quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

If that's the best you can do, subrosaDom, that is a pretty pathetic response. It contains a number of factual errors, such as:

quote:

Israeli does not target civilians to cause terror (as does Hamas) -- they do it to root out Hamas's terrorist infrastructure

Israeli General Gadi Eizenkot was quite specific that Israel does target civilians and civilian infrastructure : "From our perspective, these [civilian areas] are military bases. [...] Harming the population is the only means of restraining Nasrallah" A deliberate strategy of "harming the population", could it be any clearer? The enormous number of civilians killed and injured in Israel's current rampage in Gaza, with most independent estimates putting it at c75-80% or approx 1350 of the c1800 fatalities confirms the deliberate targetting of civilians.

quote:

If Hamas had placed its military infrastructure anywhere but in schools, hospitals and civilian buildings, then the Dahiya doctrine would not argue for targeting it.

The reason civilians are targetted by the IDF is specifically addressed by Eizenkot - "Harming the population is the only means of restraining Nasrallah". Any civilian area where hostile fire originates is automatically treated as a hostile "military base". There is no way of interpreting those statements other than meaning the deliberate targetting of cvilians and civilian infrastructure. The facts on the ground in Gaza confirm this. Entire suburbs have been razed to the ground and over 10,000 civilians dead or injured. I have seen no good evidence to support the claim that Hamas is using hospitals to store its military infrastructure. This is an Israel propaganda claim that has no independent confirmation of its validity.

However I do agree with you when you state: "The defender is not the aggressor. The destroyer of terrorists is not a terrorist." In Gaza, the IDF is on foreign soil, Hamas is defending the homes of Palestinians living in Gaza from IDF aggression. Therefore, by any standard, the IDF is unambiguously the aggressor in this conflict. It is also unambiguously a terrorist force. Hamas is acting on the Palestinians legal right of self defence and opposition to a foreign "invading/occupying force", the IDF. The IDF's behaviour far exceeds whatever legal rights it may have (it has a legal right of self defence against Hamas' indiscriminate rockets, provided such self defence is proportional). By any standard the IDF's response has been way beyond proportional.

All up, an epic fail but thanks for trying. At least you have had the courage of your convictions unlike others I could name.

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom
Israeli does not target civilians to cause terror (as does Hamas) -- they do it to root out Hamas's terrorist infrastructure

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom


when there is no more more equivalence between them than between the Axis and the Allies.

Of course there is. What? You think because it's 'the allies' we were all peace and love? Surely you understand that Britain fought to maintain its empire and keep the Germans from the French coast and threatening our trade; while the Americans also fought to extend their sphere of influence.

Look, I wouldn't put myself down as a moral relativist but, Christ, claiming Britain and the Americans are 'a pack of canny lads saving the world' is bordering on lunacy. The British and the Americans simply package it differently and it has been long understood that people are easily impressed with the packaging.

No matter what you say the Axis was far worse than the Allies.
You ignore that the British were protecting the empire they already had, they weren't trying to build one;
You forget that England and France spent the 30's accommodating Hitler.
You forget that Germany invaded Poland, and France not the other way around.
You forget Pearl Harbor.
You must to place any remote equivalence between the two.
Then there is the death camps, just when did they Allies set theirs up.
Moral relativist, like terrorists never see themselves as such.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom
Israeli does not target civilians to cause terror (as does Hamas) -- they do it to root out Hamas's terrorist infrastructure

Here's a case of IDF soldiers deliberately targetting civilians. A few days ago, I posted a video of a Palestinian man being shot in cold blood by the IDF. The video can be seen here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2701043/The-shocking-moment-Palestinian-civilian-shot-dead-Israeli-sniper-lying-defenceless-floor-earlier-hit.html

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom


when there is no more more equivalence between them than between the Axis and the Allies.

Of course there is. What? You think because it's 'the allies' we were all peace and love? Surely you understand that Britain fought to maintain its empire and keep the Germans from the French coast and threatening our trade; while the Americans also fought to extend their sphere of influence.

Look, I wouldn't put myself down as a moral relativist but, Christ, claiming Britain and the Americans are 'a pack of canny lads saving the world' is bordering on lunacy. The British and the Americans simply package it differently and it has been long understood that people are easily impressed with the packaging.

Then I would disagree with you. I would submit you are a moral relativist. Being good does not mean being perfect. Even Babe Ruth didn't hit 1.000. The aim to create evil is what defines evil. The aim to protect and create good is what defines the good. When a Hamas terrorist has a bomb blow up in his face and he dies, that is a good, but that does not make the terrorist any less evil.

