Strykers Part II

[Woodey]

LOL, hoist on my own petard. Aye all else is fluff but fluff is what lets you live with yourself afterwards. It is the stuff you fill your mattress with so you can sleep at night.

The fluff is what makes civilization and it is what is traded off in dribs and drabs to win a war, any and every war. The quicker one can win the war with the least loss of fluff the better.

If a Stryker unit goes in and takes casualties then we loose a little “fluff”. If we send in the heavies and call in the artillery or air on a mosque or school that is being used as a fire base we loose “fluff”. My point is that the longer the fighting goes on the more “fluff” we loose. A shorter sharper conflict is much less damaging to both sides in the end

The unfortunate part of this is that a significant number of the other side has no fluff. Those who send out the suicide bombers want power and prestige and those who go to die just want their 100 virgins. (A sad thought that they just want 100 pleasure slaves as their ultimate goal.

And they don’t seem to understand that if we run out of fluff then millions will die. Don’t think the world has changed that much in the last 60 years.

[Molloy]

^It's no surprise that Woodey lives in Phoenix.

[Woodey]

Molloy, I don't get the "no surprise" comment. Could you extrapolate?

[Molloy]

A silly dig, nothing more.

[Woodey]

Ah, no worries. If it refers to the wild west and cowboys you would be sadly mistaken. I think one would find more Californians here than people actually born and raised here. LOL

[JonS]

Originally posted by dan/california:

http://www.slate.com/id/2172636/

Since we're rapidly arcing off on tangents anyway ...

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/milbloggers?currentPage=all

[pamak1970]

On "war crimes", sorry that is poppycock. If Hezbollah used coercion to keep civilians in a combat area then yes that would be a war crime. But simply targeting enemy forces in a populated area is not, especially if warning is given.

Two comments.

First,

this argument is not used when both Hamas and Hezbolah have given warning for attacks against Israel.

Do you justify a mortar attack by Hamas or Hezbolah against an Israelian settlement in occupied territories?

There are plenty of military outposts,Hqs and soldiers patrolling in these areas.

Recall that during the Lebanese confrontation,Hezbolah warned for attacks against Tel-aviv.

It is interesting also that during the first day of fighting ,when the Israelian patrol was ambushed ,there were zero Israelian civilians dead.

The following Israelian site has details about all the civilian deaths in Israel

http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/IsraelUnderAttack/Lebanon+North/attacklebanonnorth.htm

Although there are conflicting reports about the events during the first day,some pointing to Hezbolah divertions by attacking cities,

common sense points that you can not expect to plan an ambush to kidnap and transfer back an Israelian soldier by staging a divertion that will alert the whole Israelian army.

Second

Reading about the civilian casualties on both sides, reveals the following.

The number of FOREIGN civilians deaths in Lebanon ,is much more compared to the number of FOREIGN civilians in Israel.

Even if you exclude the Arab foreign civilians, you still have about 25 dead European,Canadian and Indian civilians in Lebanon, compared to two foreign civilians in Israel.

It is easy to claim that Hezbolah might have forced Lebanese civilians and used them as a human shield for propaganda purposes,

however, they would not be able to do the same with foreign civilians without public outcry by everybody and especially by their countries.

Now, if these foreign civilians were not able to escape the combat zone,it was not Hezbolah fault.

[ August 24, 2007, 12:37 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

[pamak1970]

Originally posted by AdamL:

Today Sallai Meridor spoke about the situation a little. He was asked about Hamas. The first thing he pointed out was that Hamas has made it their focus to target civilians - Hamas' strategy is directed to mazimize how many civilians deaths they can inflict. Israel, said Meridor, was "holding back" to avoid a humanitarian crisis. What of Israel? Meridor pointed out that they left Gaza. There were elections in Gaza, it wasn't hijacked. They freely elected Hamas. Israel is supplying the Palestinians with humanitarian aid, efforts of which are being hijacked by political interests. He said the UN is practically the only thing holding that together. There was also a statement in there, to the effect (paraphrasing) that "some nations when dealing with enemies trying to destroy them did not abstain from bombing/attacking cities supplying sugar and flour to the enemy." Following that one journalist asked him if he had a "final solution to the conflict". Way to go. She was shaking like a leaf, audibly. The fix endorsed by Meridor - a separation of the Palestinian and Jewish people through the Palestinian state structure, was described by Meridor using these words: "equal, fair, pragmatic." That was all he said on that.

