Kill all of Hamas even if it means killing an unlimited number of non-combatant Palestinians is probably a lingering result of hatred for Muslim Arabs after the 9-11 takedown of the World Trade Center. The desire for revenges leads to a HatfieldโMcCoy feud that can go on for far too long.
Some have seen these words from me before, but I'lโฆ
Kill all of Hamas even if it means killing an unlimited number of non-combatant Palestinians is probably a lingering result of hatred for Muslim Arabs after the 9-11 takedown of the World Trade Center. The desire for revenges leads to a HatfieldโMcCoy feud that can go on for far too long.
Some have seen these words from me before, but I'll write them again. I had not been in Vietnam long when I saw the bodies of dead Viet Cong sappers found dead in the wire after the previous night's action. Their body's broken from gunfire, bones snapped and protruding from their skin, intestines in plain view. They were young, mostly about 13 years old. My first thought was that their mothers were waiting for them. My next thought was, so is mine. I was 18. They were child soldiers who had come to kill me. They were the enemy. The children who appeared on the road wherever we stopped after a truck hit a mine or we waited to cross a pontoon bridge were not the enemy. If a VC popped up in their midst, I would have chosen my M-16 in preference to a frag.
America was aghast when it learned of the My Lai massacre. Most of America anyway. Sadly, Isriel, America's darling, seems to have fewer detractors as they frag the children at the bridge.
This is an emotionally fraught subject, and I respect that people can have different takes on it. I can feel your compassion as you try to slice and dice tricky situations which have no clean answers. Please don't take what I have to say as being insensitive to the emotion involved, on a personal level (like me and you).
However, I fear that in the bigger picture (beyond me and you) such a framing is calculated to create overwhelming emotions which saturate the rational mind, alas more often bringing out the worst cognition (even while invoking the best).
Could you personally look into their eyes and order a small company of soldiers into certain death, in order to enable a larger formation to retreat and escape that fate? Or could you look instead into the eyes of the larger group who would die due to your inability to sacrifice the smaller group? Does this way of making a decision by eye contact squeamishness strike you as functional?
That kind of "look them in the eye" decision making does not, in my view, constitute a likely path out of tricky situations where we need every ounce of our rational perspective to choose the least bad outcome. It favors local rather than global optimization, or short term versus long term thinking.
But it's even more problematic if the morally costly option is presented in isolation - your scenario posits nothing about the consequences of your deciding NOT to take an action which results in the death of a non-combatant child. Your scenario omits any balancing, presenting only an isolated moral cost with nothing to be gained. If there were no overriding reasons, then no I could not. If there WERE over-riding reasons, then whether or not I as in imperfect human could personally take some action does not determine whether it's the wisest action.
And again, I realize you are trying to sort out some morally fraught no-win situations as best a human can, so I have a lot of sympathy and my (hopefully gentle enough) dissent is not motivated by disrespect.
In the overwhelmingly unlikely hypothetical case of my personally needing to shoot an innocent child in order to save a larger group, whether I did or not, I'd likely be one of the casualties. It would likely destroy me either way. But that feature of my psyche doesn't guide us in selecting the best path.
"That kind of "look them in the eye" decision making does not, in my view, constitute a likely path out of tricky situations where we need every ounce of our rational perspective to choose the least bad outcome."
I understand the dangers of appeals to emotion in situations where logic is necessary, but the entire situation is fraught with this kind of emotional pleading. That's why this situation has led to such irrationality.
No rational person could argue that it was reasonable to blockade two million people into a relatively small area, persecute them for decades, and then drop three Hiroshima's worth of bombs on the civilian population when extremists commit an undeniably atrocious attack.
No rational person could claim that because these extremists committed this atrocious attack, ANY response, no matter how atrocious, was the exclusive fault of the extremists.
No rational person could call the 2 million people living in the region, with extremely limited ability to leave thanks to the aforementioned blockade, "human shields" instead of "innocent, uninvolved civilians." No rational person could argue that the foremost military power in the region, with the full support of arguably the foremost military power in the world, can't do better than dropping 65,000 tons worth of unguided bombs on civilian targets.
So I think this "look in the eyes" rhetoric, is about humanising the people who are dying right now. We SHOULD feel emotion for them. It IS monstrous to be purely rational about such immense loss of life. Every single person staunchly defending Israel's atrocities does so on the back of this 1200 people killed on October 7th. And righty so. This, too, should stir our emotions.
I'm just astonished by how many people only seem to be able to generate emotion in one direction.
Please read this sentence: I am NOT defending the massive Israeli attack on Gaza, which is undeniable. This is more about critical thinking in the consumption of news sources, versus simply repeating the most outrageous accusations one can find.
> "No rational person could argue that it was reasonable to ... drop three Hiroshima's worth of bombs on the civilian population when extremists commit an undeniably atrocious attack."
That latter assertion is quite a good outrage producer, but as is my wont, I wondered where this figure "3 Hiroshima's" came from, as it seems surprisingly large upon even superficial consideration. The Hiroshima bomb was estimated at 12 to 18 kilotons, so three times that would be 36,000 to 54,000 tonnes of TNT.
The largest (non-nuclear) ordinance used by the IDF is the BLU117, or so called 2000 pound bomb, which actually contains about 1000 pounds of TNT equivalent, so it would take about 70,000 -110,000 of such bombs to equal 3 Hiroshima bombs.
For context, the US has supplied 5400 BLU117, but it's unlikely that all have been used. We do know that hundreds have been tho.
Of course, the vast majority of the artillery, rockets and bombs used in Gaza were much smaller than that monster. So that claim is a bit dubious, likely exaggerated by severalfold, perhaps even an order of magnitude high. But that estimate would be subject to revision with facts from a competent and unbiased source.
So where did the claim come from? Apparently, it came from the Gaza Media Office, an organ of Hamas (ie: part of their propaganda apparatus).
From what I can find in a quick search, it looks like those who wish to fuel the anti-Israel narratives are (1) exaggerating the number of weapons dropped or fired, (2) falsely assuming that all of them are very large indeed, and (3) counting the total starting weight (including casings, rocket motors, guidance, fuel, etc) as being pure TNT. And counting on an audience who *wants* to believe the worst and will not do any checking.
Simply taking Hamas' word for it, and repeating without any verification (or even quick reality-check arithmetic) their 3 Hiroshima framing, which was calculated to foster outrage in a gullible public in the West, is less than optimal for factuality.
Likewise assuming that 100% of that exaggerated 65,000 tonnes of explosive was unguided (better estimates of the percentage is 40-45%), and assuming that it was all dropped on civilians (and none of it on military targets). Good for outrage, bad for truth.
Let's all beware of unreflective echoing of propaganda - and the "motivated reasoning" bias we can ALL experience in uncritically accepting anything which seems to support the point we wish to make. This is a note to myself as well, so nobody should take it too personally, but we should all take it seriously and up our game.
(Let me note that my primary point is about using known unreliable sources like Hamas in our writing. Doing post-writing research which is selectively looking for the highest numbers one can cull from other sources in order to be 'right' - ie: sources which were not considered before writing - does NOT mean the initial credulity goes away. At best it means one was lucky.)
And once again - even if the figures from Hamas (or from peace groups, etc) are grossly exaggerated for propaganda effect, there is zero doubt that Israel has nevertheless engaged in truly massive destruction in Gaza, and that can be justly condemned. So I'm not arguing against the main point, but cautioning about good process - about not believing and amplifying a questionable source just because it supports our point.)
(Aside: Apart from total quantities, just the use of several hundred 2000 pound bombs in a crowded area like Gaza - which has been verified by bomb crater analysis of satellite photos - is in itself very hard to justify, even if it's not tens of thousands of such bombs. I am appalled at many things that Israel has done).
But we can do that condemnation carefully, without being taken in by easily dispelled misinformation from propaganda sources. We must trust that the truth is enough to support our points, with no need for exaggeration.
"Please read this sentence: I am NOT defending the massive Israeli attack on Gaza, which is undeniable. This is more about critical thinking in the consumption of news sources, versus simply repeating the most outrageous accusations one can find."
For the record, I find disclaimers like this, which you use quite frequently, to be unnecessary and condescending. If you write a sentence, you don't then need to instruct people to read it.
If, in their reply, you feel that they've made an unfair assumption about your motives, it's obviously appropriate to point that out. But I think it's sensible to give people the benefit of the doubt that they'll at least read what you've written and aren't going to react like irrational children.
This is just my feeling on it, of course. Others might feel differently. But thought I'd offer the feedback, as stuff like that just makes it exponentially more likely I won't bother replying.
Anyway, that said, I appreciate this comment. We completely agree that accurate, clearly expressed information is important. And while I did check the figures for myself, I didn't go into the same detail you did regarding tonnage vs direct explosive force. So, looks like the correct figure is around one Hiroshima's worth, no? Google is telling me that the explosive yield of a bomb is typically around 30-40% of the weight. 65,000 x 0.3 = 19,500. Little Boy, according to Wikipedia, was 15,000.
