Saturday, November 3, 2007

Waging War and Killing Innocents

It appears not all of my readership agrees with me that Israel was too careless with Lebanese lives in last year's war. Since I'm not coming to the discussion as a bleeding heart pacifist or some such, I can see the sense of their objections; however, precisely because my position is that the waging of war is NOT the worst thing that can happen, and Israel will unfortunately need to continue at war for quite some time, we need to adhere to the highest practicable standards. Last year, we didn't. Our standards were much higher than those of our enemies, of course, but that is very feeble praise.

Martin Kettle at the Guardian finds himself participating in the English version of the same discussion. Many of his readers take him to task for daring to recognize that the subject is a thorny one, with no easy answers.

1 comment:

Lydia McGrew said...

"It appears not all of my readership agrees with me that Israel was too careless with Lebanese lives in last year's war."

Actually, I consider _you_ a much more reliable source on that question than HRW. :-)