like almost everyone, if you don't want to hurt me, i don't want to hurt you - live and let live. perhaps i think too highly of my own people (and some of you don't even believe there IS such a thing, or if there is, it's a negative) but we are in a really tight situation here - global warming, mass extinctions etc. or at least that's what i believe. so we need all the IQ we can get - and you don't get that from a people whose average is 80 IQ. unfortunately half of all the 3+SD IQ's were killed by hitler. we could have used those, now dead, einsteins. furthermore i don't trust non-jews to care whether we live or die. to me, it was bracketed by the evian conference ('38) where all the world said "we don't want jews" and the Bermuda conference('43) where roosevelt and churchill said, let hitler kill them. i do not know what wierd psycho-drama the U.S. has in supporting israel so strongly, but you can see how the rest of the world reacts. what about the million jews the arabs threw out, forcing them to leave all their possessions behind? doesn't count, does it? because, you know why. i think it must be spiteful envy, why else? and the multitude of jewish traitors and apologists don't save themselves or others. the day i left israel, my best palestinian friend made a dinner for me wherein he poisoned me (obviously i survived). this leaves a very great impression. i think it was because i helped him (monetarily) something a moslem could never tolerate.

So if the US and Israel ever get into a war for whatever horrible reason, I assume you think Israeli lives are more valuable than American ones. Just wanting to be sure.

LWM: Yes, you are correct. I do not believe that the terror-bombing of German civilians by the US and UK in WW2 was justified. To the contrary, it was mass murder. Some years ago, I visited Auschwitz and Dresden on the same trip, and did not think for a moment that the former justified the latter.

-- Gator90

It was total war. It may not have been "justified" in your mind or even moral. It was "legal" in that it was not specifically illegal at that time, or its legality was dubious or questionable.

Israeli "surgical" strikes accidentally kill innocent civilians at rates far higher than the rates Hamas does Israeli civilians. But Israel isn't trying to kill innocent civilians, and since you have to make room for the limits of the accuracy of the weapons in that you sometimes kill innocent civilians, your OK with that. Fine. I accept that.

By your and my new moral calculus, all the Palestinians need to do to be morally equivalent is to set their launchers up outside populated areas and aim at military targets within Israel. Of course with their crude weapons their still going to kill many innocent civilians as their rockets fall miles from the intended targets, but at least now they're morally equal. If this was the way things were, you'd think the Palestinians were being perfectly acceptable guys, and would no longer feel any of the righteous anger you do now?

Just curious.

but it would be a quandary since i don't feel as "american" as say, bush (all my european relatives died since the U.S. wouldn't give them visas, in spite of the fact my father was a veteran and could support them). i suppose blacks and native americans could feel that way too (but don't since they enlist in greater than proportional numbers). but then, when i had the chance, all i could think about was getting out of the draft. i didn't have anything against asians and i didn't want to either kill or die in vietnam.
still, it's an interesting question and one, i suppose, iraqi-americans have to confront daily. i don't envy their mental state. on the one hand they hated saddam on the other, their country is in turmoil and while their own do most of the killing, americans do some and are part cause of the instability (syria and iran are part of it also). the worst part (from my way of thinking) is that america is not allowing iraqi allies/employees to come here. most have escaped to syria or jordan (as such they had it better than the jews) but it really isn't fair - but then, when was the U.S. fair to non-american allies? (they let their vietnamese allies down too). so it's an interesting question - though posed in a smirky gotcha way. but that's just you and can't be helped.

Actually, not only are we trying not to kill civilians, we are distinctly trying to avoid all unnecessary civilian casualties. We do not celebrate death and martyrdom.

In fact, I'm about as pacifist as one can be and wish we could all just get beyond bombs and rockets. But in a war, war is hell (as they say) and military targets are targets. We would still hate the rockets, but no, I don't think the outrage would be quite what it is. It's the deliberate intent to cause civilian deaths, and the jubilation at those deaths, that gets to us. And especially when, as I said, we left Gaza almost three years ago.

"Any reading of things anybody here has said as somehow a justification for the murder of innocent civilians is a lack of understanding on your part."

No, it isn't. Glenn has specifically refused to characterize the murder of Israeli civilians by Palestinians as unjustified. It follows, necessarily, that he believes such murders have at least some justification. There is simply no other interpretation.

There is simply no other interpretation.

There is, even more simply, reading his words, which requires no interpretation, just mere literacy. Glenn Greenwald has stated time and again that he rejects the premise of your overbroad, Manichaean, black-and-white, right-and-wrong, my-way-or-the-highway constructions and has attempted to tell you what he actually thinks.

Twisting the words of your interlocutor is a poor way to claim the moral high ground in any argument... but I suspect that's not your purpose here, is it?