I don't have any great problem using information from Hamas or Gaza as long as I do some verification myself. Hamas' figures have proven to be accurate over the many years of this conflict, there's no good reason to believe they aren't here. I think a lot of people constantly trying to cast doubt on the "Hamas figures" are doing so because the reality of what Israel is doing is tough fro them to swallow. And while Hiroshima comparison are undeniably emotive, I think it's also quite difficult for the people to get a sense of what 65,000 tons of bombs means. Is that a lot? It sounds like a lot. But there's no context.
Anyway, I'd repeated the "3 Hiroshimas" in an article, which I've now corrected (I'll just stick with tonnage rather than "Hiroshima units" until I find a better way to convey the scale), so again, really appreciate the correction.
> "the entire situation is fraught with this kind of emotional pleading. That's why this situation has led to such irrationality."
Exactly. People on all sides are using and being influenced by emotional manipulation, and so cognitively compromised that they often cannot recognize even basic truths.
Where we may differ is that I believe the only hope of minimizing the terrible outcomes is through reducing that irrational raw emotionality, rather than expanding it.
Let me be very clear about something, which is usually misunderstood and which I fear might easily be misunderstood here. I do not believe that pure rationality alone can ever provide a guide, by humans or any other intelligence, organic or artificial. An absolutely rational entity, operating based on pure reason without any non-rational assumptions, values, or axioms, has no purpose or goal or meaning. Without values, it's no more or less rational to destroy the world with dirty nuclear weapons than to cure cancer.
I think the latter is a better outcome, but only because it is more coherent with my (irrational) values.
I see reason and rationality not as providing the values (which are not rational), but as providing the tools for effectively implementing values, and avoiding sabotaging oneself through disconnect with reality.
So when I advocate for a rational perspective on a situation like Israel/Palestine, I'm not suggesting that rationality should or even could be untethered to values and emotions as the underlying motivations, only that our reasoning and exploration of alternatives not be cognitively blinded by emotions so as to inadvertently undermine those underlying values and emotions.
As best I can decipher the issues in Israel/Palestine, a deficit of passionate emotions is not the core dysfunction, and the way out does not involve further "stirring our emotions". The deficit I see is in dispassionate reasoning and respect for truth, while still anchored to underlying humane values.
> "It IS monstrous to be purely rational about such immense loss of life."
I sympathize with your passion, but I think that statement represents a misunderstanding. The loss of 20+ thousand lives is a terrible tragedy, but when literally millions of lives are hanging in the balance (in an all out future war), SOMEBODY has to look at the situation with clear vision, rather then through a red haze of irrational emotionalit and knee-jerk response to the immediate stimulus, or there could be vastly larger tragedy in the offing.
That is, the rationality I am advocating is DEEPLY intertwined with caring about lives - ALL of the lives which are on the line, not just the subset showing up in videos. Wanting to avoid going off half cocked in a blind reaction to an emotionally evocative incident is an outgrowth of deep caring about the ultimate outcomes, not of indifference.
In case it's not clear, everything I'm saying also fully applies to the emotional reaction of Israelis to the terrorist attack on Oct 7. There too rational concerns (grounded in humane values, not free floating) need to over-ride appeals to strong emotion (like revenge). My saying that doesn't come from not caring about the 1400 lost Israeli lives - but from ALSO caring about the millions of other lives (Israeli and Palestinian) which are still on the line.
I am quite sympathetic to the high emotions (on both sides), but I do not wish to lose my ability to reason clearly by joining them. If that path produced good outcomes, the issues would have been long solved. My goal is to have clear sight connected by good reasoning to positive humane values in seeking the best outcome for all - rather than being emotionally hijacked and stampeded by whatever atrocity is in my visual field at the moment. If you feel that makes me an uncaring monster, I will just have to live with that.
Yeah, as Dave said, I don't think anybody's accusing you of being any kind of monster. The point is that there's a difference between allowing for emotion and being ruled by your emotions. Just as, as you say, there's a difference between being rational and being a robot (not accusing you of being a robot or, in fact, any of these. Just establishing a baseline).
If we were all looking at the situation with clear vision, Israel would follow international law by defining it's borders in line with the 1967 borders, ending the blockade and, at the very least, reshaping the West Bank Barrier in line with those borders, removing the illegal settlements, and allowing Palestinians forcibly removed from their homes to return. Israel's attempts to move forward without accepting this are a significant source of the turmoil in the region.
Israel would also recognise that bombing Gaza into oblivion can only ever radicalise their enemies even further and lead to more attacks in future.
The Palestinians would accept Israel's acceptance of International law with good grace, denounce all future violence, and devote their energies to making their Palestinian state flourish.
The Palestinians would also recognise that acts of violence against the most powerful military force in the region, even if that military force is breaking international law, can only ever end badly for Palestine.
This is all perfectly rational and humane. But it's not even close to where we are. Because there are decades of emotion clouding the issue for both sides. So first, we have to start with the simplest possible questions like, "how can we get these people to agree to stop killing each other as soon as possible?"
I think the main reason Palestinians hate Israelis are the aforementioned violations of international law. Most of all, the humiliation and suffering related to the blockade, occupation and settlers.
I think the main reason Israelis hate Palestinians is the fear that one of them will come to Israel and blow themselves up on a bus or in a synagogue. Or now, come across the border with paragliders and rape, kill and abduct civilians. There's also the fear that Palestinians want to drive them from what they see as their God-given land.
If I've learned one thing over the past few years of talking and writing about these kinds of issues, it's that being objectively correct, having all your facts right and using iron-clad logic, isn't even close to enough. You always have to contend with people's emotions. You have to bridge gaps where there's a strong difference of opinion about what the "best solution for everyone" is. And the best way to do that, as you say, is to appeal to simple--and hopefully common--values.
Saving the lives of as many children as possible. Freeing hostages. Liberating innocent people from oppression. Allowing people to live peacefully in the land they were born in. Most people can agree on the importance of these ideas because we can empathise and emote. We know we'd want these things for ourselves and the people we love. The people who can't compromise even on issues like these are the ones who are being irrational. And sometimes you need to poke them to remind them of the full human weight of what they're arguing.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing on the broader point, we need cool heads. We can't allow a single atrocity to dominate all other thinking. I just also think there's a real danger of being cool headed to the point where these human beings just become abstract numbers. 10,000 here, 1,400 there. Reminding ourselves that each one of them had a face and a name is important.
> "If I've learned one thing over the past few years of talking and writing about these kinds of issues, it's that being objectively correct, having all your facts right and using iron-clad logic, isn't even close to enough. You always have to contend with people's emotions."
I fully agree, at a broad and general level.
Analysis and persuasion have different characters, and should not be conflated into one big ball of sameness.
Accurate analysis is hindered, not helped, by constant emotional hijacking. That's a time when it's best to have the ability to detach from the emotions of the moment in order to better understand the rational connection between actions and our humane values.
After one uses this dispassionate logic to better understand real world, you are correct that one still needs to use emotional arguments to persuade others, because that's how the majority get convinced.
Both are true, of their separate domains. But it is not helpful to lump them together and assume that the same dynamics apply to both accurate analysis and to public persuasion, so if passionate emotionality helps with the latter it must also help with the former.
I'm guessing that by "1967 borders" you don't mean the borders from 1967 to present, but the borders from 1949 to 1967, ie: basically the "green line" 1949 armistice borders, right?
Why do you see the 1949 armistice line as more legitimate than, say, the 1946 borders? Or the 1947 UN partition plan?
A problem is - a lot of Palestinians (and their supporters in the Arabic and/or Muslim world as well as the West) do not accept the borders established by war in 1949 either (ie: your (pre) 1967 border).
Look at Gaza - whose border pretty much follows the 1949-1967 borders. Israelis are not shrinking Gaza, in fact in 2005 they forcibly removed all the settlers, in what the left leaning government sold as "land for peace". But the Gazans overwhelmingly elected two parties who were not calling for an end to the blockade, but an end to Israel entirely.
What I'm getting at is: do you believe that a "return to the pre-1967 borders" (even if Palestinians do not accept those borders as any more valid) would end or reduce the intention of eliminating Israel? Our would it result in Israel essentially facing the same implacable opposition, only much better armed and positioned?
Try this: use Google maps to zoom in on the Tel Aviv area, and note how far t is from the 1949-1967 border to, say, Tel Aviv. The airport is only about 8 miles from the border. Hesbolah has reportedly amassed 100,000 rockets in the north, so an independent Palestine could do so too, far closer to Israeli population centers. But they wouldn't even need rockets - it's in very easy artillery range. Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centers would likely become similar to Seol South Korea, with massive North Korean artillery able to destroy any portion thereof.
The possibility of a war with Palestinian losses 10 or 100 or more times greater than what's happening in Gaza today would be very real (along with an even greater multiplier of Israeli losses). Literally millions of lives would be at stake, and if Israel were to feel they were losing, nukes would come out.
