The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.

OK now given that Walzer’s view is the topic of discussion and given that he himself thinks that the angle I have been focusing on is interesting it is to put it politely suprising that no one is interested . But maybe I should not be suprised if the philosophy here is just a kind of decoration.(?).

Everything which it is imperative to do will be done regardless of sacrifice, but what can be avoided will not be done.

[...]

The attempt to convince the responsible [XXX] command – in so far as it existed – that it was futile and in fact insane to attempt resistance, especially in a city of more than a million inhabitants, proved entirely fruitless….

Since it was realized that [XXX]’s fortifications alone were not likely to withstand the [our] attack, the entire city was converted into a fortress and barricaded in every direction. Batteries were mounted in every square and great courtyard, thousands of machine-gun posts manned and the whole population called up to take part in the fighting.

Sheer sympathy for women and children caused me to make an offer to those in command of [XXX] at least to let civilian inhabitants leave the city. I declared a temporary armistice and safeguards necessary for evacuation, with the result that we all waited for emissaries just as fruitlessly as we had waited at the end of August for a [XX] negotiator. The proud [XX] commander of the city did not even condescend to reply.

To make sure, I extended the time limit and ordered bombers and heavy artillery to attack only military objectives, repeating my proposal in vain. I thereupon made an offer that the whole suburb of [XX] would not be bombarded at all, but should be reserved for the civilian population in order to make it possible for them to take refuge there.”

It amazes me, genuinely stuns me that apparently sane people actually believe a military commander when he states that his troops are ‘only’ attacking military targets, and that he ‘regrets’ any civilian deaths but ‘he has done everything in his power to prevent them.’ As the humanitarian quoted above shows: this is just something that army personnel (who are paid to lie) say. The fact is that there are military objectives, and if civilians have to die to facilitate the accomplishment of these objectives: tough. That’s war. If you don’t like it, don’t fight.

I dont have a problem with changing my mind about these issues

All credit to you for that.

Since CB has written you off you are unlikely to get a response to your speculations as to what he may be doing. I suggest looking at what he wrote. His main objection to Walzer is in the paragraph begining “Israel can’t simultaneously base its justification for action on the responsibility of the Lebanese government to act and on its incapacity to do so”.

No reasonable person would fault soldiers who “aim as precisely as they can” using appropriate weapons. (Aiming a tank gun at a gunman in a crowded shopping centre isn’t normally considered appropriate, no matter how carefully the weapon is aimed.) What is being discussed here is the kind of bombing Jan Egeland complains of. Sure, it is precisely aimed, but the target is an entire neighbourhood.

Incidentally I have no idea why you think abb1’s comment was off-topic. Unusually for him, it was right on the money. But since you agree with Egeland it may be that we have nothing to argue about.

” when Palestinian militants launch rocket attacks from civilian areas, they are themselves responsible – and noone else is-for the civilian deaths caused by Israeli counterfire. But Israeli soldiers are required to aim as precisely as they can, to take risks in order to do that and to call off counterstrikes that would kill large # of civilians…still minimizing does not mean avoiding entirely : Civilians will suffer as long as no one on the Palestinians side takes action to stop rocket attacs. ”

What is wrong with this view ? This is a point about what is morally permited and who must share / bare the burden of responsibility for the civilian deaths.
Walzer is relying on DDE to make this case stand up and that principle is inependently plausible and this is why people who disagree with him need an argument to avoind just begging the question at issue ( which I think Chris may be doing ? ).

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israeli bombing of a Beirut neighborhood where Hizbollah had its headquarters has breached humanitarian law, a senior U.N. official said on Sunday.

“It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses,” Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told reporters as he toured the shattered Haret Hreik district. “It makes it a violation of humanitarian law.”

“It’s bigger, it’s more extensive than I even could imagine,” he said, surveying a pile of rubble.

Israeli warplanes have pounded the area nearly every night since its war with Hizbollah began on July 12.

It was last hit early on Sunday, said the few residents not to have fled the usually packed area.

Egeland said between half a million and a million people were in need of international assistance in Lebanon, but delivering aid required safe access. “So far Israel is not giving us access,” he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060723/ts_nm/mideast_egeland_dc_1

Let’s leave to one side the weaselish “obviously and palpably”. Yes, the burden of proof is on those who cause non-combatant deaths through their violent actions. I can’t take seriously as an interlocutor anyone who thinks the burden of proof might go the other way. Sorry zdenek, you are outside the sphere of people with whom it is possible to have a reasonable conversation.

Or has it dawned on your claim was a little rash?

So either the US is successfully suppressing news of civilian casualties we inflict (my choice) or else Israel is inflicting civilian casualties at a rate dozens of times higher.