I pity the redneck attitude that leans only on one side. It's quite pathetic that humans such as yourself (term used loosely) exist. I bet you've got a pot belly, drink beer every second day and have few loyal friends. Single perhaps? Or an obedient by hand wife? Enjoy your little world, little man.

Let me guess .... the IP address for X is the same as for Johnny and Retired Spit and some others, right?

Note that "x" doesn't attempt to attack the substance of the post, and, in true blue liberal form, instead resorts to personal attacks that are amusingly inaccurate.

CY, I would like to ask x what part of Israel was attacked that he fails to understand. I agree with some that an immediate cease fire in necessary. All we need to accomplish it is for Hezbollah to stop firing rockets into Israel and to release the two kidnapped soldiers. It is a good thing Israel is not bent on the destruction of the Arab world. They could conquer Lebanon in days, Syria in weeks and who know where else.

Well I realize I'm going to piss somebody off with this comment, but I can't buy in to what you're selling.

The children killed were for all intents and purposes civilians, trying to differentiate between innocents and civilians in regards to children is a crock.

Our criminal justice system tries minors on a different standard all because they don't have the ability to make rational decisions and to comprehend the reproductions of their actions. Just like the 34 children who died.

The children aren't making the call. They're doing what American children do on a daily basis, emulating their parents.

American children grow up playing soldier, I did, you did, a good number of red-blooded American kids did. Take a look at the sales of G.I. Joes. A high percentage of the children of our soldiers will grow up idolizing soldiers and potentially enlisting. This doesn't make those select American children any less civilians does it?

In a war are American children fair game?

Suggesting that these children weren't civilians is the first step in dehumanization. You agree they're innocents, but they're the enemy, future combatants if you will. Surely you don't feel these targets should be preemptively neutralized.

For some reason I missed the part of all the prior wars where we were wiping out the innocent non-civilians of the populations. Want a bright, shiny, identical example: Hitler's Youth.

The loss of any child's life is a tragedy; to demean it in any way is deplorable.

Is it just me or does anyone else think those little kids are reminiscent of the Hitler Youth?

I tend to usually agree with conservative and libertarian bloggers, but I have to disagree here.

Using some of the same reasoning, muslim terrorists justify the deaths of Israeli civilians. They reason that there are no Israeli civilians.

In my opinion, I would think twice before going there. The definition of civilian is non-combatant. If they dont have guns in their hands firing away, then that person is a civilian by all objective standards. we shouldnt play the same game of blurring the definitions as the terrorists do.

In a war are American children fair game?

Yes, they are. They have been in every modern war, only the width of the Atlantic and Pacific kept us from realizing the nasty fact that many Europeans learned first hand. In total war, their are no civilians, just enemy targets.

For some reason I missed the part of all the prior wars where we were wiping out the innocent non-civilians of the populations. Want a bright, shiny, identical example: Hitler's Youth.

Look closer at Dresden, Toyko, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, just to cover the basics. What exactly did you think strategic boming was? As for the Hezbollah wing of the Hitler-Jugend, I know my history. The 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend at Normandy were war criminals, executing more than 100 captured Canadian soldiers. They are fanatics.

I do not call for Hezbollah's version of the Hitler Youth to be targeted, but then, it is Hezbollah bringing fire down on them, isn't it?

You say that the loss of any child's life is a tragedy.

Hezbollah obviously disagrees.

Do you think that the IDF knew there were women and children in that building? Israel has repeatedly stated that they do not target innocent civilians, not like the HEZBOS. It is a tragedy that those kids got killed but, I am a little concerned that is might have been staged that way and more than likely the numbers are greatly exagerated for Al jezzera. The Hezbos are getting their butt's kicked and they will resort to anything to get the IDF to stop, even killing their own.

And regretfully it appears Hezbollah isn't the only one disagreeing that the loss of a child's life is a tragedy. Your examples of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are exceptions to the rule. You're also leaving out the part where they're considered War Crimes by some.

You may want to check out the Geneva Conventions you've quoted in the past.

Area bombardments and other indiscriminate attacks are forbidden. If it becomes apparent that an objective is not a military one, or if an attack is expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects then the attack must be canceled or suspended. (Protocol I, Art. 57, Sec. 2b)

An indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects and resulting in excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. (Protocol I, Art. 85, Sec. 3)

Now lets see what the Geneva Conventions have to say about children.