I can't simply say "a rational person would obviously agree that withdrawing to the pre-1967 borders would obviously reduce rather than increase the chances of a catastrophic war in the coming decades". We don't know the future, but the chances of a vastly worse outcome for Israelis and Palestinians seems is hardly trivial.
In the strategic circumstance, with literally millions of lives likely on the line, it seems short sighted to simply decide on the best course forward based on no more than what saves thousands of lives in the immediate future - no matter how many horrifying videos try to emotionally hijack our rational long term considerations, under the nominal intention of "reminding us" that there are real people dying.
If one is concerned about a far more catastrophic war in the future, we have to factor in the real people with faces and names who would die in that conflict - even tho we don't have videos of those people yet, to activate our limbic systems and amygdala.
I've been reading the Hamas charter, the statement of Hamas leaders, the statement of PA leaders, and opinion polls among Palestinians (which are skimpy because it's very hard to do, even before this war). I personally don't see much realistic hope of peace, only of different front lines. And from that perspective, I can understand why Israel may be unwilling to return to the pre-1967 borders.
That doesn't mean there could not be some border which would work better for peace than the 1949 green line, or the present situation. But it makes harping on the pre-1967 border as if it would produce peace and security rather questionable.
I'm also not saying that means the Israeli's are justified in their actions. I think what's happening is horrible, and I want it to end in a better world.
I'm saying that some of the proposed "solutions" may be penny wise and pound foolish, ineffective in the real world of achieving the nominal aims of said solution, and too likely leading to even larger wars. Good (short term) intentions do not automatically lead to good (longer term) outcomes.
> "Reminding ourselves that each one of them had a face and a name is important."
I fully agree that each human affected has a face and a name.
However, at this moment, I am swamped with exactly that "reminder". The first ten times it might generously be termed a "reminder" just in case one had forgotten, but by the 100th time, it can come to feel like emotional manipulation because one hasn't forgotten.
And this can be done by both sides.
As I have said, I have sympathy for the strong passions, I can easily understand where they come from. But when almost EVERY attempt to rationally discuss the options gets hijacked by strong emotionalism, I do not think that lack of passion is the real problem or that further "stirring the emotions" is on the path out of the problem. Sober, unbiased, rational evaluation (grounded in big picture humane values) is in far shorter supply than inflamed passions.
If I rarely heard such "reminders" and most of the discussion was about seeking truth through reason and evidence, I might think that a reminder is needed. But when "reminders" are ubiquitous, and seem to be displacing other discussion, I question the value and role of once again shifting the discussion to the horrors of it all (as if that had been forgotten).
It starts feeling like CSJ folks saying "why don't we ever talk about race?", when such talk is already omnipresent.
I don't think the Steve or I are judging you or are thinking you are a monster. All things come with a cost and when the cost is too high it may just be a no sale.
We learn to accept the unacceptable when there is nothing we can do about it, but that is not cost free.
A friend who came to America as a boat person who had been an ARVN officer told me that when he finally went back for a visit with family still there he decided that the emotional wounds of the war would not heal until the last person with living memory of the war was dead.
In Israel/Palestine with never ending war that won't happen. They must accept the unacceptable horror of what is happening, and their part in it.
When I asked if people could kill the little girl as an acceptable pragmatic act of war if you saw her face as she died, it was implicit that you would have to accept her nocturnal visits in your dreams and not see yourself as a monster when you awake.
Not about judging which side is worse in that conflict, but if we were participants we would judge ourselves until we are dead.
I got that you were talking about the emotional cost (anticipated cost inhibiting action in advance, or trauma cost afterward), when asking if I could shoot a young girl in the head while looking into her eyes. I don't know that I personally could, even if in this contrived question that action would save 10 other young girls. But even if I personally couldn't do it, I might still think that 10 for 1 is the better answer if one has the guts to do it (and bear the cost).
I read about people who survive being trapped (eg: fallen tree or rubble) by cutting off their leg - painful but otherwise they die. I don't know if I personally could do that. But my human limitations don't mean that cutting off one's leg is thereby the wrong course of action in the larger picture. Those who do such a thing first need to be able to objectively engage with the reality they face (death if they don't cut off the leg) rather than fantasies, and secondly they need the strength to carry out an action which is bad in the short turn but good in the longer run.
I personally might also have a hard time being a field surgeon or a general. That doesn't mean there isn't a proper role for those who could.
(The above is about the broader concept of judging the rightness of the action, by whether it would be personally incredibly painful, rather than looking at the larger picture - using a deliberately different scenario to facilitate clear thinking. It is NOT meant to be any direct analogy to Israel/Palestine, so please nobody try to pick apart an analogy I was not making.)
You call the question contrived. It is not. Currently Israel is reducing Gaza to rubble and know full well that they are killing non-combatants, including a high number of children. But they do it with thousand-pound bombs where they don't see their victims and the horror is an abstraction.
In the case of the My Lai massacre during the war in Vietnam, Lt. Calley was rightfully prosecuted but the higher lever officers who ordered a preparatory artillery strike on the village were not. They knew the artillery strike they were ordering would be killing of civilians, but they were not looking them in the eye.
The Hamas ghouls certainly saw the faces of their victims and if they were all exterminated, I would not shed a tear for them.
Although rare, Israel has prosecuted IDF ground troops for unjustified killings https://en.idi.org.il/articles/12244 , but the leaders ordering it on a large scale seem exempt.
In the Marine's Hymn there is a phrase, "And to keep our honor clean". "Death before dishonor" was a popular tattoo back in the day. In my view, purposeful killing non-combatant (not collateral but purposeful) is dishonorable. The scale of what is taking place leads me to believe that it is purposeful and dishonorable and even Israel considers it to be a crime, for low level grunts who see those they kill. But just as with the My Lai massacre, that only seems to apply to those who see their faces.
I call that contrived because (1) there is no over-riding reason to do so mentioned. Is the alternative a nuclear war or just some property damage? It's free floating, without the essential context which would need to be weighed. (2) It is incredibly unlikely that I "personally" would ever face such a situation, where I needed to blow the brains of a child out, a contrived thought experiment rather than a feasible real world situation. It's rather unlikely that a burglar will ever say to me (or most people) "if you blow out the brains of this girl, I'll let your family live" or any other scenario, and (3) whether or not I personally would be able to "pull the trigger" is irrelevant to the issue; there are many things I personally would be able or unable to do, but my personal strength or weakness doesn't determine whether they should be done.
By contrast I brought up ordering a smaller military unit into a near suicidal mission in order to allow a larger unit to escape destruction. That's not a contrived, abstract and extremely unlikely-to-ever-occur-in-real-life thought experiment like me personally needing to look a small girl in the face before blowing out her brains in light of some unnamed greater good; it's a very real world situation faced by many.
I hope I've clarified what I meant by "contrived" (in contrast to realistic).
I was not saying it was invalid to consider thought experiments **as such** (I raise thought experiments myself at times), and I proceeded to engage with your scenario in good faith rather than rejecting it out of hand as "contrived" - I just noted as part of my response that your personal questioning of me in that scenario was in fact contrived rather than realistic. My intention in using "contrived" was descriptive, not dismissive.
While it is true that you, or I at my age, will not face that choice, at one time it was a possibility for me. If I had been one of Lt Calley's men, would I have shot on-combatant women and children as they fearfully squatted chanting prayers? I like to think that I wouldn't have.
The cannoneers who fired the artillery into the village didn't know the target. When for mission is called the coordinates are dialed in but they don't have time to get it a map and do the math. Someone higher up did that.
But if I was firing widely spread WP in a city, I would know. If you have no desire to participate in the "thought experiment" as irrelevant to you that's OK. No answer from you required, but at what level is purposefully killing non-combatants justifiable?
(As I said, I did engage with your question already, and only peripherally used "contrived" as descriptive rather than as an excuse not to engage.)
> "at what level is purposefully killing non-combatants justifiable"
Aye, stated that way, it's a much less contrived scenario, and a good question. Thanks.
That's a very real world situation rather than just an abstract thought experiment, with real world consequences. I don't sense any emotional manipulation, but more of exploring together a moral quandary that many humans face.
Your real world experience in related situations is much greater than mine. What is your answer?
Say, if you or your unit were in the open being fired upon (small arms, MG, RPG, whatever) by enemies in a civilian crowd or building, would you shoot back or call in an artillery strike to save yourself or others, even if you knew that no matter how careful you would like to be, civilians would be endangered thereby (and that putting you in that dilemma was exactly the strategy of those firing at you)?
Where and how would you draw the line? Up to how many civilians would you risk death or injury to, before you would decide instead to let the enemy sniper, machine gunner, platoon, or rocket launcher continue to take out your group without firing back?
And if in general it was discovered that your military was unwilling to harm more than whatever number of civilians your answer comes up with, would the enemy adopt more or less of the tactic of placing their attackers within similar civilian contexts?
