What about Dresden, Hiroshima, Berlin, Kabul and Kosovo?

Submitted by Joe Levi (United States), Jul 28, 2002 at 17:57

The United States unfortunately just killed 45 participants at a wedding in Afghanistan and wounded dozens more. Our Secretary of Defense immediately apologized, but after it was revealed the bombing was a reaction to the firing of weapons into the air, originally thought to be by the Taliban. He said essentially that these things happen in war.

In other wars, when innocents have been killed, we coldly referred to them as "collateral damage" as everyone knows.

I mean, talking about dehumanizing people to "collateral damage".

Even in Kosovo, after civilians were killed, we said we were sorry for their deaths, but they were (again the expression) collateral damage. Lest we not forget the tens of thousands who died in our day and night raids during WW2 over Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and dozens of other German and Japanese cities, ending of course with the A bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which killed hundreds of thousands. (Also collateral damage).

When Israel struck Lebanon in the early 80s, they faced the same problem, of Arabs hiding behind the skirts of their women or in UN controlled areas, or in hospitals and mosques (which the Muslims have repeated doing in other areas of warfare, most especially in the West Bank cities (across from Gilo)).

Israel does not intentially target civilians, but occasionally some innocent people are caught up in the conflict and killed or wounded.

The real issue here is the entire conflict. None of this would be happening if Arafat had accepted Barak's very generous proposals at Camp David and Taba, which were in the main forced on Israel by the then President Clinton.

All of what is happening are ripple affects of the Palestinian double talk, double think, PENCHANT FOR VIOLENCE and very SKILLFUL propaganda, which has confused just about everyone, except the very alert Pipes.

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