Quote (bogie160 @ 13 May 2024 05:41)
Virtually the entire population of North Korea has lived under the rule of the Kim family without a single democratic election, and yet clearly if Kim Jong Un were to decide to invade South Korea tomorrow a lot of otherwise innocent North Koreans would have to die. It's impossible to prosecute a war without collateral damage. From a Hamas-apologist point of view, it was wrong to invade Germany at the tail end of WWII and a negotiated peace with the Nazi party was the appropriate answer. They should own that but they won't.
Of course some degree of collateral damage has to be accepted in war. But it's also obvious that the ratio of collateral damage to valid targets can't get infinitely high. Say we had gotten reliable intel in late 2001 that Osama is in Kabul - would it have been justified to drop a nuke on the entire city, killing hundreds of thousands to take out one man? Obviously not. Similar story in your example of a North Korean invasion. If the North invaded the South, it would be justified to crush their military and destroy their barracks, airfields and arms factories. But would it be justified to bomb villages to take out every last soldier of the KPA?
At the end of the day, it's a dicey trade-off between sparing civilian lives and achieving military goals. The key problem in the current situation in Gaza is that Israel has no buffer, the enemy is right at their doorstep and can - as Oct 7 showed - inflict significant damage even with the simplest of means. Nazi Germany was done and no longer posed an existential threat although several million staunch nazis got away. South Korea would be safe even if thousands of scattered KPA soldiers survive. Israel, by contrast, will not be safe if any sizable number of Hamas fighters survive.
Quote (Goomshill @ 13 May 2024 07:09)
Why should moral culpability enter the equation to begin with? If we judge the world on their beliefs and willingness to embrace terrorism or genocide, there are plenty more than just hamas and the palestinians. Most of the Arab world now aligned loosely with Israel because of their common Persian threat would still gladly throw a Jew down a well. It is incumbent upon Israel to minimize collateral damage and protect Palestinian lives no matter whether they are worthy or not, any noncombatants no matter if they are sworn blood enemies. When you conquer a place, you become responsible for it and its people, and I'd like to think the Knesset won't approve building pyramids of skulls like the mongol horde once did
Moral culpability is (imho) part of the equation because Israel is ultimately faced with a trade-off between lost Palestinian lives in the present and lost Israeli lives further down the line, when Hamas has rebuilt and launches another attack 5 or 10 years in the future. The more the civilian population of Gaza aligns with Hamas, the more this judgement call is shifted in favor of future Israeli lives at the expense of present Palestinian lives.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 13 2024 11:19am