(Aside: let's take My Lai out of this discussion, as it was not a case of collateral damage in seeking a military target, but more of expressing rage on completely non-military targets. That is, it was just plain wrong by anybody's ethics, and refusing to participate is a moral no-brainer, not a tricky moral balancing issue to explore as we are doing in this thread)
I didn't actually write that as an appeal to emotion, but to shine a light on the idea that it is far easier to support "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." when you are not the killer. One who sees the reality.
It might seem tactically sound to toss a frag into a bunch of kids if an enemy combatant pops up in their midst, but it is strategically foolish. If you kill one of my daughters in callous disregard (bug splat) you will not end my will to fight you, you will create it. Israel is creating enemies faster than they can kill them.
America used napalm and Willie Peter in Vietnam, but I never saw WP used as an airburst, let alone over a village. But when I saw these pictures, nobody had to tell me what it was. Excuse my French, but my instant thought was, "Those mother f****rs!" It takes a lot of balls to deny that that was white phosphorus with such an obvious bold-faced lie and ๐๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ฒ ๐๐ข๐๐ง'๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ค ๐ข๐ญ ๐ฐ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ฏ๐ข๐ฅ, ๐ฐ๐ก๐ฒ ๐๐ข๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ฒ ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐ญ๐จ ๐๐๐ง๐ฒ ๐ข๐ญ? Try to tell me that this is a tactical attack on a military target and not terrorism aimed at a civilian population.
Dave, I think we can all agree, 100% of us reading this substack, that it would be harder to intentionally kill a child in cold blood (for some greater purpose), than for somebody else to do it. Can we just stipulate that, and move to other issues?
For example, would Israel returning to the 1949 armistice borders make a more catastrophic war more or less likely in the next decade or two - the answer to that does not depend on whether it's harder or easier to kill a person while looking them in the eye.
You are welcome to condemn the excesses of Israelis and of Palestinians; in nearly every case I would agree with you. I just don't tend to think that curated atrocities tend to bring out the wisest parts of human being seeking the least awful outcomes for millions of people. Analysis is best done dispassionately (while connected to underlying humane values in the larger picture). It may take a lot of passion to implement even well thought out policies, but that's a separate step.
As a side question, you cite an article from 2009. Are you recounting your reaction from seeing that photo in 2009, or your outrage today in seeing a 2009 photo? Or was your reaction of "Those MF's" in response to 2023 photos which you did not reference?
I saw it then and that is what I thought at the time. Now I have seen video of large buildings collapsing into their footprint like the World Trade Center in the first days of response and Gaza laid to waste like Carthage now. Israel has always been disproportionate in its response. Has it caused its enemies to stop attacking our to do increasingly spectacular attacks?
I have not taken sides in this, but I call out both sides when I see what they are doing as wrong. I'm not a fan of the US sending 2000 pound bombs for use in a counter incergency in a city. The biggest round that has exploded near me was a 1000 pounder.
The people who tried and failed to catapult it and blew themselves up didn't see any of their friendlies in my proximity. I don't hold it against them or think it wrong. It was an unexploded bomb intended to be used on them that they collected after ASP1 blew up. 18 hours of boom, boom, boom that widely distributed a lot of ordinance sent back to us with bad intentions. I wouldn't want someone to try to kill my next door neighbor with one.
Thank you too. My original point was that it is easier to kill the faceless, and an armchair warmonger. As the conversation went on, I couldn't help but mention that I think (just my opinion) that Israel is doing a large-scale terror campaign. That is not a whatabout to defend the Hamas unambiguous terror attack.
It goes to something I wrote previously about the difference in counterinsurgency and war against nations. But even with that difference, with occupations terror tactics like rape take place that are not like bombing factories with civilian workers. I do think there is space for moral lines to be drawn and it should be.
After reflection, this brings up for me the "Trolley Problem", a widespread (and also contrived) thought experiment in moral philosophy. Briefly, for any reader not familiar, it goes like this:
"An out of control trolley car is barrelling down the track and about to kill 10 innocent workers further down the track, who cannot see it in time. However, you are stationed at a track switch between the trolley and the workers and can see the whole situation, and you know that if you pull a lever, the trolley will be diverted down another track, where there is only one worker who will be killed. Should you pull the level?"
You can think about that a bit and perhaps posit and answer.
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But then let's add some emotional juice to it:
"If you divert the trolley, before it hits the single worker, she will see that you have pulled the lever and directly caused her death, and will look you right in the eye as the trolley arrives, letting out a blood curling scream of terror. After the impact, you will have a clear view of her broken and bloody body, with her brains squished around the tracks."
Does adding this sudden jolt to the limbic system and the amygdala better illuminate the question of "what is the right thing to do morally, pull or not pull", or does it obscure that question? Would rationality (within an underlying moral value framework like causing the least harm) be a better approach to deciding the moral question, or would following your immediate visceral emotions be the wisest and best choice?
My answer: adding the emotionally evocative context does not change the moral question of pulling or not pulling the lever to switch the trolley, it just adds an additional personal cost to the person making the decision such that they might be more likely to make the wrong decision about the lever if they (understandably) can't personally bear that cost.
And that ties to a larger and more general question:
Is it wisest to determine "the right thing to do morally" based on rationally evaluating facts in light of underlying values, or by doing whatever is believed to be emotionally easiest on the decider?
Unfortunately, your quoted hypothetical question seems to me (if I understand it) to be aimed at supporting the latter approach. If in my flawed human psychology I were to be too squeamish to pull the lever in time and thus save 9 lives, that personal emotional limitation doesn't make not pulling it the morally best answer.
Nor would it make somebody who (at great emotional cost to themselves) does pull the lever a monster operating by ruthless and uncaring logic. They are still operating from deep caring, just at a higher level of cognition vs immediate emotion.
I won't delete my first response, since it's on the record and has been responded to in turn, but I like this answer better. Thanks for raising these tough issues, Dave.
Kill all of Hamas even if it means killing an unlimited number of non-combatant Palestinians is probably a lingering result of hatred for Muslim Arabs after the 9-11 takedown of the World Trade Center. The desire for revenges leads to a HatfieldโMcCoy feud that can go on for far too long.
Some have seen these words from me before, but I'll write them again. I had not been in Vietnam long when I saw the bodies of dead Viet Cong sappers found dead in the wire after the previous night's action. Their body's broken from gunfire, bones snapped and protruding from their skin, intestines in plain view. They were young, mostly about 13 years old. My first thought was that their mothers were waiting for them. My next thought was, so is mine. I was 18. They were child soldiers who had come to kill me. They were the enemy. The children who appeared on the road wherever we stopped after a truck hit a mine or we waited to cross a pontoon bridge were not the enemy. If a VC popped up in their midst, I would have chosen my M-16 in preference to a frag.
America was aghast when it learned of the My Lai massacre. Most of America anyway. Sadly, Isriel, America's darling, seems to have fewer detractors as they frag the children at the bridge.
๐n ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฌ๐ฉ๐ข๐ซ๐ข๐ญ ๐จ๐ ๐๐ญ๐๐ฏ๐'๐ฌ, ๐ฐ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐๐ง๐ฌ๐ฐ๐๐ซ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ช๐ฎ๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง. ๐'๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐๐ฌ๐ค ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ง๐๐๐ซ๐ฌ ๐จ๐ ๐๐ฌ๐ซ๐ข๐๐ฅ'๐ฌ ๐จ๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ค๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ, ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐ฉ๐๐ซ๐ฌ๐จ๐ง๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐ค ๐ ๐ง๐จ๐ง-๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐๐ญ๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐ก๐ข๐ฅ๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ ๐ก๐๐ซ ๐๐ซ๐๐ข๐ง๐ฌ ๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ? ๐๐จ๐ฎ! ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐๐จ ๐ข๐ญ?
> "๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐ฉ๐๐ซ๐ฌ๐จ๐ง๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐ค ๐ ๐ง๐จ๐ง-๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐๐ญ๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐ก๐ข๐ฅ๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ ๐ก๐๐ซ ๐๐ซ๐๐ข๐ง๐ฌ ๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ?"
This is an emotionally fraught subject, and I respect that people can have different takes on it. I can feel your compassion as you try to slice and dice tricky situations which have no clean answers. Please don't take what I have to say as being insensitive to the emotion involved, on a personal level (like me and you).
However, I fear that in the bigger picture (beyond me and you) such a framing is calculated to create overwhelming emotions which saturate the rational mind, alas more often bringing out the worst cognition (even while invoking the best).
Could you personally look into their eyes and order a small company of soldiers into certain death, in order to enable a larger formation to retreat and escape that fate? Or could you look instead into the eyes of the larger group who would die due to your inability to sacrifice the smaller group? Does this way of making a decision by eye contact squeamishness strike you as functional?
That kind of "look them in the eye" decision making does not, in my view, constitute a likely path out of tricky situations where we need every ounce of our rational perspective to choose the least bad outcome. It favors local rather than global optimization, or short term versus long term thinking.
