"Most people insert some sort of pro forma language that killing by Muslims is also detestable. The lack in your post, tells all."

i guess i gotta go ahead and retract what i said about you adding to the conversation. i know you talk infinitely more than i do, but i faintly recall a conversation we had about torture on this site. you were pro, i was against, if memory serves, and your last comment to me was along the lines that i could only be against torture because there was nothing in my life i couldnt stand to lose, or some similar cowardly bullshit. or maybe it was the elephant, you two are a bit interchangeable.

i generally remember the things i say, and what people say to me. if you could, it should be an easy jump from "anti-torture" to "anti-murder" but it must be expecting too much to think you had any interest beyond scoring points. i have mentioned issues of faith a few times in comments to various articles, suffice it to say i consider myself christian (and thus necessarily more pro-israel than most people here) and pacifist.

funny that a person who so clearly delights in the loss of palestinian life would think he could score points by accusing me in delighting in the loss of israeli life. one is only worse than the other if israeli life is worth more than palestinian. which you clearly believe.

"OTOH the desire to kill is overwhelmingly Palestinian. Incompetence is not a defense or justification."

We all get it: The Palestinians are uniformly evil, death-loving subhumans who deserve to be killed along with their families and neighbors. You don't have to keep making the same point over and over.

regarding the responses of the right-wing folks here, let me start by saying that shooter and elephant, unlike a certain robot fellow, generally play fair (by caustic internet standards, at least) and contribute to the conversation. More often than not, it seems to me that they make glenn's points for him. a few examples, admittedly without specific citations:

1) first off, i believe it was shooter who said that blame is due palestinian citizens for electing hamas, and made some comment along the lines that they deserved to be terrorized by the IDF for supporting hamas. of course, this also justifies the civilian deaths of 9/11. "the american people elected leaders that radical muslims did not like and they got what was coming to them." of course the analogy falls apart because hamas is pure evil and america is pure good, and any attack we launch or support by proxy is per se justified.

2) to the people who point out that civilians are always terrorized by war: of course. but countries accepted the duties of proportional response and limiting civilian casualities when they signed on to geneva. limiting the impact of our military interventions is, of course, what makes us morally superior to terrorists. of course from a right-wing perspective, we are morally superior just because we are. we never need to question our claim of moral superiority, because we have named ourselves legitimate governments and our enemies terrorists. we are per se justified in whatever we do, again.

3) regarding proportionality, it is widely known that the rocket attacks have killed a handful of people over the course of a decade, and the latest offensive in gaza has killed hundreds of women and children. the justifications offered would be hilarious if they were not sick, and can only be reasonably boiled down to one overriding belief: they (palestinians) are subhuman, and our right to security justifies killing 10 of them in a week for every 1 of us they have killed in a decade. they deserve it. of course dehumanization is the same rationale that justified slavery and apartheid and any number of genocides throughout history, but this does not seem to concern anyone on that side. they are per se justified to target schools, aid workers, and anyone else who interferes because they are good and the people they fight are evil.

4) finally, the idea that morality need not come into play because it will work. they will destroy all the terrorists and the rest of the population will give up and eventually everybody will be so afraid of israel that it will be safe. this is probably the most absurd assertion on its face, and even moreso when you reintroduce any sense of morality into it. because it is essentially a justification, not an excuse, for genocide. israel is allowed to take military action until every last person in palestine stops shooting rockets at israel, and as long as one person has a rocket, israel can keep wiping out civilians to get to that one person. and remember, its the civilians' fault.

the most tragic thing is that it wont work. even if israel could eliminate hamas and hezbollah, there will be other terrorist organizations, and they will continue to pursue nuclear weapons. for instance chechen separatists, predominantly muslim, have (allegedly) increased their contacts with global terror groups recently. given the number of soviet nukes supposedly floating around, many in the intelligence community think it is entirely likely that a terrorist group could acquire a warhead. they will want to attack the u.s., but israel is a more convenient target, since sophisticated delivery systems would not be necessary. given the incredibly close relationship between the two countries, terrorists might see a successful WMD attack on israel as "just as good." by enraging a good majority of the world with its current acts, israel makes this kind of attack more likely.

and israel could certainly reduce the threat by limiting its military operations and focusing on diplomacy (for those that can be persuaded) and intelligence (for those that cannot). that they chose not to signals to me that the same groups have power in israel and america: ideologues divorced from reality, too arrogant to realize when theyve made mistakes, and too evil to care about the consequences.