"An unrealistic belief in equality"
It seems that whenever Israel responds to violent overtures from groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, leaders of the international community are quick to assign equal condemnation to Israelis and Palestinians regardless of whether one is legitimately acting in self-defense.
Whether it is due to a latent anti-Semitism, the desire to avoid inflaming fundamentalist Arab passions, or simply an unrealistic belief in equality, world leaders are focusing too much on buzzwords.
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It does not make sense to demand one technologically or militarily superior belligerent to refrain from fighting to their full potential, simply because they are able to enact "disproportionate" damage on a weaker foe.
CSM
When someone first told me, "the only people crying for equality are those who can't keep up," I thought it was crass, cruel, primitive and horrible of them to say that.
Now I see it's true. Our society conspires to find this mythical "equality" and enforce it on all of us, but it only benefits those who cannot keep up.
It's insane to ask a combatant with more firepower to limit themselves in the name of fairness. They are fighting for survival. "Fairness" becomes some concept designed to salvage the unequal from the equal.
An unrealistic expectation of equality pervades all that we do here in Modernity, Inc., but it's starting to become clear how much it holds us back. How much money we could put into winners that we put into losers. How much time we waste. How much it exhausts us all when we should be enjoying life.
Maybe we should wage war on "equality," that delusional but flattering notion, instead.
McNAMARA: Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50 to 90% of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional in the minds of some people to the objectives we were trying to achieve.
ReplyDelete"They are fighting for survival"
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, that statement is wrong. Israel is not fighting for survival, they are crushing an annoyance. Since 2000, Hamas rockets have killed 20 Israeli's. 20. In 8 years. There is no way in anybodies language that you can seriously think that 20 deaths in 8 years represents a threat to a nations survival especially when, as you so clearly point out, the two sides are so unbalanced.
No, the Israeli's aren't fighting for survival, the Gazans are, and they have been for 60 years under the unfair and illegal Israeli state.
"How much money we could put into winners that we put into losers"
Ummm, do you even know why Israel are so technologically superior to all their neighbours?? Do you have any idea how much money America has poured into Israel?? Do you know how little the Palestinians receive the USA as aid?? Do some reading before you post bullsh*t...
It can hardly be claimed that Israel's current military operation is a fight for survival; Hamas' rocket attacks are quite impotent and pose only a minor threat. True, they are dangerous and can injure, but they are not mass-murder weapons.
ReplyDeleteIsrael is fighting this current battle simply because (1) the current leaders dont want to lose favor with the voting public (2) the current leaders want to prove to their middle eastern neighbors that Israel can fight a war, despite their embarassment in Lebanon and (3) the rockets are a bit of a nusiance and keep their people from living in peace.
Not so much survival. Israel would survive without this war - just some annoying rocket fire and the occasional injuries from them.
I'm not against the operation, I just don't care for the moralism on either side of the battle, including those who say that Israel "had" to do this for its survival.
It seems that this argument is very much in favor of a a very Darwinian system. That is, the strong survive, and the weak are killed off (or die off due to lack of resources). This is certainly a practical way to look at things.
ReplyDeleteHowever, (speaking from an evolutionary standpoint)human beings are social animals, and as such we've developed a complicated system of morals that we use to guide our actions.
For instance, we find it morally wrong when Israel levels an entire building with hundreds of people inside just to ensure the death of a handful of people who were responsible for launching rockets into Israel.
From an evolutionary standpoint, nothing is wrong with this. Israel is the stronger country why should they not dominate their neighboring weaker country. Evolution is not a moral system, it is a practical one. And by the same logic, the United States should wipe the middle east countries right off the map, and take their resources for ourselves.
No one is asking Israel to limit it's fighting capabilities against ACTUAL terrorists, we're just asking them to show mercy to innocent civilians who seem to be dying at an alarming rate in this conflict.
Makes sense, I think I mostly agree, although perhaps this one is not the best example of representing the problems with the concept of equality. This is a fairly hard case. Most sensible people agree that punishment must be proportional to crime i.e. not burn pickpockets at a stake alive, and it's a long and complicated process to prove how a war is different from punishment. It's better choose a problem within one and peaceful society to demonstrate the problem.
ReplyDelete