On Hezbollah, responding to journalist inquirying as to whether Lebanon was "Israel's Iraq", he kept the analysis of the conflict to "the jury is still out" but he did talk about some problems that war has caused in "perceptions, aspirations, deterrents, and the like." Weapons are still flowing from Syria to Lebanon, and Hezbollah is not dismantled. He wants Lebanon to realize they are being invaded, taken over, by Iran & Syria. Those two are, he said, using Lebanon to attack Israel and deter the west while they "corrupt" areas elsewhere. In other words, as much as we are still hung up on even how to handle the middle east, he thinks it is ultimately a distraction for us? He said that if the world community does not come to a concensus there would be negative consequences, soon. He said it wasn't too late to prevent that.

He later took a question about the Kibbutz movement, what their status was and health. He said he thought very highly of the movement. He said he felt the Kibbutz movement was important and beneficial, not only for Israel but for all of Western society.

Some comments also here.

Sure ,there is corruption inside Pal government and sure there is a share of radicals there.

Sure hammas is trying to inflict civilian casualties.

It is also true that Israel is trying to expand and steal land that is under dispute.

The security wall which is not built along the borders but actually infiltrates inside the disputed territoty is one example.

Both attitudes must not be tolerated.

One is not more evil than the other.

Even in our society ,an aggressive action against our land and well being is sufficient to trigger a declaration of war and actions that will certainly cause civilian deaths.

The use of civilian casualties as a method to pressure the enemy are well known everywhere.

Israel did it recently in Lebanon ,counting on deterrance of future hezbolah actions.

Obviously killing just radical fighters is not sufficient deterance since they are actually seeking for this.

Both Nazis and allies did it in previous wars.

They did bombed the factories that supplied the army with material.

They also tried to win the war by bombing whole cities in general without aiming to specific targets.

The aiming point for Hiroshima nuclear attack for example was the center of the city.

The city was so important in military terms that it was pretty much intact up to that time.

That was actually considered an advantage by the targeting comittee ,since it would demonstrate more clearly the power of the new weapon.

The argument that "it actually saved lifes in the long run" can apply to justify Arab terrorist attacks as well.

A conventional war is certainly more expensive regarding casualties

I do not want to put a particular blame only on US .

British did the same in many occassions .

Of course Axis did the same and much worse .

Sure cities provide army with various materials, workers for factories and so on.

That applies to israelian cities also with a civilian population ready to fill reserve units of the Israelian army in a few hours.

As to the so called retreat from Gaza,it is not revealed that in that small space ,more than a million of Palestinians are crumpled.

There was certainly no room for expansion and even more Israelian illegal settlements.

The army needed to protect the relative few Israelians there, could be deployed more efficiently in the new areas of West bank behind the constantly expanding "security wall" .

As to the supply of humanitarian help by Israelians, he must be joking.

Just because Israel wants to control communications,transportation, electricity , water supplies and so on, it does not mean that whatever they offer to Pals is a humanitarian help.

What they really offer is destruction of any economic life and chance to be independent.

The whole Gaza traffic with Egypt is regulated by just one control post controlled by Israel and which does not even allow the passage of cars.

Pal products are not allowed in Israel and most of the times they become rotten before getting out from control posts towards other Arab countries.

Fishermen are not allowed to leave the harbor.

Israel actually regulates the flow of funds of towards Pals ,not to mention imposing outrageous taxes .

Most of the above are from Former US President Carter,in his book "Palestine,peace not aparheid" describes the whole situation there since he has been involved actively and visited middle East in recent years.

Many people tried to discredit his book,which is not surprising considering the crowd of christians in US that are pro-Israel beleiving in the concept of "promissed land" by God to the jewish people in old testament.

CNN two days ago had an interesting poll on this

Israel constantly refuses the presence of some UN peace keeping force in the occupied territories .

They also impose rediculus prerequirements before continuing any type of diplomatic effort for resolving the problem ,buying time for expanding even more.

For example , trying to extract a requirement by ANY Pal government , that ALL violence and terrorist attacks must FIRST stop, before continuing discussion , is unrealistic.

Imagine such a requirement in Iraq today abandoning any effort for the construction of an effective Iraqie government there.

Of course those things which are so obvious in Iraq , are not so obvious in the israel-Palestinian confrontation.

On the contrary , the US government tries supposely to reform the middle East by spreading democracy (Lebanon and Pals undertook democratic elections and still voted for Hamas and hezbolah)

At the same time they try supposely to be mediators in diplomatic efforts and they expect to be treated as fair ones by Pals and Arabs when they continue to fund Israel ,refusing to link such funds to the ending of Israel settlements expansion and they support Israel in delaying ceasefire in Lebanon during the recent confrontation in Lebanon.

By the way, although Israel refused the offer of hezbolah to exchange the soldier with Arab prisoners during the Lebanon operations

it did not have problem to interfiere in the inner-Pal confrontation recently, by supporting

Abbass and releasing on its own initiative ,more than 100 Pal prisoners .

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Darren J Pierson]

You know, I keep forgetting what this thread is about and expect to see stuff about Strykers.