re: #320 LudwigVanQuixote

Well since you seem to have a fairy-tale view of war, let me start by pointing out that all war is collective punishment.

If a people actively supports and votes for a government that levies war and makes acts of war, then those people suffer for it. It is a two edged sword really.

Even if the people were not 100% in support, it does not matter. This is the point that SFZ has made to you again and again.

Let me give you an example.

I am perfectly willing to count an 18 year old German kid who was drafted into the Wehrmacht and didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground as another victim of Hitler. However the cost of letting him win outweighs the sadness anyone should feel for him. He too had to be killed. War is ugly. the only way to make it less ugly is to win it as quickly as possible.

That means killing enough so quickly that the enemy reconsiders. That is how it works.

As to hitting the civilian population directly and intentionally in hostilities, of course, that should be avoided. As to a pie in the sky notion that a war can be fought without any civilian suffering, particularly when the enemy uses them as shields - that is ludicrous.

Okay, I get your point. War is suffering, and collateral damage is impossible to avoid. I get both points and agree with them.

My question was very clear. You said you were in favor of deporting millions of people from Palestine, and cutting off water and electricity supplies. That has nothing about defeating Hamas or their soldiers. That’s about hitting the civilian population.

Do you think that Palestinians as a whole should be DIRECTLY (not in the indirect way that you talked about) collectively punished or not?