Parties to a conflict must respect children, provide them with any care or aid they require, and protect them from any form of indecent assault (Protocol I, Art. 77, Sec. 1).

Children under 15 must not participate in hostilities and must not be recruited into the armed forces. (Protocol I, Art. 77, Sec. 2; Protocol II, Art. 4, Sec. 3C)

Those children who do participate in hostilities do not lose their protections under the Geneva Conventions, including the right to an education. (Protocol II, Art. 4, Sec. 3d)

Children who have committed an offense related to the armed conflict before their 18th birthday cannot be subject to the death penalty. (Protocol I, Art. 77, Sec. 5)

Warring parties must try to make local agreements to allow the removal of children from besieged or encircled areas. (Convention IV, Art. 17)

Warring parties must ensure that orphans or lost children are not left alone, and that they are taken care of and allowed to practice their religion and pursue their education in their cultural tradition if possible. (Convention IV, Art. 24)

As you've stated before, and I agree with, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations aren't following the Geneva Conventions.

We however are, and must continue, whether some people like it or not. If we as a society, and the last remaining true super power, decide to drop the protocols then we're no better than the terrorist we're fighting, which is a price I'm not willing to pay.

If unarmed women and children were acceptable and permissible targets there'd have never been public outrage or criminal proceedings following the My Lai Massacre. My Lai is an extreme example here the IDF was going after legitimate targets and the civilians(children and some of the women) killed were casualties of war.

The children killed, whether intentionally place there by Hezbollah or not, are and always will be civilians. As I mentioned earlier to lessen their deaths is the first step in dehumanization, which if allowed to go unchecked could lead to 'justified' preemptive neutralization of future enemy combatants (a and pretty name for genocide).

Why not admonish Hezbollah for their not so successful use of human shields and turning their wives, daughters and sons into “martyrs” instead of trying to confuse the lines between civilian / combatant and trying to provide justification the deaths of children?

Area bombardments and other indiscriminate attacks are forbidden.

These were specific targetted attacks at rocket-launching positions that were confirmed to have fired no less than 8 rockets immediately prior to the counter-batery fire. Hardly indiscriminate, and what's more, they were on target.

Children under 15 must not participate in hostilities and must not be recruited into the armed forces.

And yet, Hezbollah and Hamas use children this age and under, as well as the mentally ill, to carry out suicide attacks.

Warring parties must try to make local agreements to allow the removal of children from besieged or encircled areas.

All civilians were ordered out of Qana days in advance of the Israeli attacks.

Warring parties must ensure that orphans or lost children are not left alone, and that they are taken care of and allowed to practice their religion and pursue their education in their cultural tradition if possible.

These children were not orphans or lost. Their fathers fired the rockets from the building's parking lot, and retreated back inside the building.

We however are, and must continue, whether some people like it or not. If we as a society, and the last remaining true super power, decide to drop the protocols then we're no better than the terrorist we're fighting, which is a price I'm not willing to pay.

We hav enot. What's more "we," as Americans were not involved in this incidnet in any way, so this statement is completely irrelevant. As it applies to Israel, they followed the letter of the Geneva Conventions, and have done a better job of this than perhaps any nation on the planet.

If unarmed women and children were acceptable and permissible targets there'd have never been public outrage or criminal proceedings following the My Lai Massacre. My Lai is an extreme example here the IDF was going after legitimate targets and the civilians(children and some of the women) killed were casualties of war.

You conflate things no one ever said or implied. Nobody ever said they were targetted, and in fact, it has been explicited stated wah the target was, a Hezbollah missile launching site and the building that Hezbollah retreated into after they launched their missiles. Mi Lai is completely irrelevant and inappropriate to bring up when discussing this incident. No one in Mi Lai has just fired on U.S forces.

The children killed, whether intentionally place there by Hezbollah or not, are and always will be civilians. As I mentioned earlier to lessen their deaths is the first step in dehumanization, which if allowed to go unchecked could lead to 'justified' preemptive neutralization of future enemy combatants (a and pretty name for genocide).

As I told you in an email a while ago:

Hezbollah's culture raised children from birth to hate Israel and be fighters against it. I guess the question should be, at which point and age do we stop thinking of these people as civilians when the entire culture is militarized.

Hezbollah families--which these clearly were-- are not proper civilians when their society is militarized from cradle to grave. They are civilains only in the loosest sense of the term, and I'm not dehumanizing them by recognizing the society they built for what it is.

