It seems to me that state terrorism is a much more dangerous beast than stateless terrorism.
There are two sides to that: the intent, and the result. The intent, I agree with you, is very different. But the result -- innocent people dying -- is the same. So in respect to the latter, I stand by my opinion that wilfully ignoring the actions of Hezbollah terrorists is tantamount to intellectual dishonesty (if that is being done, which is the impression that I got).
... the mood amongst many of Westerners seems to telegraph that stateless terrorism is just as or more severe than state terrorism, and this perception is what I'm most wary of.
This isn't exactly representative of my position, just to make it clear. I don't believe that stateless terrorism is ever more severe than state terrorism, but I do believe that the concept of terrorism in and of itself is deplorable, whether committed by a state or a stateless entity. I don't think that's a dangerous position to take, because I'm quite aware of the great terror that states often commit and, pretty must just by 'virtue' of being a state, get away with.
I largely drew my contextual understanding of what you were trying to say from the first sentence of your first post in this thread, when you said "You seem to be ignoring the facts here." Perhaps the issue is more that Flyboy does not agree with you regarding the weight these facts should have. Using the term "ignore" suggests a deliberate avoidance of information to me, which colours the dialogue.
In hindsight, I could have chosen better words, so I apologise both to you and to Flyboy if I came across as needlessly accusatory. Yet my point above still stands.
"And I don't mean that in terms of justification, as if one act justifies the other. I mean this in terms of understanding what the motivations are for these actions. Excuse me for trying to be disinterested."
I might be missing subtleties here, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.
I wrote that in reaction to my perception of being seen by you and/or others of taking a position in defence of Israel's actions. If it came across as confusing, again my apologies, but I think it should make sense taken in the context of everything I've written, here included.
You implied that for Flyboy to fail to mention aforementioned facts means that ze's ignored them. I hardly think that's a fair assumption, and when you're measuring state terrorism against stateless terrorism, I think it's easy to equivocate the horrors inflicted in cases where they are nowhere near equal -- see the casualty figures cited by Flyboy earlier.
If this is supposed to be a forum about debate, then I do think it was fair to assume (though I admit I think less so now) that Flyboy was acting in bad faith by only presenting the 'boo Israel' side of the story, and to state my objection to it. As for the tone of my response, see above.
Regarding the second half of your statement, I always have a problem with casualty figures such as the ones cited. They rub me up the wrong way in the same manner as the term 'collateral damage' does, reducing people's lives to mere numbers. Nobody deserves to die in this way. Put yourself into the shoes of someone who's lost a loved one -- one horror is a bad as one hundred. (Yes, I can see it might be hypocritical of me to say something this after professing my disinterest, but I think the experience of the people on the ground on all sides of this conflict can often be ignored when the big geopolitical issues are discussed. Call me politically disinterested, but humane.)
My reading of your post was that you thought it intellectually dishonest to focus on censuring Israel without condemning the activities of Hezbollah.
That is my point, and I'm sticking to it, but I'm not certain that you fully understand my position here. Israel should be rightly condemned and censured for its massivley disproportionate military actions against its neighbours, but that does not exclude Hezbollah and other paramilitary organsations active in the region from similar criticism -- and I think it colours the issue to concentrate on one and leave out the other if the actions of both are clearly destroying lives in a similar, even if not equitable, fashion.
To conclude this, I completely identify with Tabitha:
I appreciate that feelings run high on this subject (and believe me, I find this quite a tricky subject to discuss without antagonising people with whom I disagree but nonetheless wish to converse)
I'm not always the most articulate of souls when it comes to such complex issues, so forgive me if I've misrepresented anyone or failed to explain myself as clearly as I'd hope. |
