this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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Sorry, I was trying to say - Please don't imply I might be willingly misunderstanding you when you're not communicating clearly. Even your edit is somewhat unclear, as it isn't evident if the part before the edit is still relevant.
Wait, what? The prevalent criticism against the exploding pagers (both on Lemmy and other places) is that they're akin to mines and are essentially terrorist attacks. Both of these thing are (at least somewhat) specific and objective, and that's where we started the conversation. Going from that to "It's heartless", which is a very subjective description, seems to me like moving the goalpost.
Yes, of course it's heartless and tragic. War is heartless and tragic. How else would you describe taking a kid who was in high school a few months ago, putting a rifle in his hand and telling him "See that other kid who's just like you? go shoot him because he happen to be living on the other side of an imaginary line"?
Saying "Well, this heartless and tragic thing is acceptable but I don't like that heartless and tragic thing" is arbitrary unless there's an actual criteria. Either way you're entitled to your own opinion, it's just that earlier I thought you have some criteria or test.
I did, it's been in every comment of mine and in the rest of the sentence after the bit you cherrypicked.
Once we hit this point, further discussion was likely pointless anyhow. Please let's end this discussion here. Thank you!
No one is forcing to to reply. I'm continuing it because to me the operation was extremely selective in which people it targets relative to modern warfare among civilian infrastructure, and I'm trying to understand the counter argument.
OK, it took me a while to understand this, and I'm assuming you meant "I do have some criteria". If you meant something else, I can't even guess what it was.
Ah, my bad. I mistook the "pagers that will randomly move around a populated area" part as a purely rhetorical statement and my brain kinda swept it aside. Sorry. The explosives weren't planted in a random batch of pagers. It was in a batch specifically meant for Hezbollah operatives. You could make the argument that some of the pagers got into non-Hezbollah hands (and obviously they did), but what you said is a gross and unfair exaggeration. Your criteria doesn't apply here.
Yes, I understand that. And those Hezbollah operatives can lose their pagers, have them stolen, or they themselves can move randomly through populated areas with the hidden bomb strapped to their hip. You don't think any of these "operatives" do anything but sit all day in a cartoon-style bad guy lair surrounded by other bad guys? They never go to buy groceries, or stop at a hospital or school, or have their devices stolen or lost in some random location? As I have said repeatedly, these devices were deployed in a manner that has absolutely no mechanism by which to control where they actually are and who else is in proximity to them when detonated.
Either we are just incapable of communicating effectively with each other, or you are being intentionally obtuse.
Again I say good day to you.
And you can lose your car keys. But if someone asked you where they were, you wouldn't say "Oh, they're in a random place".
The explosive charge was small enough to seriously harm only those who are in direct contact with it. There's a video of one charge going off in the middle of grocery shopping (speaking of your next point) with a person standing maybe 20 cm next to the explosion. That person was able to run away without apparent harm.
There's no method of warfare that would never harm civilians.
~~The pagers being bought by Hezbollah is the mechanism. Did you mean a real-time mechanism? Is this what it boils down to?~~ Edit: Sorry, I misread what you said. Changing my reply to: As you can see from the video, where they are and who is next to them isn't really a factor. I would agree that if they are in very close proximity to another person (hugging them of maybe riding in a crowded public transport), the explosion will probably harm the other person. Once again, relative to other methods aimed against targets operating among civilian population, this seems more selective, not less.