Hezbollah purposefully blurred the line between civilian and combatant more than 20 years ago, and continues to do so.

It is time to be honest about that, and honesty is not dehumanizing.

I'm in agreement that these were specific targeted attacks against civilians. Never said they weren't. You're the one who "incident" brought in the bombardment of Japan and Germany to show that sometimes civilian deaths are acceptable. Which is why I brought up Mi Lai. The Mi Lai is relevant in the fact that it shows a sympathetic civilian population is just that a civilian population. It doesn't matter if the kids may one day grow up to be terrorists, they're still just that kids. If the War on Terror is as successful as we hope then, and only then, will their culture begin change, much like the post war cultures of Germany and Japan.

From the beginning of the war on terror everyone in support of the war has explained it will take time. Time to defeat the terrorists and time to change their irrational thought processes. “Blurring the lines” between terrorist and civilian will only help to confuse matters, on both sides, when it's all said and done.

Yes all civilians were ordered out, yet some don't have the ways or means to evacuate. Were the people killed in this category? We don't know, probably won't due to the media confusing matters and Hezbollah propaganda.

The block quote on the rest of the Geneva conventions bit was closed prematurely. You're right though, the children weren't orphans or lost, but their father's actions don't make them willful combatants either.

We as Americans and through our government are involved in the battle being waged. To state we're not involved in any way is wrong. Who's providing billions of dollars of aid to the Israeli government? How many rockets and warplanes have we given / sold to the Israeli government? We are partners with Great Britian and Israel in the war on terror. We are involved in this 'incident' and have quit a bit riding on it's outcome.

I've never claimed the children killed were intentionally killed or targeted, just that they classified wrong. However stripping them of their civilian status as you've done leaves only a couple of classifications left. Which implies they're combatants, thus acceptable targets.

Hezbollah may have blurred the lines between civilian and combatant more than 20 years ago, however to claim their children are less civilian than any other group of children is dehumanizing. I've yet to see a toddler that truly understood the concepts of hate and death, much less being able to project those feeling onto an entire group of people. Let an Israeli soldier give a Hezbollah child a sucker he'll be that child's best friend until his parents convince the child otherwise.

Isn't there something about not punishing the children for the sins of their father?

phin wrote:

The loss of any child's life is a tragedy; to demean it in any way is deplorable.

You're absolutely right; it is deplorable to demean a child's life -- as someone else eloquently put it -- by holding up their body like a trophy for media consumption (1, 2, 3).

That baby, after attaining a martyr status, must be enjoying his shares of virgins in heaven, even as we speak.

i want to intreduce myself first
im from israel and i live in tel aviv.
im sry if my english is bad but its not my mother tounge.

i read all the things u say about hizbulla and im gald to c that some ppl really knows what hizbulla stands for.

i dont wanna talk about Qana or any part of the war right now i just wanna ask one question.

from 1995 till 2006 Suicide bombers Used to blow up Busses blow up in a crowded places like hotels and malls. they even hit a children night club and killed 30 of them 92 childrens injured, some were left without body parts such as hands legs lost of earin or eye sight.
u might ask urself why we never show horror photos of our deads from suicide bombers or from the war with hizbulla. well the jewish religion Will not allow us to do so. Jewish Dead ppl r Sacred thing and must b buried few hours later to honor the dead. showing them on TV is against our religion and it will dishonor the dead.

i ask where the world was when all this heppend?
where was Prime minister of France when 30 kids died in Tel Aviv for no resson?
Why when IDF kill civiliens In Mistake the World is Against us?
where is the world when 200 rockets drop on Israel every day in the last 20 days?

did israel started this war? Hizzbulla kidnapped 2 soldiers killed 8 more and lunched 150 missles on israel before We acted.
we dropped Pages with instruction where we gonna bomb. IDF lost 30 soldiers since the start of the war cuz we dont wanna hit civiliens during ground missions and we lose Soldiers cuz of this.
We jewish R united country and religion.we all stand unite other then few exceptions.
when one soldier or civilen die we all cry for the lose and we never brag about our dead ppl.

look at hizbulla Brag with the dead ppl. so i ask u what kind of ppl Show off with dead coarpses?

what kind of ppl shot missles in order to kill only civiliens?
every day 200 missles hit Israeli Towns in the north in order to hit and kill civiliens.

so i ask u now, what kind of ppl u think Hizbulla really r?