But it's even more problematic if the morally costly option is presented in isolation - your scenario posits nothing about the consequences of your deciding NOT to take an action which results in the death of a non-combatant child. Your scenario omits any balancing, presenting only an isolated moral cost with nothing to be gained. If there were no overriding reasons, then no I could not. If there WERE over-riding reasons, then whether or not I as in imperfect human could personally take some action does not determine whether it's the wisest action.
And again, I realize you are trying to sort out some morally fraught no-win situations as best a human can, so I have a lot of sympathy and my (hopefully gentle enough) dissent is not motivated by disrespect.
In the overwhelmingly unlikely hypothetical case of my personally needing to shoot an innocent child in order to save a larger group, whether I did or not, I'd likely be one of the casualties. It would likely destroy me either way. But that feature of my psyche doesn't guide us in selecting the best path.
"That kind of "look them in the eye" decision making does not, in my view, constitute a likely path out of tricky situations where we need every ounce of our rational perspective to choose the least bad outcome."
I understand the dangers of appeals to emotion in situations where logic is necessary, but the entire situation is fraught with this kind of emotional pleading. That's why this situation has led to such irrationality.
No rational person could argue that it was reasonable to blockade two million people into a relatively small area, persecute them for decades, and then drop three Hiroshima's worth of bombs on the civilian population when extremists commit an undeniably atrocious attack.
No rational person could claim that because these extremists committed this atrocious attack, ANY response, no matter how atrocious, was the exclusive fault of the extremists.
No rational person could call the 2 million people living in the region, with extremely limited ability to leave thanks to the aforementioned blockade, "human shields" instead of "innocent, uninvolved civilians." No rational person could argue that the foremost military power in the region, with the full support of arguably the foremost military power in the world, can't do better than dropping 65,000 tons worth of unguided bombs on civilian targets.
So I think this "look in the eyes" rhetoric, is about humanising the people who are dying right now. We SHOULD feel emotion for them. It IS monstrous to be purely rational about such immense loss of life. Every single person staunchly defending Israel's atrocities does so on the back of this 1200 people killed on October 7th. And righty so. This, too, should stir our emotions.
I'm just astonished by how many people only seem to be able to generate emotion in one direction.
Please read this sentence: I am NOT defending the massive Israeli attack on Gaza, which is undeniable. This is more about critical thinking in the consumption of news sources, versus simply repeating the most outrageous accusations one can find.
> "No rational person could argue that it was reasonable to ... drop three Hiroshima's worth of bombs on the civilian population when extremists commit an undeniably atrocious attack."
That latter assertion is quite a good outrage producer, but as is my wont, I wondered where this figure "3 Hiroshima's" came from, as it seems surprisingly large upon even superficial consideration. The Hiroshima bomb was estimated at 12 to 18 kilotons, so three times that would be 36,000 to 54,000 tonnes of TNT.
The largest (non-nuclear) ordinance used by the IDF is the BLU117, or so called 2000 pound bomb, which actually contains about 1000 pounds of TNT equivalent, so it would take about 70,000 -110,000 of such bombs to equal 3 Hiroshima bombs.
For context, the US has supplied 5400 BLU117, but it's unlikely that all have been used. We do know that hundreds have been tho.
Of course, the vast majority of the artillery, rockets and bombs used in Gaza were much smaller than that monster. So that claim is a bit dubious, likely exaggerated by severalfold, perhaps even an order of magnitude high. But that estimate would be subject to revision with facts from a competent and unbiased source.
So where did the claim come from? Apparently, it came from the Gaza Media Office, an organ of Hamas (ie: part of their propaganda apparatus).
From what I can find in a quick search, it looks like those who wish to fuel the anti-Israel narratives are (1) exaggerating the number of weapons dropped or fired, (2) falsely assuming that all of them are very large indeed, and (3) counting the total starting weight (including casings, rocket motors, guidance, fuel, etc) as being pure TNT. And counting on an audience who *wants* to believe the worst and will not do any checking.
Simply taking Hamas' word for it, and repeating without any verification (or even quick reality-check arithmetic) their 3 Hiroshima framing, which was calculated to foster outrage in a gullible public in the West, is less than optimal for factuality.
Likewise assuming that 100% of that exaggerated 65,000 tonnes of explosive was unguided (better estimates of the percentage is 40-45%), and assuming that it was all dropped on civilians (and none of it on military targets). Good for outrage, bad for truth.
Let's all beware of unreflective echoing of propaganda - and the "motivated reasoning" bias we can ALL experience in uncritically accepting anything which seems to support the point we wish to make. This is a note to myself as well, so nobody should take it too personally, but we should all take it seriously and up our game.
(Let me note that my primary point is about using known unreliable sources like Hamas in our writing. Doing post-writing research which is selectively looking for the highest numbers one can cull from other sources in order to be 'right' - ie: sources which were not considered before writing - does NOT mean the initial credulity goes away. At best it means one was lucky.)
And once again - even if the figures from Hamas (or from peace groups, etc) are grossly exaggerated for propaganda effect, there is zero doubt that Israel has nevertheless engaged in truly massive destruction in Gaza, and that can be justly condemned. So I'm not arguing against the main point, but cautioning about good process - about not believing and amplifying a questionable source just because it supports our point.)
(Aside: Apart from total quantities, just the use of several hundred 2000 pound bombs in a crowded area like Gaza - which has been verified by bomb crater analysis of satellite photos - is in itself very hard to justify, even if it's not tens of thousands of such bombs. I am appalled at many things that Israel has done).
But we can do that condemnation carefully, without being taken in by easily dispelled misinformation from propaganda sources. We must trust that the truth is enough to support our points, with no need for exaggeration.
"Please read this sentence: I am NOT defending the massive Israeli attack on Gaza, which is undeniable. This is more about critical thinking in the consumption of news sources, versus simply repeating the most outrageous accusations one can find."
For the record, I find disclaimers like this, which you use quite frequently, to be unnecessary and condescending. If you write a sentence, you don't then need to instruct people to read it.
If, in their reply, you feel that they've made an unfair assumption about your motives, it's obviously appropriate to point that out. But I think it's sensible to give people the benefit of the doubt that they'll at least read what you've written and aren't going to react like irrational children.
This is just my feeling on it, of course. Others might feel differently. But thought I'd offer the feedback, as stuff like that just makes it exponentially more likely I won't bother replying.
Anyway, that said, I appreciate this comment. We completely agree that accurate, clearly expressed information is important. And while I did check the figures for myself, I didn't go into the same detail you did regarding tonnage vs direct explosive force. So, looks like the correct figure is around one Hiroshima's worth, no? Google is telling me that the explosive yield of a bomb is typically around 30-40% of the weight. 65,000 x 0.3 = 19,500. Little Boy, according to Wikipedia, was 15,000.
I don't have any great problem using information from Hamas or Gaza as long as I do some verification myself. Hamas' figures have proven to be accurate over the many years of this conflict, there's no good reason to believe they aren't here. I think a lot of people constantly trying to cast doubt on the "Hamas figures" are doing so because the reality of what Israel is doing is tough fro them to swallow. And while Hiroshima comparison are undeniably emotive, I think it's also quite difficult for the people to get a sense of what 65,000 tons of bombs means. Is that a lot? It sounds like a lot. But there's no context.
Anyway, I'd repeated the "3 Hiroshimas" in an article, which I've now corrected (I'll just stick with tonnage rather than "Hiroshima units" until I find a better way to convey the scale), so again, really appreciate the correction.
Steve, I fully agree that:
> "the entire situation is fraught with this kind of emotional pleading. That's why this situation has led to such irrationality."
Exactly. People on all sides are using and being influenced by emotional manipulation, and so cognitively compromised that they often cannot recognize even basic truths.
Where we may differ is that I believe the only hope of minimizing the terrible outcomes is through reducing that irrational raw emotionality, rather than expanding it.
Let me be very clear about something, which is usually misunderstood and which I fear might easily be misunderstood here. I do not believe that pure rationality alone can ever provide a guide, by humans or any other intelligence, organic or artificial. An absolutely rational entity, operating based on pure reason without any non-rational assumptions, values, or axioms, has no purpose or goal or meaning. Without values, it's no more or less rational to destroy the world with dirty nuclear weapons than to cure cancer.
I think the latter is a better outcome, but only because it is more coherent with my (irrational) values.
I see reason and rationality not as providing the values (which are not rational), but as providing the tools for effectively implementing values, and avoiding sabotaging oneself through disconnect with reality.
So when I advocate for a rational perspective on a situation like Israel/Palestine, I'm not suggesting that rationality should or even could be untethered to values and emotions as the underlying motivations, only that our reasoning and exploration of alternatives not be cognitively blinded by emotions so as to inadvertently undermine those underlying values and emotions.
As best I can decipher the issues in Israel/Palestine, a deficit of passionate emotions is not the core dysfunction, and the way out does not involve further "stirring our emotions". The deficit I see is in dispassionate reasoning and respect for truth, while still anchored to underlying humane values.