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD


Moral relativist, like terrorists never see themselves as such.

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

I don't know that moral relativist would fit you in any case, I have always believed you to be wholly amoral, in all frames of reference.

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

*AHEM* The Danish language is written the same as the Norwegian language (not the other way 'round) but the Danes speak it unintelligibly, with a heavy Hitler accent.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom


when there is no more more equivalence between them than between the Axis and the Allies.

Of course there is. What? You think because it's 'the allies' we were all peace and love? Surely you understand that Britain fought to maintain its empire and keep the Germans from the French coast and threatening our trade; while the Americans also fought to extend their sphere of influence.

Look, I wouldn't put myself down as a moral relativist but, Christ, claiming Britain and the Americans are 'a pack of canny lads saving the world' is bordering on lunacy. The British and the Americans simply package it differently and it has been long understood that people are easily impressed with the packaging.

Then I would disagree with you. I would submit you are a moral relativist. Being good does not mean being perfect. Even Babe Ruth didn't hit 1.000. The aim to create evil is what defines evil. The aim to protect and create good is what defines the good. When a Hamas terrorist has a bomb blow up in his face and he dies, that is a good, but that does not make the terrorist any less evil.

Problem with this is who exactly is defining good and evil? In this case, surely it is a false dichotomy.

I fail to see how killing civilians and displacing countless more could ever be deemed to be 'good'. A burrow owl would probably grasp the logic in this sentiment, so surely a human being with the capacity to reason could emulate such an achievement.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom


when there is no more more equivalence between them than between the Axis and the Allies.

Of course there is. What? You think because it's 'the allies' we were all peace and love? Surely you understand that Britain fought to maintain its empire and keep the Germans from the French coast and threatening our trade; while the Americans also fought to extend their sphere of influence.

Look, I wouldn't put myself down as a moral relativist but, Christ, claiming Britain and the Americans are 'a pack of canny lads saving the world' is bordering on lunacy. The British and the Americans simply package it differently and it has been long understood that people are easily impressed with the packaging.

No matter what you say the Axis was far worse than the Allies.
You ignore that the British were protecting the empire they already had, they weren't trying to build one;
You forget that England and France spent the 30's accommodating Hitler.
You forget that Germany invaded Poland, and France not the other way around.
You forget Pearl Harbor.
You must to place any remote equivalence between the two.
Then there is the death camps, just when did they Allies set theirs up.
Moral relativist, like terrorists never see themselves as such.

Far worse? The Allies certainly did not engage in genocide on the back of some warped foreign policy built upon racial supremacy. That much is true.

My point was that perhaps there was more to American involvement than out-and-out benevolence. No one would ignore the fact that a lot of American Mothers lost their sons fighting in Europe, but, at the same time, the US government had its fingers in a few pies.

The British were protecting the Empire they already had?! I fail to see how this mitigates anything.

England spent the '30s accommodating Hitler? There were legitimate reasons for this. In the aftermath of WW1, the French wanted the Germans destroyed, and a prominent French general, I forget his name, said something like: "this is not an end to hostilities, but merely a 20 year break". As it turned out, his prediction was out by about 3 months. The French had no time for any sense of justice with the Germans, and as the Germans had imposed a harsh peace on France in 1870 and Russia at Brest Litovsk, then who can blame them. The British and Americans thought differently. The British felt it was not in our interests to have a severely weakened Germany as they were trade, or to be exact money to us, and the Americans under Woodrow Wilson had their heart set on a 'just peace' and the League of Nations as they felt the war had been caused by secret and binding alliances that were not in tune with any sense of international co-operation. The Germans when they walked up the steps in Versailles in June 1919 expected a fair bargain from the process, except the Americans had changed their tune. The Americans loaned the British an awful lot of money during WW1 and a fair chunk of it was passed onto the French. The Americans wanted their money back. The British had some; the French had none. So, we couldn't get our money back from the French to pass back to the Americans and so it was decided that the only way the Americans could get their money back was from Germany. This is why the War Guilt Clause was inserted into the treaty; it hasn't been envisaged in 1918 until the Americans realised they were gonna get robbed blind. In order to make the Germans pay, they had to be deemed to be the sole cause of the war, and with that the Americans did an about turn from 'just peace' to 'fuck the fucking just peace, I want me money'.

