Goldstone is wrong, God bless him
I wish he weren't But he is.
What happened in Gaza and in Siderot was not a War Crime. It was war. There are no war criminals in the IDF. Or in Hamas.Or flying the Enola Gay. Or ordering GIs in 1944 "take these prisoners back the HQ (10 miles away) and be back in 5 minutes."
Just warriors.
In wars, warriors do things like dispatching a peace mission while the fleet's en route to Pearl Harbor, Or saturation bombing of Coventry or Dresden. Or dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima ; firing rockets at Siderot ; bombing a UN school filled with Gaza civilians.If it kills any one on the other side , it's not a War Crime. It's war.
And that all too definitely includes killing civilians-what else were Bomber Harris and Curtis Lemay doing in 1944.
If not absolutely in all wars at all times, in so many you might as well say all, military leaders have believed, correctly,that killing civilians is probably the most effective strategy, And certainly the one that best spares its own citizens. Denying that is Cant. Or invincible ignorence..
As Prince Andre argued (and Sherman practiced) ensuring the current war inflicts grievous harm on civilians is the best way to lengthen the interval before a new generation learns for itself the same old lessorn that War is Hell.
Killing civilians only becomes a War Crime when it decreases the chance of winning like Eichman commandering Hungarian rail roads to transport Jews to the Camps.. Not when Hitler, or Roosevelt or Stalin or Arafat or Golda Meir killed any of the enemy, civilian or military. Preferably as horribly as possible. That was just War.
Nonsense and morally monstrous. Your facile argument that the only war crimes that Nazis committed were the extermination of Jews is really horrendous. I know you are trying to make a general point but this is intellecually and morally bankrupt. Your argument ends in nothing is a war crime and goes beyond war as well.
Sherman made war hell; he certainly did not condone in any sense killing civilians (at least not in the Civil War). He was quite the criminal in his treatment of native Americans as were the complicit politicians who adopted extermination policies.
War crimes are clearly difficult to define and to codify but saying as you do that we cannot condemn inhuman barbarous behavior is shameful.
September 18, 2009 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously I have a more pessimistic view of human nature. I understand that you and Goldstone and many others believe that many people are capable of behaving morally when it's against their interests.I believe the number of people of whom that is true is far less than a majority..
And I fully understand why you consider my view morally bankrupt. It's not that I am totally pessimistic about the possibility of individuals behaving morally. Certainly some do. Goldstone for one.
But I am totally pessimistic about the possibility that a majority of the citizens of any country is ever capable of honesty with respect to the actions of their country's enemies.
really translates into but of course it's never wrong.Or at least into if we're wrong , the other guys are wronger.The Nazis weren't commited to the extermination of the Jews, the Germans were. I spent an afternoon walking through the an almost deserted museum at Dachau, in particular examining the yellowing photos of emaciated prisoners on their way to a day's work in the field. Being marched down the Hauptstrasse past house wives chatting in front of a bakery.
Everybody knew. OK?
It's unnecessary to angst over how could the Germans do it ?. Any country could do it. Because that's what countries do.On Kristalnacht or at Abu Ghraib. Or Bagram.
September 18, 2009 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink