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it's baffling that so many intelligent and well-meaning people are simply incapable of thinking abt Israel vs Hamas as WAR, leading to total moral and practical confusion. war is not an online argument, or a police action, or colonialism, or national politics here's what WAR is:
1. wars are rarely fought between equally-balanced forces. this isn't a video game 2. wars usually end with one side being defeated, allowing the victor to dictate conditions. the first condition is always: the loser can no longer conduct war or violence https://t.co/1m2BGYHv6U
@seconds_0 it's a bit sad that Americans are so used to "war" meaning "you kill a bunch of people over many years until you feel bored and guilty and pull out" that they seem to have forgotten the concept of fighting a war to actually win it and impose your conditions on the loser
3. despite what the president of Brazil says, war usually doesn't mean genocide. I say *usually* because Brazil did fight a war with such brutality that 60-70% of entire enemy population was killed. but Brazilians aside, this is quite rare and certainly isn't taking place in Gaza https://t.co/hJEUzdmjHz
4. if war is ever justified, it is always justified by its *ends* since the *means* of war is simply violence. there is no coherent position outside of absolute suicidal pacifism where you judge a war to be bad if people are hurt in it
5. war is basically never between "good guys" and "bad guys". it's either between equally bad guys at the start, or terrible guys dragging the other guys down to "pretty bad but short of terrible" for both practical reasons (minimize the other side's evil) and moral licensing https://t.co/6iew7Zbwkv
6. modern wars are governed by international military law which takes only practical tradeoffs into account and not moral arguments about desert or evil. this is one of mankind's great moral triumphs - the law binds even if you say your enemy "deserves it" https://t.co/o0dHGwKHzs
I see a lot of talk on whether Palestinians are "evil", whether they "deserve" this or that outcome. these are good questions and important for people to think about in private - especially Palestinians themselves but they are just not really relevant as far as war is concerned
and once more: wars can be WON, and the loser of the war isn't "genocided" but often ends up living in peace with the victor. establishing a monopoly on violence is the tried and tested way of ensuring peace https://t.co/ubSNcYLUqJ https://t.co/12ZSGa29mZ