In this climate, a lot of commentators both left and right in England thought this was a disaster. Keynes included, who was very vociferous. And, with this in mind a lot of people in England had no problem with the Germans marching into the Rhine because it was theirs anyway and they'd had it wrenched from them unjustly.

Once it became clear that the Nazis were not going to stop with uniting Germans within a German country, then the mood in England changed.

It wasn't appeasement for the sake of it, but rather 10 years of a firm belief that it was not fair to blame Germany for a war when there was the usual political manoeuvring from all quarters.

Added to this we were almost bankrupt after WW1, what were we gonna fight them with? Words? Poetry from the 17th century? You do realise that we used to put cardboard cut outs of tanks in the fields because we had none?

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

To address an earlier point, in Norway, I have found, women are glad to be women, and do not truck with most of the shite in the rest of girl world. Of course they were 'equals' in Norway from recorded history..

quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

If that's the best you can do, subrosaDom, that is a pretty pathetic response. It contains a number of factual errors, such as:

quote:

Israeli does not target civilians to cause terror (as does Hamas) -- they do it to root out Hamas's terrorist infrastructure

Israeli General Gadi Eizenkot was quite specific that Israel does target civilians and civilian infrastructure : "From our perspective, these [civilian areas] are military bases. [...] Harming the population is the only means of restraining Nasrallah" A deliberate strategy of "harming the population", could it be any clearer? The enormous number of civilians killed and injured in Israel's current rampage in Gaza, with most independent estimates putting it at c75-80% or approx 1350 of the c1800 fatalities confirms the deliberate targetting of civilians.

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom


Churchill, in his first volume of his WWII history, seems to have a different point of view regarding active appeasement during the 30s. I think the man knows whereof he speaks.

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

If that's the best you can do, subrosaDom, that is a pretty pathetic response. It contains a number of factual errors, such as:

quote:

Israeli does not target civilians to cause terror (as does Hamas) -- they do it to root out Hamas's terrorist infrastructure

Israeli General Gadi Eizenkot was quite specific that Israel does target civilians and civilian infrastructure : "From our perspective, these [civilian areas] are military bases. [...] Harming the population is the only means of restraining Nasrallah" A deliberate strategy of "harming the population", could it be any clearer? The enormous number of civilians killed and injured in Israel's current rampage in Gaza, with most independent estimates putting it at c75-80% or approx 1350 of the c1800 fatalities confirms the deliberate targetting of civilians.

Since I know you can read I know you know you are intentionally misrepresenting that quote.

He's saying Hezbollah is hiding amongst the civilian population so the IDF has to attack those civilians to get at Hezbollah.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom


Churchill, in his first volume of his WWII history, seems to have a different point of view regarding active appeasement during the 30s. I think the man knows whereof he speaks.

Churchill isn't the last word on these matters. He was prone to monumental errors of judgement and was no doubt a career politician who went conservative-liberal-conservative when the wind blew in a certain direction.

Churchill was not as well liked in England as you might assume, because at the end of WW2 he was voted out of office. People recognised he was the right man at the right time but not necessarily a consummate politician.

The act of appeasement was entirely right because: a) The Germans were far from the only protagonist in WW1 and as such to have large swathes of their land confiscated and unbearable reparations placed upon them (which in the end they avoided through deliberate hyper-inflation anyway) was not just b) what it did it have to do with us anyway if two countries were squabbling in the middle of Europe, which they'd always done anyway and we'd stayed out of it because they were deemed nothing but trouble and c) as stated, we were in no position to throw our weight around.

What you might not be aware of is the fact that England's foreign policy was always to stay out of European wars. There were very few occasions where wee got involved and almost none in which we were involved from the outset (WW1 being the exception).

Appeasing Hitler was a continuation in British foreign policy, not a change. What did we have to gain from costly land wars in Europe? And, we couldn't really influence them anyway as all of our resources were poured into the Navy which was the heartbeat of our prosperity. At the outbreak of WW2 we had something like 6 divisions to send to France.

We always tried to strike a balance and the only times we ever used force was when Napoleon, Hitler and the Kaiser threatened to dominate Europe and therefore strangle our trade, and the Crimean War when the Russians threatened our trade.

Hitler or not Hitler, the British policy was always to not use force in Europe unless they felt backed into a corner, and they only felt this when the Germans waltzed into Poland away from German speaking lands. Unifying Germany/Germans was one thing; waltzing round Europe with daft hats on and worse marching methods was another.