> "It IS monstrous to be purely rational about such immense loss of life."
I sympathize with your passion, but I think that statement represents a misunderstanding. The loss of 20+ thousand lives is a terrible tragedy, but when literally millions of lives are hanging in the balance (in an all out future war), SOMEBODY has to look at the situation with clear vision, rather then through a red haze of irrational emotionalit and knee-jerk response to the immediate stimulus, or there could be vastly larger tragedy in the offing.
That is, the rationality I am advocating is DEEPLY intertwined with caring about lives - ALL of the lives which are on the line, not just the subset showing up in videos. Wanting to avoid going off half cocked in a blind reaction to an emotionally evocative incident is an outgrowth of deep caring about the ultimate outcomes, not of indifference.
In case it's not clear, everything I'm saying also fully applies to the emotional reaction of Israelis to the terrorist attack on Oct 7. There too rational concerns (grounded in humane values, not free floating) need to over-ride appeals to strong emotion (like revenge). My saying that doesn't come from not caring about the 1400 lost Israeli lives - but from ALSO caring about the millions of other lives (Israeli and Palestinian) which are still on the line.
I am quite sympathetic to the high emotions (on both sides), but I do not wish to lose my ability to reason clearly by joining them. If that path produced good outcomes, the issues would have been long solved. My goal is to have clear sight connected by good reasoning to positive humane values in seeking the best outcome for all - rather than being emotionally hijacked and stampeded by whatever atrocity is in my visual field at the moment. If you feel that makes me an uncaring monster, I will just have to live with that.
Yeah, as Dave said, I don't think anybody's accusing you of being any kind of monster. The point is that there's a difference between allowing for emotion and being ruled by your emotions. Just as, as you say, there's a difference between being rational and being a robot (not accusing you of being a robot or, in fact, any of these. Just establishing a baseline).
If we were all looking at the situation with clear vision, Israel would follow international law by defining it's borders in line with the 1967 borders, ending the blockade and, at the very least, reshaping the West Bank Barrier in line with those borders, removing the illegal settlements, and allowing Palestinians forcibly removed from their homes to return. Israel's attempts to move forward without accepting this are a significant source of the turmoil in the region.
Israel would also recognise that bombing Gaza into oblivion can only ever radicalise their enemies even further and lead to more attacks in future.
The Palestinians would accept Israel's acceptance of International law with good grace, denounce all future violence, and devote their energies to making their Palestinian state flourish.
The Palestinians would also recognise that acts of violence against the most powerful military force in the region, even if that military force is breaking international law, can only ever end badly for Palestine.
This is all perfectly rational and humane. But it's not even close to where we are. Because there are decades of emotion clouding the issue for both sides. So first, we have to start with the simplest possible questions like, "how can we get these people to agree to stop killing each other as soon as possible?"
I think the main reason Palestinians hate Israelis are the aforementioned violations of international law. Most of all, the humiliation and suffering related to the blockade, occupation and settlers.
I think the main reason Israelis hate Palestinians is the fear that one of them will come to Israel and blow themselves up on a bus or in a synagogue. Or now, come across the border with paragliders and rape, kill and abduct civilians. There's also the fear that Palestinians want to drive them from what they see as their God-given land.
If I've learned one thing over the past few years of talking and writing about these kinds of issues, it's that being objectively correct, having all your facts right and using iron-clad logic, isn't even close to enough. You always have to contend with people's emotions. You have to bridge gaps where there's a strong difference of opinion about what the "best solution for everyone" is. And the best way to do that, as you say, is to appeal to simple--and hopefully common--values.
Saving the lives of as many children as possible. Freeing hostages. Liberating innocent people from oppression. Allowing people to live peacefully in the land they were born in. Most people can agree on the importance of these ideas because we can empathise and emote. We know we'd want these things for ourselves and the people we love. The people who can't compromise even on issues like these are the ones who are being irrational. And sometimes you need to poke them to remind them of the full human weight of what they're arguing.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing on the broader point, we need cool heads. We can't allow a single atrocity to dominate all other thinking. I just also think there's a real danger of being cool headed to the point where these human beings just become abstract numbers. 10,000 here, 1,400 there. Reminding ourselves that each one of them had a face and a name is important.
> "If I've learned one thing over the past few years of talking and writing about these kinds of issues, it's that being objectively correct, having all your facts right and using iron-clad logic, isn't even close to enough. You always have to contend with people's emotions."
I fully agree, at a broad and general level.
Analysis and persuasion have different characters, and should not be conflated into one big ball of sameness.
Accurate analysis is hindered, not helped, by constant emotional hijacking. That's a time when it's best to have the ability to detach from the emotions of the moment in order to better understand the rational connection between actions and our humane values.
After one uses this dispassionate logic to better understand real world, you are correct that one still needs to use emotional arguments to persuade others, because that's how the majority get convinced.
Both are true, of their separate domains. But it is not helpful to lump them together and assume that the same dynamics apply to both accurate analysis and to public persuasion, so if passionate emotionality helps with the latter it must also help with the former.
I'm guessing that by "1967 borders" you don't mean the borders from 1967 to present, but the borders from 1949 to 1967, ie: basically the "green line" 1949 armistice borders, right?
Why do you see the 1949 armistice line as more legitimate than, say, the 1946 borders? Or the 1947 UN partition plan?
A problem is - a lot of Palestinians (and their supporters in the Arabic and/or Muslim world as well as the West) do not accept the borders established by war in 1949 either (ie: your (pre) 1967 border).
Look at Gaza - whose border pretty much follows the 1949-1967 borders. Israelis are not shrinking Gaza, in fact in 2005 they forcibly removed all the settlers, in what the left leaning government sold as "land for peace". But the Gazans overwhelmingly elected two parties who were not calling for an end to the blockade, but an end to Israel entirely.
What I'm getting at is: do you believe that a "return to the pre-1967 borders" (even if Palestinians do not accept those borders as any more valid) would end or reduce the intention of eliminating Israel? Our would it result in Israel essentially facing the same implacable opposition, only much better armed and positioned?
Try this: use Google maps to zoom in on the Tel Aviv area, and note how far t is from the 1949-1967 border to, say, Tel Aviv. The airport is only about 8 miles from the border. Hesbolah has reportedly amassed 100,000 rockets in the north, so an independent Palestine could do so too, far closer to Israeli population centers. But they wouldn't even need rockets - it's in very easy artillery range. Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centers would likely become similar to Seol South Korea, with massive North Korean artillery able to destroy any portion thereof.
The possibility of a war with Palestinian losses 10 or 100 or more times greater than what's happening in Gaza today would be very real (along with an even greater multiplier of Israeli losses). Literally millions of lives would be at stake, and if Israel were to feel they were losing, nukes would come out.
I can't simply say "a rational person would obviously agree that withdrawing to the pre-1967 borders would obviously reduce rather than increase the chances of a catastrophic war in the coming decades". We don't know the future, but the chances of a vastly worse outcome for Israelis and Palestinians seems is hardly trivial.
In the strategic circumstance, with literally millions of lives likely on the line, it seems short sighted to simply decide on the best course forward based on no more than what saves thousands of lives in the immediate future - no matter how many horrifying videos try to emotionally hijack our rational long term considerations, under the nominal intention of "reminding us" that there are real people dying.
If one is concerned about a far more catastrophic war in the future, we have to factor in the real people with faces and names who would die in that conflict - even tho we don't have videos of those people yet, to activate our limbic systems and amygdala.
I've been reading the Hamas charter, the statement of Hamas leaders, the statement of PA leaders, and opinion polls among Palestinians (which are skimpy because it's very hard to do, even before this war). I personally don't see much realistic hope of peace, only of different front lines. And from that perspective, I can understand why Israel may be unwilling to return to the pre-1967 borders.
That doesn't mean there could not be some border which would work better for peace than the 1949 green line, or the present situation. But it makes harping on the pre-1967 border as if it would produce peace and security rather questionable.
I'm also not saying that means the Israeli's are justified in their actions. I think what's happening is horrible, and I want it to end in a better world.
I'm saying that some of the proposed "solutions" may be penny wise and pound foolish, ineffective in the real world of achieving the nominal aims of said solution, and too likely leading to even larger wars. Good (short term) intentions do not automatically lead to good (longer term) outcomes.
> "Reminding ourselves that each one of them had a face and a name is important."
I fully agree that each human affected has a face and a name.
However, at this moment, I am swamped with exactly that "reminder". The first ten times it might generously be termed a "reminder" just in case one had forgotten, but by the 100th time, it can come to feel like emotional manipulation because one hasn't forgotten.
And this can be done by both sides.
As I have said, I have sympathy for the strong passions, I can easily understand where they come from. But when almost EVERY attempt to rationally discuss the options gets hijacked by strong emotionalism, I do not think that lack of passion is the real problem or that further "stirring the emotions" is on the path out of the problem. Sober, unbiased, rational evaluation (grounded in big picture humane values) is in far shorter supply than inflamed passions.
