Daniel J. Pipes

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re: squared circle

Reader comment on item: How Israel Can Win
in response to reader comment: Israel can win, if it has the spine to.

Submitted by true believer (India), Apr 21, 2006 at 03:52

Killing any civilian at random is wrong. But Identifying your enemy specifically and destroying it even if the enemy runs into thousands or lakhs in number is according to me justified, provided you do your best to minimise collateral damages. So if Iran tries to nuke Israel, Israel is justified in defending Herself whatever be the cost. And what is wrong with Israel retaliating the nuclear way ? If Iran gets away with it once, she will repeat it again. And Israel is not going to acheive that by just bumping off some palestinians at random. It will require more sophisticated weaponry for defence and offence and whatever support it can get from the world, especially the US.

You said
"inflicting pain on relatively small numbers of innocents can be the more moral course because it may forestall and makes less likely an eventual nuclear exchange"

Why not try to inflict pain on a smaller number of the guilty instead ? Will killing of some palestinians at random stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons or trying it out on Israel ? Or would it have prevented the transfer of nuclear technology and hardware from Pakistan and North Korea to Iran.? Would it have prevented the arabs from attacking Her or Saddam from scudding Her ?

You can call my writings truism , squared circle or whatever, but I think that my message is unambigious and clear. "Use all your means to punish the guilty, but try to spare the innocent"

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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".

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