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Originally Posted by dlishsguy
willravel...is hezbollah answerable to the UN war crimes commision? since they are not the leaders of lebanon, can they be answerable in the same way that slobodan milosovic was ?
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This can't be the UN anymore. We've already seeen that they are powerless. Besides, the UN has vested interest in all of it's most powerful members....which makes them untouchable. If the US were to break UN resolutions, no one would or could stop us, including the UN. That makes it essentiaqlly useless in the facet of war. There needs to be an independant world court set up specifically for addressing war crimes; that can prosecute a government, organzation, or even individual.
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Originally Posted by hulk
How can people of anything resembling intelligence assume that military action can be performed without civilian deaths? There has not been one significant military conflict in the history of mankind that killed only fighters. Wars cannot be one without one side using excessive force. If you kill only the fighteres, there are thousands of others willing to take their place. You need to remove the structure that supports them, and groups like Hezbollah hide that amongst the population.
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Watch the news much lately? The reason I ask is because your post sounds a lot like the talking points that Israeli representatives have been giving on the news the past few weeks. The problem is that they are somewhat biased when it comes to the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. The reality is that Israel is, at this very moment, having cluster bombs delivered from the US. The problem is that an estimated 1000+ Lebanese civilians have died, while less than 50 Israelis have died (including soldiers). The problem is that Israel has smart weapons that can prevent a great deal of collateral damage (as opposed to Hezbollah, that have weapons that basically can't find shit). The problem is that of self control. Israel could have attacked Hezbollah in a way where less Lebanese had to die. What their actions communicate is that they either want Lebanese dead, or hey don't care.
The biggest problem is the black and white thinking. You say, "How can people of anything resembling intelligence assume that military action can be performed without civilian deaths?", which assumes that we (those who are condem Israel's actions) are appauled and shocked that there are any civilian deaths at all. That's simply not true. We all understand that there can and will be collateral damage in war and conflict. It's a terrible thing that we have to live with. Howeve, when are civilian deaths no longer simply collateral damage? Isn't there a line that once crossed moves into murder? If the US were at war with Iraq and we bombed civilian areas with no military presence or strategic significance, would that be (well, since it happened, was it... )collateral damage?