If I rarely heard such "reminders" and most of the discussion was about seeking truth through reason and evidence, I might think that a reminder is needed. But when "reminders" are ubiquitous, and seem to be displacing other discussion, I question the value and role of once again shifting the discussion to the horrors of it all (as if that had been forgotten).
It starts feeling like CSJ folks saying "why don't we ever talk about race?", when such talk is already omnipresent.
I don't think the Steve or I are judging you or are thinking you are a monster. All things come with a cost and when the cost is too high it may just be a no sale.
We learn to accept the unacceptable when there is nothing we can do about it, but that is not cost free.
A friend who came to America as a boat person who had been an ARVN officer told me that when he finally went back for a visit with family still there he decided that the emotional wounds of the war would not heal until the last person with living memory of the war was dead.
In Israel/Palestine with never ending war that won't happen. They must accept the unacceptable horror of what is happening, and their part in it.
When I asked if people could kill the little girl as an acceptable pragmatic act of war if you saw her face as she died, it was implicit that you would have to accept her nocturnal visits in your dreams and not see yourself as a monster when you awake.
Not about judging which side is worse in that conflict, but if we were participants we would judge ourselves until we are dead.
I got that you were talking about the emotional cost (anticipated cost inhibiting action in advance, or trauma cost afterward), when asking if I could shoot a young girl in the head while looking into her eyes. I don't know that I personally could, even if in this contrived question that action would save 10 other young girls. But even if I personally couldn't do it, I might still think that 10 for 1 is the better answer if one has the guts to do it (and bear the cost).
I read about people who survive being trapped (eg: fallen tree or rubble) by cutting off their leg - painful but otherwise they die. I don't know if I personally could do that. But my human limitations don't mean that cutting off one's leg is thereby the wrong course of action in the larger picture. Those who do such a thing first need to be able to objectively engage with the reality they face (death if they don't cut off the leg) rather than fantasies, and secondly they need the strength to carry out an action which is bad in the short turn but good in the longer run.
I personally might also have a hard time being a field surgeon or a general. That doesn't mean there isn't a proper role for those who could.
(The above is about the broader concept of judging the rightness of the action, by whether it would be personally incredibly painful, rather than looking at the larger picture - using a deliberately different scenario to facilitate clear thinking. It is NOT meant to be any direct analogy to Israel/Palestine, so please nobody try to pick apart an analogy I was not making.)
You call the question contrived. It is not. Currently Israel is reducing Gaza to rubble and know full well that they are killing non-combatants, including a high number of children. But they do it with thousand-pound bombs where they don't see their victims and the horror is an abstraction.
In the case of the My Lai massacre during the war in Vietnam, Lt. Calley was rightfully prosecuted but the higher lever officers who ordered a preparatory artillery strike on the village were not. They knew the artillery strike they were ordering would be killing of civilians, but they were not looking them in the eye.
The Hamas ghouls certainly saw the faces of their victims and if they were all exterminated, I would not shed a tear for them.
Although rare, Israel has prosecuted IDF ground troops for unjustified killings https://en.idi.org.il/articles/12244 , but the leaders ordering it on a large scale seem exempt.
In the Marine's Hymn there is a phrase, "And to keep our honor clean". "Death before dishonor" was a popular tattoo back in the day. In my view, purposeful killing non-combatant (not collateral but purposeful) is dishonorable. The scale of what is taking place leads me to believe that it is purposeful and dishonorable and even Israel considers it to be a crime, for low level grunts who see those they kill. But just as with the My Lai massacre, that only seems to apply to those who see their faces.
I agree with everything you said, except that the question was not contrived. The question:
> "๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐ฉ๐๐ซ๐ฌ๐จ๐ง๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐ค ๐ ๐ง๐จ๐ง-๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐๐ญ๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐ก๐ข๐ฅ๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ ๐ก๐๐ซ ๐๐ซ๐๐ข๐ง๐ฌ ๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ?"
I call that contrived because (1) there is no over-riding reason to do so mentioned. Is the alternative a nuclear war or just some property damage? It's free floating, without the essential context which would need to be weighed. (2) It is incredibly unlikely that I "personally" would ever face such a situation, where I needed to blow the brains of a child out, a contrived thought experiment rather than a feasible real world situation. It's rather unlikely that a burglar will ever say to me (or most people) "if you blow out the brains of this girl, I'll let your family live" or any other scenario, and (3) whether or not I personally would be able to "pull the trigger" is irrelevant to the issue; there are many things I personally would be able or unable to do, but my personal strength or weakness doesn't determine whether they should be done.
By contrast I brought up ordering a smaller military unit into a near suicidal mission in order to allow a larger unit to escape destruction. That's not a contrived, abstract and extremely unlikely-to-ever-occur-in-real-life thought experiment like me personally needing to look a small girl in the face before blowing out her brains in light of some unnamed greater good; it's a very real world situation faced by many.
I hope I've clarified what I meant by "contrived" (in contrast to realistic).
I was not saying it was invalid to consider thought experiments **as such** (I raise thought experiments myself at times), and I proceeded to engage with your scenario in good faith rather than rejecting it out of hand as "contrived" - I just noted as part of my response that your personal questioning of me in that scenario was in fact contrived rather than realistic. My intention in using "contrived" was descriptive, not dismissive.
While it is true that you, or I at my age, will not face that choice, at one time it was a possibility for me. If I had been one of Lt Calley's men, would I have shot on-combatant women and children as they fearfully squatted chanting prayers? I like to think that I wouldn't have.
The cannoneers who fired the artillery into the village didn't know the target. When for mission is called the coordinates are dialed in but they don't have time to get it a map and do the math. Someone higher up did that.
But if I was firing widely spread WP in a city, I would know. If you have no desire to participate in the "thought experiment" as irrelevant to you that's OK. No answer from you required, but at what level is purposefully killing non-combatants justifiable?
[edited typing on a phone errors]
(As I said, I did engage with your question already, and only peripherally used "contrived" as descriptive rather than as an excuse not to engage.)
> "at what level is purposefully killing non-combatants justifiable"
Aye, stated that way, it's a much less contrived scenario, and a good question. Thanks.
That's a very real world situation rather than just an abstract thought experiment, with real world consequences. I don't sense any emotional manipulation, but more of exploring together a moral quandary that many humans face.
Your real world experience in related situations is much greater than mine. What is your answer?
Say, if you or your unit were in the open being fired upon (small arms, MG, RPG, whatever) by enemies in a civilian crowd or building, would you shoot back or call in an artillery strike to save yourself or others, even if you knew that no matter how careful you would like to be, civilians would be endangered thereby (and that putting you in that dilemma was exactly the strategy of those firing at you)?
Where and how would you draw the line? Up to how many civilians would you risk death or injury to, before you would decide instead to let the enemy sniper, machine gunner, platoon, or rocket launcher continue to take out your group without firing back?
And if in general it was discovered that your military was unwilling to harm more than whatever number of civilians your answer comes up with, would the enemy adopt more or less of the tactic of placing their attackers within similar civilian contexts?
(Aside: let's take My Lai out of this discussion, as it was not a case of collateral damage in seeking a military target, but more of expressing rage on completely non-military targets. That is, it was just plain wrong by anybody's ethics, and refusing to participate is a moral no-brainer, not a tricky moral balancing issue to explore as we are doing in this thread)
If you have time for reading, I recommend this book. If you don't, take a look at the sample. It could go a long way toward understanding.
https://www.amazon.com/Fields-Fire-Novel-James-Webb-ebook/dp/B000SEFH74/
I didn't actually write that as an appeal to emotion, but to shine a light on the idea that it is far easier to support "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." when you are not the killer. One who sees the reality.
It might seem tactically sound to toss a frag into a bunch of kids if an enemy combatant pops up in their midst, but it is strategically foolish. If you kill one of my daughters in callous disregard (bug splat) you will not end my will to fight you, you will create it. Israel is creating enemies faster than they can kill them.
America used napalm and Willie Peter in Vietnam, but I never saw WP used as an airburst, let alone over a village. But when I saw these pictures, nobody had to tell me what it was. Excuse my French, but my instant thought was, "Those mother f****rs!" It takes a lot of balls to deny that that was white phosphorus with such an obvious bold-faced lie and ๐๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ฒ ๐๐ข๐๐ง'๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ค ๐ข๐ญ ๐ฐ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ฏ๐ข๐ฅ, ๐ฐ๐ก๐ฒ ๐๐ข๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ฒ ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐ญ๐จ ๐๐๐ง๐ฒ ๐ข๐ญ? Try to tell me that this is a tactical attack on a military target and not terrorism aimed at a civilian population.
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/0114/p07s01-wome.html
I am not a pacifist, but a revenge terror campaign is too much and that is what it has become as I see it.
Dave, I think we can all agree, 100% of us reading this substack, that it would be harder to intentionally kill a child in cold blood (for some greater purpose), than for somebody else to do it. Can we just stipulate that, and move to other issues?
