War Is Hell...

A proper take on Qana, by Josh Trevino:

Let us call the childrens' deaths in Qana what they are: a horrific freak of war. They were not intended; they were not actively sought; and they were not the product of criminal negligence. In weeks of war and thousands of sorties against a foe that intentionally hides amongst civilians in the active hope of just this manner of carnage, the remarkable fact is that this hasn't happened before. Contrary to founding advocates of airpower -- and unlike its battlefield foes -- Israel does not seek the death of civilians for their own sake. Pace the rationalizations extended to Allied aircrews obliterating Western European villagers unfortunate enough to live near a rail junction, Israel does not even regard acceptance of this manner of death -- unintended, incidental, and not worth especial efforts to preclude -- as acceptable within the moral parameters of war. The uninformed and the insane will react with bitter derision upon being told this, on the heels of the news from Qana: but their emotional self-indulgence does not negate the fact at hand.

Need it be said -- and it is a sign of our fallen age that it does need to be said -- Israel's enemy in this war operates under no such constraint. (One assumes that in bygone days, the difference between a Western democracy and a band of murderous savages would not need repeated explanation.) Hezbollah and the average Islamist do not shrink from direct assaults on civlians as such and as an end in itself. Indeed, it has been their sole tactic in this entire war. If they have not produced scenes of masses of dead children, it is not for lack of trying -- it is, after all, the only thing they try for. That they have not managed it is indicative of the confluence of blind luck and Israeli battlefield superiority. But give it time: give it infinite time to launch its rockets and try its luck, as the braying proponents of ceasefire would have it, and eventually we'll see Jewish children, too, incinerated in their sleep. The difference, of course, is that the perpetrators then will celebrate.

There are many unaswered questions about the tragedy in Qana, among them:

1. Why did the building collapse eight hours after the attack?
2. If so much time elapsed, why were people still in the building?
3. Why was there no immediate rush of rescue or medical personnel to the scene?
   

Not to mention the obvious fact that the Hezzybos use civilians as shields, and mounting evidence that the entire collapse and body count were staged by Hezbollah as a publicity stunt. Some even say that the victims were murdered by Hezbollah, which then claimed they were victims of the Israeli air-strike. Given the cowardly way the sissy-boy Hezzybos hide behind women's skirts and children's cribs, I'll buy that story.

Oh, and where is the world outrage over the hundreds of shells lobbed into Israel by Hezbollah? Where is Kofi the Korrupt with his stinging rebukes of Hassan Nasrallah and his minions? Where are the protests and vigils for the Israeli civilians who have been deliberately targeted and massacred by Islamofascist Muslims? Ha! Don't hold your breath waiting for anyone to condemn those deaths. After all they're just Joos...

ht: Malkin