Henley on the Jimmy Johnson rule: People who say they're too nice are never nice at all.
I think you're in the wrong thread.
This doesn't mean it was justified; it just means it wasn't deliberate.
If there were legitimate military targets right next to the post, it's not a separate offense from shelling Lebanon at all -- this incident becomes not individually meaningful.
Yeah, but the right word would be "a legitimate accident," as opposed to "justified," I think. Quibble, quibble.
Fair enough. All I meant to say is, not a reason for thinking "Those incredible fucks."
And, for what it's worth, the continued calls to the Israeli's from the UN should have been enough.
Deciding, "We'd rather kill these Hezbollah guys at the (known) expense of killing those UN guys" doesn't strike me as much of an excuse.
6: Exactly. "Justified" implies something much stronger - i.e., it was necessary to destroy the U.N. base itself for some reason.
9: Really? Assuming the facts are as reported (actual, current Hezbollah military activity right around the post, and taking as a given that Israel may shell military Hezbollah targets within Lebanon, which I understand could be argued about, but if that's your point I'd have to think about it differently), I'd think that whoever answered the phone at the IDF would be justified in saying: "Sorry, there's a legitimate target right next to you, and you're within our normal limit of error in shelling it. You need to evacuate."
I think 9 is right, and there's still plenty of reason to think "Those incredible fucks." I've never thought the IDF deliberately targeted a UN base - I just don't see what they could possibly get out of that - but they essentially treated the UN observers with the same callous disregard with which they've treated Lebanese civilians.
This case just stuck in the world's collective craw more because of the details involved (the ten calls) and the fact that their own were getting killed (Canadians, Chinese, etc.).
"Justified" is a fine way of saying "legitiimate accident." I don't think there's a way of reading LB's post that could be mistaken for thinking Israel should blow up the UN regardless of Hezbollah.
I'd think that whoever answered the phone at the IDF would be justified in saying: "Sorry, there's a legitimate target right next to you, and you're within our normal limit of error in shelling it. You need to evacuate."
Sort of beside the point when they didn't in fact do that. They just kept shelling and then denied all knowledge later. Evacuating is easier said than done when you're being shelled.
And the whole 'limit of error' thing is speculative given that the final strike that destroyed the command post is described in news reports as a 'precision guided missile'.
12: But they didn't tell them to evacuate (and I'm not sure they have the authority to, either, but that's a side issue). According to the reports as we know them, the IDF told them they'd stop the attack.
the IDF told them they'd stop the attack.
I'd missed this.
The IDF does have 'previous' on this. They've killed UN people before in circumstances that, like this case, look like 'callous disregard' at best and 'deliberate targetting' at worst.
The Israelis have outright refused to allow a joint Israeli-UN investigation into the incident.
And the whole 'limit of error' thing is speculative given that the final strike that destroyed the command post is described in news reports as a 'precision guided missile'.
To be fair, there's still room for error with precision-guided missiles. I think the legitimate complaint is that the UN workers repeatedly asked them to stop the attack, and the IDF assured them they would, and they didn't, and quite predictably, people got killed.
I'd missed this.
They'd repeatedly received "assurances." Am I reading that wrong?
Ah, here we go:
"The UN report says each time the UN contacted Israeli forces, they were assured the firing would stop."
To be fair, there's still room for error with precision-guided missiles.
Yes, and if it weren't for the other circumstances and a past record of similar events, I might be prepared to extend the benefit of the doubt in the direction of 'unfortunate error'.
That's fucked up, then. I'd call my 12 a minimum standard of care, if the facts are as I understand them.
There are I think two misconceptions here:
1. The post might have been destroyed by mistake but nobody is claiming it was destroyed by accident (JL Austin's story about the donkeys refers here, explaining the difference between an accident and a mistake). The IDF has confirmed that the UN post was destroyed by a munition that was aimed at it. The person who fired that rocket might have thought it was something other than a UN post, but they hit what they were firing at.
2. This is not correct under the Geneva Conventions:
I'd think that whoever answered the phone at the IDF would be justified in saying: "Sorry, there's a legitimate target right next to you, and you're within our normal limit of error in shelling it. You need to evacuate."
This person would then need to be reminded "We do not have to evacuate and indeed cannot because we have a mission here" (obviously, it would make a mockery of the whole concept of a UN observer if they could just be told to go somewhere else for a while by either side) they would then point out "the destruction of a single Hezbollah platoon is simply not a military objective which would justify the killing of four civilians under a UN flag, and you are obliged to find another way to achieve that military aim even if it is inconvenient for you to do so and even if doing so exposes your troops to more risk".
I personally believe that the IDF commander just got sick of being sniped at and decided to blow the UN post away, thus committing a war crime. There is a chance of an honest mistake but not of an accident.
19: yes, it reminds me of the chinese embassy in belgrade that was blown up by the US during the balkan wars some time back.
communication between troops in wartime is a notoriously difficult thing. i do think the israelis usually try their best to avoid unnecessary casualties...although they clearly didn't try hard enough in this case, no question about it.
okay, if 24 is the case i take my analogy back.
dsquared's #2 is absolutely right.
i do think the israelis usually try their best to avoid unnecessary casualties...
