Bloodless Coup

this from dershowitz's LA Times piece:

"Turning specifically to the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas, the line between Israeli soldiers and civilians is relatively clear. Hezbollah missiles and Hamas rockets target and hit Israeli restaurants, apartment buildings and schools. They are loaded with anti-personnel ball-bearings designed specifically to maximize civilian casualties."

you know, i had this very discussion with someone tonight. should it affect one's place on the "civilianility continuum" that one side in an armed conflict has access to more precise weapons than the other side? i mean, seriously -- is the standard now that, either you can afford, or have in your pocket powers that will provide, smart technology enabling you to pinpoint targets, or else you're a terrorist?

think back to the birth of musketry. so hey, i've got this sword here, and yeah using it's kind of bloody -- as soon as the dudes on the other side have gunpowder should i lay down such arms as i can muster because my methods are, you know, barbaric?

i don't pretend to be terribly on top of this conflict, this region, or this sort of international relations generally, but best i can tell, what's going on right now between israel and lebanon is war -- to whatever end, for whatever reason. and war is about winning. and winning is ugly. and last i checked, no one ever checked out of a war because his or her technology was second rate.

bottom line, israel's using what it has, lebanon's using what it has, and i have a whole hell of a lot of trouble making moral judgments about which side is more shitty than the other. seriously, folks, it's war.

and this is not garden variety relativism: this is about a weird sort of elitism, where only the people who can afford and gain access to the sort of weapons than enable them to minimize civilian casualties are allowed to fight to defend themselves.

i'm no friend of lebanon, to be sure, but i'm not going to come down on them for using the missiles they have in the way that those missiles can be used any more than i'm going to mock the special ed kid for not winning the spelling bee.