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom


Churchill, in his first volume of his WWII history, seems to have a different point of view regarding active appeasement during the 30s. I think the man knows whereof he speaks.

Churchill isn't the last word on these matters. He was prone to monumental errors of judgement and was no doubt a career politician who went conservative-liberal-conservative when the wind blew in a certain direction.

Churchill was not as well liked in England as you might assume, because at the end of WW2 he was voted out of office. People recognised he was the right man at the right time but not necessarily a consummate politician.

The act of appeasement was entirely right because: a) The Germans were far from the only protagonist in WW1 and as such to have large swathes of their land confiscated and unbearable reparations placed upon them (which in the end they avoided through deliberate hyper-inflation anyway) was not just b) what it did it have to do with us anyway if two countries were squabbling in the middle of Europe, which they'd always done anyway and we'd stayed out of it because they were deemed nothing but trouble and c) as stated, we were in no position to throw our weight around.

What you might not be aware of is the fact that England's foreign policy was always to stay out of European wars. There were very few occasions where wee got involved and almost none in which we were involved from the outset (WW1 being the exception).

Appeasing Hitler was a continuation in British foreign policy, not a change. What did we have to gain from costly land wars in Europe? And, we couldn't really influence them anyway as all of our resources were poured into the Navy which was the heartbeat of our prosperity. At the outbreak of WW2 we had something like 6 divisions to send to France.

We always tried to strike a balance and the only times we ever used force was when Napoleon, Hitler and the Kaiser threatened to dominate Europe and therefore strangle our trade, and the Crimean War when the Russians threatened our trade.

Hitler or not Hitler, the British policy was always to not use force in Europe unless they felt backed into a corner, and they only felt this when the Germans waltzed into Poland away from German speaking lands. Unifying Germany/Germans was one thing; waltzing round Europe with daft hats on and worse marching methods was another.

No. Nor is Newton the last word on classical physics or MLK the last word on the content of one's character. But they're all more than suitable for me.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

quote:

ORIGINAL: subrosaDom


Churchill, in his first volume of his WWII history, seems to have a different point of view regarding active appeasement during the 30s. I think the man knows whereof he speaks.

Churchill isn't the last word on these matters. He was prone to monumental errors of judgement and was no doubt a career politician who went conservative-liberal-conservative when the wind blew in a certain direction.

Churchill was not as well liked in England as you might assume, because at the end of WW2 he was voted out of office. People recognised he was the right man at the right time but not necessarily a consummate politician.

The act of appeasement was entirely right because: a) The Germans were far from the only protagonist in WW1 and as such to have large swathes of their land confiscated and unbearable reparations placed upon them (which in the end they avoided through deliberate hyper-inflation anyway) was not just b) what it did it have to do with us anyway if two countries were squabbling in the middle of Europe, which they'd always done anyway and we'd stayed out of it because they were deemed nothing but trouble and c) as stated, we were in no position to throw our weight around.

What you might not be aware of is the fact that England's foreign policy was always to stay out of European wars. There were very few occasions where wee got involved and almost none in which we were involved from the outset (WW1 being the exception).

Appeasing Hitler was a continuation in British foreign policy, not a change. What did we have to gain from costly land wars in Europe? And, we couldn't really influence them anyway as all of our resources were poured into the Navy which was the heartbeat of our prosperity. At the outbreak of WW2 we had something like 6 divisions to send to France.

We always tried to strike a balance and the only times we ever used force was when Napoleon, Hitler and the Kaiser threatened to dominate Europe and therefore strangle our trade, and the Crimean War when the Russians threatened our trade.

Hitler or not Hitler, the British policy was always to not use force in Europe unless they felt backed into a corner, and they only felt this when the Germans waltzed into Poland away from German speaking lands. Unifying Germany/Germans was one thing; waltzing round Europe with daft hats on and worse marching methods was another.

No. Nor is Newton the last word on classical physics or MLK the last word on the content of one's character. But they're all more than suitable for me.

Fine. If you want to ignore the fact British foreign policy in the 1930's was a continuation of hundreds of years of British foreign policy then be my guest. There are deep rooted structural, social and cultural issues that made British foreign policy in the 1930s the obvious course to take for us.

We always did that. The British appeased the Americans in the 1890s when territorial disputes arose.

I suppose you don't get to the top in the event you're going to fight every battle that comes your way when some of those battles will obviously be very costly to you with limited gain in return.