There doesn't seem to be the remotest evidence for that claim. I don't want to sound like some relentless Israel-basher, but their track record over the past few years does not bear that claim out.
25: I thought it was more or less understood that the Chinese embassy was blown up deliberately because they were transmitting some sort of communications the US didn't like.
Not for one second did I ever buy the story that it was mismarked because the CIA had a map with an outdated location for the embassy. That would be like the Cincinnati Bengals thinking that the Steelers still play in Three Rivers. I mean, isn't the Chinese Embassy the base of operation for Chinese spies? How the hell could the CIA not have been up to date on its location?
On preview, I also agree with 27.
Chinese embassy story in the Guardian.
count me shocked. that didn't get reported in any US paper i read. my impression was not bad maps but that an imprecisely fired missile was at fault. at least i read unfogged. !
27: i continue to disagree. the israelis have a policy of avoiding civilian casualties, and they have disciplined soldiers for failing to follow it, even though obvs. we all wish it were implemented more thoroughly. they are facing an enemy who openly seeks civilian as well as military casualties, and celebrates them. this certainly increases their imperfection in avoiding civilian casualties on the ground, but at least it is their policy.
i'm a critic of israel too but it's important to be fair to the difficult position they're in.
and now i'm out of internet access -- sorry, bye!
From the Guardian article, this is bleakly humorous:
"Later, a source in the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the 'wrong map' story was 'a damned lie'."
the israelis have a policy of avoiding civilian casualties, and they have disciplined soldiers for failing to follow it
Again, I would state that all available evidence is to the contrary.
The fact that they state it is their policy is not the same thing as it actually being their policy.
that didn't get reported in any US paper i read.
The follow-up contains a bit of passive aggression—we didn't criticize you, we just told our readers to demand an explanation!—but the newspapers' response seems lame. Note the NYTimes saying that it was unfortunate to uncritically accept the government's spin on the attack. (Clinton Admin, just to be clear.) I might be happier with the idea that the papers didn't find the story credible if (as per 28) I thought the story made a lick of sense. When the story first came out, shouldn't some paper have looked into how the hell the CIA lost the Chinese embassy? Or whether the allegedly intended target had actually used to be there?
As for civilian casulaties, I don't think the IDF targets civilians like Hezbollah does as a matter of policy. But there's a long enough history of killing lots of rock-throwing protestors, and of inflicting lots of civilian casualties, that I can't believe that Israel is doing its best to minimize civilian casulaties. Plus, when Olmert says that retaliation will be "very, very painful," one draws certain inferences.
"the destruction of a single Hezbollah platoon is simply not a military objective which would justify the killing of four civilians under a UN flag, and you are obliged to find another way to achieve that military aim even if it is inconvenient for you to do so and even if doing so exposes your troops to more risk".
I may be bending over backwards here just to keep the argument going, but what's the justification for 'single Hezbollah platoon' and 'not a military objective that would justify'? It seems reasonable to me (and my grounding in the law of war is weak as anything; in this regard, I am not attempting to speak as a lawyer) that there are some objectives that would be sufficient: if, say, Hezbollah were shelling an Israeli city from artillery located right next to the UN observers, I can't see it being impermissible to attack that artillery, regardless of the location of the UN observers.
That said, I don't know the nature or quality of the Hezbollah targets in this case, whether because I haven't read with enough attention, or because they haven't been made public. But it doesn't seem impossible to me that they were sufficiently militarily important to justify an attack that put the UN observers at risk.
if, say, Hezbollah were shelling an Israeli city from artillery located right next to the UN observers, I can't see it being impermissible to attack that artillery, regardless of the location of the UN observers.
Attack, yes; attack with bombs that were likely to destroy the UN observer post, no. A UN observer post is a very very protected object and only a truly extraordinary military objective would justify putting it at any risk of damage. So the IDF commander would be told "You will have to take out that rocket unit with a ground assault. This will very likely involve your losing more troops and putting yourself at more risk than if you did it with an airstrike, but the Geneva Conventions oblige you to accept that cost in order to avoid this collateral damage".
As for civilian casulaties, I don't think the IDF targets civilians like Hezbollah does as a matter of policy. But there's a long enough history of killing lots of rock-throwing protestors, and of inflicting lots of civilian casualties, that I can't believe that Israel is doing its best to minimize civilian casulaties.
Largely, I agree. I think the IDF does, sometimes, target civilians as a matter of policy -- in fact, they've explicitly stated as much vis a vis their current operations in Lebanon.
Even if one thinks that's not true, the deaths of rock-throwing protestors, killing of large numbers of civilians, foreign peace-activists,* and so on, suggests that they are certainly careless about civilian lives.
* irrespective of whether one thinks they are naive dupes who do more harm than good...
A UN observer post is a very very protected object and only a truly extraordinary military objective would justify putting it at any risk of damage.
