Israel shot 4800 shells at Gaza neighborhood in seven hours.

[fstarcstar]

The US and Israel should never make official war policy based off Geneva convention and UN "laws". In terms of history and common sense, your interests always outweigh the interests of your enemy in combat. I can't believe there's discussions about proportionality in war. If you shoot a rocket at my house you can guarantee ill be burn your house down and take your family with it. Reality folks, reality.

[exploited]

[uebermann]

[Spider]

[Homer]

[uebermann]

[exploited]

The idea that these laws and treaties "don't matter" because nobody listens to them is, in my mind, nothing more than the worst sort of defeatism. Humanity has made astounding progress in recent years. Violence and war are way, way down, and the number of democracies continues to grow. It is by sticking to our guns and demanding such progress that these gains have been accomplished - no successful movement ever began with someone saying "This is how it is and always will be." Even in terms of military tactics, the Western world has become far more civilized, and the more civilized it gets, the more successful we'll be.

Spider claims that the problem with 4G warfare is that we are pulling punches, which I find interesting, because he simultaneously claims that nobody listens to these laws. Which is it? He also claims that the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan would have happened anyways... which is true, there was bound to be some sort of resistance. However, that completely ignores the fact that they would have been much less violent and more manageable. When we first entered those countries, our chances of success were pretty good. Both countries were being ruthlessly suppressed by a small minority of the population, and had we established law and order right away, while respecting certain cultural taboos, there is an excellent chance we wouldn't have seen the sectarian warfare in Iraq, or the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Which isn't to say that everything would be perfect... just that it would be a whole hell of a lot better than having half of Iraq controlled by ISIS and half of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban. Brutality has a place in warfare, but if the goal is to leave a country with less enemies than before, it simply doesn't work - witness the Russian experience in Afghanistan, where brutality was official policy, not an exception to the rules.

Further, while I concede that proportionality is a humanitarian consideration, I adamantly disagree that it is irrational. There is nothing irrational about it. The future of warfare is small, asymmetrical, civil conflicts, not massive global wars between nation states. And so we need to develop new ways of waging war, which maximize the possibility of political settlements while minimizing the length of involvement. You cannot maximize the potential for political solutions while carpet bombing cities. In many ways, I feel as if Spider and others are behind the times when it comes to warfare - there has never been a time when political, economic and military interests must work together as much to be successful. Back in the day, putting cities to the sword might have worked, and it wasn't necessary to provide economic stability. In today's wars, it is absolutely necessary, because absent those things, you will inevitably fail at your mission, necessitating even more intervention in the future. In Israel's case, this is a deliberate strategy - the longer they an extend this conflict, the better, because every rocket that gets sent over the border allows them to demolish another hundred Palestinian homes.

As I pointed out to Ueber earlier, proportionality is by definition something to be determined by outside parties, not by Israel. And determining what is and is not proportional is a hard thing to do, in the same way that determining guilt or innocence in court is a hard thing to do. But it doesn't mean it is hard to understand, nor does it mean that Israel can just say everything is proportional because they faced a threat. Homer already pointed out that Israel could have handled those tunnels simply by closing one end of them, or by entering and clearing them starting in Israel. The response was "Well, Israel didn't do it that way, but Israel says it is necessary, so it is." It is like a guy murdering a person who just slapped him - sure, maybe they thought it was reasonable, but every other person who saw what happened disagrees. That consensus is what matters, not what Israel feels. So the proper response is to stop arming and funding the Israeli military, to boycott their products, to put political and diplomatic pressure on them to adhere to the Geneva Conventions, and finally, if necessary, to provide intelligence about Israeli military movements to Fatah, so they can defend themselves.

But that won't happen, as we all know. Why? Precisely because of the arguments being put forth here by Spider and Uebermann. The real goal of these arguments isn't to come to any sort of solution - it is so that they can shake their heads and go "Well, what can we do about it?" even as we give both parties billions of dollars to continue fighting.

[John Galt]

someone only pulls a punch because the law said so?

[exploited]

Is that a question or statement.

[Spider]