For example, would Israel returning to the 1949 armistice borders make a more catastrophic war more or less likely in the next decade or two - the answer to that does not depend on whether it's harder or easier to kill a person while looking them in the eye.
You are welcome to condemn the excesses of Israelis and of Palestinians; in nearly every case I would agree with you. I just don't tend to think that curated atrocities tend to bring out the wisest parts of human being seeking the least awful outcomes for millions of people. Analysis is best done dispassionately (while connected to underlying humane values in the larger picture). It may take a lot of passion to implement even well thought out policies, but that's a separate step.
As a side question, you cite an article from 2009. Are you recounting your reaction from seeing that photo in 2009, or your outrage today in seeing a 2009 photo? Or was your reaction of "Those MF's" in response to 2023 photos which you did not reference?
I saw it then and that is what I thought at the time. Now I have seen video of large buildings collapsing into their footprint like the World Trade Center in the first days of response and Gaza laid to waste like Carthage now. Israel has always been disproportionate in its response. Has it caused its enemies to stop attacking our to do increasingly spectacular attacks?
I have not taken sides in this, but I call out both sides when I see what they are doing as wrong. I'm not a fan of the US sending 2000 pound bombs for use in a counter incergency in a city. The biggest round that has exploded near me was a 1000 pounder.
The people who tried and failed to catapult it and blew themselves up didn't see any of their friendlies in my proximity. I don't hold it against them or think it wrong. It was an unexploded bomb intended to be used on them that they collected after ASP1 blew up. 18 hours of boom, boom, boom that widely distributed a lot of ordinance sent back to us with bad intentions. I wouldn't want someone to try to kill my next door neighbor with one.
> "I have not taken sides in this, but I call out both sides when I see what they are doing as wrong."
That commonality is why we can calmly discuss this. Thanks.
Thank you too. My original point was that it is easier to kill the faceless, and an armchair warmonger. As the conversation went on, I couldn't help but mention that I think (just my opinion) that Israel is doing a large-scale terror campaign. That is not a whatabout to defend the Hamas unambiguous terror attack.
It goes to something I wrote previously about the difference in counterinsurgency and war against nations. But even with that difference, with occupations terror tactics like rape take place that are not like bombing factories with civilian workers. I do think there is space for moral lines to be drawn and it should be.
A sarcastic paraphrasing of Numbers 285 from the Skeptics annotated Bible: "๐๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐๐ฐ๐ฅ'๐ด ๐ฅ๐ช๐ณ๐ฆ๐ค๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ, ๐๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐ด' ๐ข๐ณ๐ฎ๐บ ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ง๐ฆ๐ข๐ต๐ด ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ช๐ฅ๐ช๐ข๐ฏ๐ช๐ต๐ฆ๐ด. ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ๐บ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ข๐ฅ๐ถ๐ญ๐ต ๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ฆ๐ด, ๐ฃ๐ถ๐ต ๐ต๐ข๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ค๐ฉ๐ช๐ญ๐ฅ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ค๐ข๐ฑ๐ต๐ช๐ท๐ฆ. ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐ด ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ฏ๐ด ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐บ ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ง๐ต ๐ด๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ, ๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ข๐ฏ๐จ๐ณ๐ช๐ญ๐บ ๐ด๐ข๐บ๐ด: "๐๐ข๐ท๐ฆ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ด๐ข๐ท๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ? ๐๐ช๐ญ๐ญ ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐บ ๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ฆ ๐ข๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐จ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐ต๐ญ๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ด, ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐บ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ข๐ฏ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ฉ๐ข๐ต๐ฉ ๐ฌ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ธ๐ฏ ๐ฎ๐ข๐ฏ ๐ฃ๐บ ๐ญ๐บ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ ๐ฉ๐ช๐ฎ. ๐๐ถ๐ต ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ค๐ฉ๐ช๐ญ๐ฅ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฏ, ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ฉ๐ข๐ท๐ฆ ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต ๐ฌ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ธ๐ฏ ๐ข ๐ฎ๐ข๐ฏ ๐ฃ๐บ ๐ญ๐บ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ ๐ฉ๐ช๐ฎ, ๐ฌ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฑ ๐ข๐ญ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ณ๐ด๐ฆ๐ญ๐ท๐ฆ๐ด." ๐๐ฐ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐บ ๐ธ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐ฃ๐ข๐ค๐ฌ ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฅ๐ช๐ฅ ๐ข๐ด ๐๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ๐ด (๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ถ๐ฎ๐ข๐ฃ๐ญ๐บ ๐๐ฐ๐ฅ) ๐ช๐ฏ๐ด๐ต๐ณ๐ถ๐ค๐ต๐ฆ๐ฅ, ๐ฌ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐บ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ ๐ฆ๐น๐ค๐ฆ๐ฑ๐ต ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ท๐ช๐ณ๐จ๐ช๐ฏ๐ด. ๐๐ฏ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ธ๐ข๐บ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐บ ๐จ๐ฐ๐ต 32,000 ๐ท๐ช๐ณ๐จ๐ช๐ฏ๐ด -- ๐๐ฐ๐ธ! (๐๐ท๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐๐ฐ๐ฅ ๐จ๐ฆ๐ต๐ด ๐ด๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฐ๐ต๐บ -- ๐ช๐ฏ๐ค๐ญ๐ถ๐ฅ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ท๐ช๐ณ๐จ๐ช๐ฏ๐ด.) 31:1-54"
When religion becomes an OK for the despicable to take place it does
https://youtu.be/5y2FuDY6Q4M?si=0K3B19vAjA72IBlI
Written a few days later then my other response; I'd like to take another try at clarity.
(Caution - I will NOT be analogizing anything in this post to the Gaza situation, it's about the moral reasoning we apply to many situations)
> ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐ฉ๐๐ซ๐ฌ๐จ๐ง๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐ค ๐ ๐ง๐จ๐ง-๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐๐ญ๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐ก๐ข๐ฅ๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ ๐ก๐๐ซ ๐๐ซ๐๐ข๐ง๐ฌ ๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ? ๐๐จ๐ฎ! ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐๐จ ๐ข๐ญ?
After reflection, this brings up for me the "Trolley Problem", a widespread (and also contrived) thought experiment in moral philosophy. Briefly, for any reader not familiar, it goes like this:
"An out of control trolley car is barrelling down the track and about to kill 10 innocent workers further down the track, who cannot see it in time. However, you are stationed at a track switch between the trolley and the workers and can see the whole situation, and you know that if you pull a lever, the trolley will be diverted down another track, where there is only one worker who will be killed. Should you pull the level?"
You can think about that a bit and perhaps posit and answer.
-----
But then let's add some emotional juice to it:
"If you divert the trolley, before it hits the single worker, she will see that you have pulled the lever and directly caused her death, and will look you right in the eye as the trolley arrives, letting out a blood curling scream of terror. After the impact, you will have a clear view of her broken and bloody body, with her brains squished around the tracks."
Does adding this sudden jolt to the limbic system and the amygdala better illuminate the question of "what is the right thing to do morally, pull or not pull", or does it obscure that question? Would rationality (within an underlying moral value framework like causing the least harm) be a better approach to deciding the moral question, or would following your immediate visceral emotions be the wisest and best choice?
My answer: adding the emotionally evocative context does not change the moral question of pulling or not pulling the lever to switch the trolley, it just adds an additional personal cost to the person making the decision such that they might be more likely to make the wrong decision about the lever if they (understandably) can't personally bear that cost.
And that ties to a larger and more general question:
Is it wisest to determine "the right thing to do morally" based on rationally evaluating facts in light of underlying values, or by doing whatever is believed to be emotionally easiest on the decider?
Unfortunately, your quoted hypothetical question seems to me (if I understand it) to be aimed at supporting the latter approach. If in my flawed human psychology I were to be too squeamish to pull the lever in time and thus save 9 lives, that personal emotional limitation doesn't make not pulling it the morally best answer.
Nor would it make somebody who (at great emotional cost to themselves) does pull the lever a monster operating by ruthless and uncaring logic. They are still operating from deep caring, just at a higher level of cognition vs immediate emotion.
I won't delete my first response, since it's on the record and has been responded to in turn, but I like this answer better. Thanks for raising these tough issues, Dave.
No one does that. Could I drop a bomb on a Hamas installation knowing that children live in Gaza? Yes.
Actually, some do that, but it's much easier to kill the faceless which is why I asked.
๐๐ต ๐ช๐ด ๐ธ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ญ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ธ๐ข๐ณ ๐ช๐ด ๐ด๐ฐ ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ณ๐ช๐ฃ๐ญ๐ฆ, ๐ฐ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ธ๐ช๐ด๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ด๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ญ๐ฅ ๐จ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ต๐ฐ๐ฐ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ช๐ต. -๐๐ฐ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต ๐. ๐๐ฆ๐ฆ
There lies the problem. War is not terrible from afar where you don't have to see the faces of the those that you kill.
Yes so many armchair quarterbacks who donโt know wat.