"Should he die because some vicious adult fills him with hate, straps a suicide bomb belt on him, and sends him off to murder other innocents, I would have compassion for him and even more intense loathing for his mother and father."
You've really got me here. (In a good way : )
I must have read this 20 times now.
If I have compassion for the little ones I can't have loathing for a mother and father who were once those same little children.
But here's the flip side.
Should he die because some vicious adult fills him with hate, straps a suicide bomb belt on him, and sends him off to murder other innocents? Yes. It's him and his or "me" and "mine". And therein lies the rub.
Israel: Hezbollah Responsible For Lebanon Qana Civilian Deaths
The Israel News Agency | July 30, 2006 | Joel Leyden
Thousands of Israeli civilians take cover in bomb shelters
By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency
Jerusalem-----July 30.....The following communication was transmitted from the Israel Defense Forces to the Israel News Agency.
"This morning, the Israel Air Force attacked Hezbollah missile launch sites in the area of the village of Qana, Lebanon. An area from which hundreds of Katusha missiles were launched towards the Israel city of Nahariya and the Israel communities in the western Galilee."
The IDF will defend the citizens of Israel from terror attacks by the Hezbollah and the responsibility for any civilian casualties in Lebanon rests with the Hezbollah who have turned the suburbs of Lebanon to a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas.
Residents in this region in Lebanon and specifically the residents of Qana were warned several days in advance by both Israel and Lebanon radio to leave the village.
Eighteen Israelicivilians have been murdered and over 400 have been wounded from these rocket attacks which have disrupted the lives of thousands in Israel.
A Canadian UN officer serving as a military observer in the United Nations base hit by an Israel strike last Tuesday emailed his former commander that Hizbullah was using his UN post as a human shield. Major Paeta Hess von Kruedener was also clear that the Israel Air Force was not targeting the observers.
The UN commander, Major General Louis Mackenzie said in an interview with a Canadia radio station that his former soldier had written to him six days before his death about the recent developments in Lebanon. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, Kruedener wrote that the IAF strikes near the post were “necessary”. He also noted that the IDF fire was not aimed specifically at the UN post, but rather at the terrorists.
(Photo) A young Israeli girl is evacuated from Nahariya hospital after a Hezbollah rocket attack made a direct hit on the hospital. Photo: AFP
Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post described the killings of civilians in Qana and other villages in south Lebanon as such: "What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security? What other country sustains 2,000 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities--every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians--and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?"
Krauthammer continues: "Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and a very few others), the world--governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats--has completely lost its moral bearings. The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate" as in the universally decried "disproportionate Israeli response."
When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki to a cinder, and turned the Japanese home islands to rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right--legal and moral--to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.
Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did it respond to the blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate" aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest land invasion in history that flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.
The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides. In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do. But it is a dual campaign. Israel innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty."
(Cartoon) Hezbollah use of civilian and UN human shields.
Krauthammer adds: "On Wednesday, CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas? Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead, it attacked dual-use infrastructure- bridges, roads, airport runways--and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah.
Ten-thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more. Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut?
Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in south Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed. Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes.
The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israel soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?"
(Photo) Nahariya hospital, among many Israeli civilian targets hit by Hezbollah and Hamas terror rockets. Photo: AP
Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today that Israel had told the residents of the Lebanese village of Qana to leave before the raid. "All the residents were warned and told to leave. No one was ordered to fire on civilians and we have no policy of killing innocent people. The village and its surrounding areas were a source for launching hundreds of rockets."
- 30 -
Israel News Agency
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1674586/posts
When it gets to that point, yes. It is you and yours, or him and his. In that case, I'd want him to die before he could kill others. However, it's not a zero sum game -- or doesn't have to be. We adults have got to figure out a way to end it once and for all, so no future children ever are used that way.