re: #390 Shimshon

You tell me. I would love to hear the logic behind the side that argues:

“in war we had to protect ourself, so we dropped 2 nuclear bombs and wiped away civilian populations” or “we have to protect ourselves so we collectively punish civilians by destroying their government, drone strike at will and put in friendly politicians” and in the recent past we blocked all immigrants from Iran as collective punishment for the revolution and hostage crisis.

Why are all of these, especially wiping out cities by nuclear bombs, just acceptable tactics in war against an enemy? When Israel cannot fight Islamic terrorism without being called racist and Nazis?

Note I don’t condone such actions but I will try.

On nuclear weapons dropped on Japan, the usual arguments I hear are
a) There was no particular international convention at the time for using refugees and civilian populations as a means to upset an opponent’s military efforts
b) Firebombings such as Dresden actually caused greater civilian death and destruction,

On blocking Iran’s tourists and immigrants after the hostage crisis:
a) Iran had declared us their enemy
b) They seized our embassy and personnel

On collective punishment and fighting “Islamic terror” (note there is “Jewish terror” on the West Bank as well)

a) Some in the Israeli government think that collective punishment will eventually cow the Palestinians

On calling Israel an apartheid state or behaving as the Nazis did:
a) They have walled off the West Bank and seized land from Palestinians without compensation
b) They punish the families of individual criminals or terrorists, notably by bulldozing their homes
c) They are partitioning the West Bank further and further by allowing more settlements that they agreed to withdraw
d) They hold people on “administrative holds” in jail for months or years (much like Gitmo) without charge