you or I know this is the best option they had all we can do is speculate. And your article said both sides are guilty for using kids as cannon fodder so I am not sure how that is relevent here just another article that includes Isreal in human rights blunders but also accuses palestine as well. I am not saying what their doing is right but from what I've read on here and the net as well as one sided media, both sides are to blame and one of them just didn't want to take it anymore. War is stupid but it appears to be in our nature.


On a side note you do make some pretty good arguments.

Ya no kidding!! I think its great that they finally got one.

Now..how many more innocents will get killed for the next 1 they need to take out?



Cheers!!!!

reply to post by Aleksander

---

Thank you for your thoughts I do appreciate them, the first thing I will say is that I have always taken the stance that both sides are wrong, I will add that I am not attempting to " armchair quaterback" either I am simply commenting on the events in this ongoing conflict that I feel are relavant. Is their blood on the hands of the Hamas leaders you betcha! just as there is blood on the hands of the Israeli leaders. If any point is to taken from my posts it's that I don't agree with all of the killing, is that going to make it stop? no but I would bet that if I was one of those innocent people hiding in a closet whenever I heard a plane, that I would be somewhat comforted to know that people worldwide are including me an others in their prayers.