This is the legal claim I wasn't working from -- I was thinking of it as as, or possibly slightly less, protected than any civilian location. I suppose it makes sense that this should be true, I was just unaware of it.
A UN observer post is a very very protected object and only a truly extraordinary military objective would justify putting it at any risk of damage. So the IDF commander would be told "You will have to take out that rocket unit with a ground assault. This will very likely involve your losing more troops and putting yourself at more risk than if you did it with an airstrike, but the Geneva Conventions oblige you to accept that cost in order to avoid this collateral damage".
I'm not sure I see either the factual or legal basis for you claim regarding the sanctity of a UN observation post. My understanding of the Law of War and the Geneva Conventions (I would particularly like to know how you see them fitting in here) is quite different from yours.
Well, isn't blowing up a UN observation post kind of like running over a traffic cop?
Honestly, given the history between the UN and Israel, I don't think it takes much imagination to suspect they hit it while sarcastically saying, "Oops, what a shame."
re: 40
While I am not prepared to assume the worst, if you turned out to be right, I would not be astonished, for the reasons you give.
#39 yes, but without the element of comedy
#38 UN observers are protected in three ways:
1. They are noncombatants and thus protected by their status as noncombatants
2. They are under a UN flag, which is specifically mentioned in the GC as conferring protected status
3. They are carrying out a mission which is presumably important and which cannot be carried out if they are dead (in particular, since their monitoring responsibility involves gathering evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, someone who intentionally eliminates UN observers is probably planning on doing something else no good).
Remember, these were *observers*, not members of a peacekeeping force.
re 42
Thanks. We disagree--I do not think, their status notithstanding, that they have the level of protection you think they do. Consider the case of civilians and other protected sites like religious sites. There still are situations where you can attack a church with civilians in it. In the same way, terrorists cannot hide in the shadows of UN installations with impunity.
To go back to 40, given that Isreal has at least a bit of justification for seeing the UN as having taken sides, in that they are more about protecting people from Isreal that the other way around, I agree that it is not crazy to think that they might have been less worried about the safety of the UN observers that they might otherwise have been.
Salon:
Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around those targets to destroy them, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.
But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians like the plague. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.
It sickens me to think that the IDF, in their zeal to clear the area of all human presence, may have targeted the UN post deliberately.
It worries me even more that my mind about Israel has changed to such an extent, I wouldn't be surprised if proof came that it was deliberate.
More and more, I'm beginning to think that if you want to be a good Jew, you have to be anti-Israel -- or anyway anti-Israel about how they're handling themselves in a difficult position they've put themselves in.
I mean, Hamas are now offering to return the soldier they've captured, and Israel has imprisoned a third of the Palestine parliament.
What's with these guys?
There is a long history (justified or no) of Israel achieving its goals by creating "facts on the ground" and then demanding that negotiations be predicated on them (see "Occupied territories, settlement of, qvv). The goal seems to be to create as much chaos in Lebanon as possible, though G-d only knows who's expected to clean up the mess (apparently the wealthy Maronite Christian minority is being carefully kept out of the line of fire, but they've never managed to run a stable government AFAIK).
There's a longish history of prisoner exchanges such as could have de-escalated this mess more than a week ago. Just as Hezbollah took advantage of the fight with Hamas to start trouble on the border, Israel is taking advantage of the weak Lebanese government to kick as much ass as possible before someone tells them to stop. They've had to pull back from Lebanon before after killing U.N. observers, but apparently that's not enough this time; everybody seems to agree for some reason that Israel can keep bombing until the Administration asks them nicely to cut it out.
I am willing to accept that with missiles coming over the border, the Israeli government felt compelled to act. But this situation wasn't exactly impossible to predict, and I don't understand why they have chosen to do what dismally failed before.
Things may already have gotten so bad that only indefinite military occupation of Lebanon can prevent Hezbollah from achieving total victory. If there's a rational strategy behind this, I fail to grasp it. Is this what "Democracy is on the march" is supposed to mean?
Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb
<quibble>Well, actually, as I understand it, the pilots don't choose the targets, or even have any idea what the targets are.</quibble>
40 and 43 may be true, but that still doesn't make it OK for Israel to blow up a UN observer post.
Consider the case of civilians and other protected sites like religious sites. There still are situations where you can attack a church with civilians in it. In the same way, terrorists cannot hide in the shadows of UN installations with impunity.
And yet, it would still be wrong to bomb a church, killing the non-combatants inside, simply because it would be easier than raiding the house next-door.
On the hypotheticals, LA Times says:
The nearest known Hezbollah activity was more than three miles away, although in the past there have been Hezbollah weapons caches in the area, a senior U.N. official said.
(From comments to this post by, I think, this Nell)
Oh, and as to why Israel would do such a thing, see here (exec summary: they might have wiped out the UN observers so as not to be observed).
One thing to keep in mind while agonizing over whether every Israeli action is a perfect example of the platonic ideal of a properly waged just war: Israel's enemies violate such ideals every day, deliberately, as part of an overall strategy.