[SNIP]
KURTZ: And joining us now here Washington Anne Compton who covers the White House for ABC News, and Thomas Ricks, Pentagon reporter for "The Washington Post" and author of the new book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq."
Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?
THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.
KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?
RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.
KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.
RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.
[/SNIP]
The Moral High Ground
On
2006-08-10
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3 comments:
This kind of shit isn't new. The Israeli's are simply following the American playbook... without the attack on the World Trade Center, how on earth would Bush have garnered enough support from the American people to send a massive army to the middle east and all but bankrupt the US in an effort to capture oil in Iraq?
I know, I know...gaddamn conspiracy theororist...hey, how 'bout some quotes...
“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
— Leading Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials before he was sentenced to death
“The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. Especially if it is repeated over and over.”
— Adolph Hitler
“Authoritarian government required to speak, is silent…Representative government required to speak, LIES with impunity.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
“If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs [surface-to- air missiles]. They know we own their country. We own their airspace…We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a good thing, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need.”
— U.S. Brig. General William Looney, who directed the bombing of Iraq in the late 1990s
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
— Mohandas Gandhi
Source: Gandhi on non-violence edited by Thomas Merton
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”
— Oscar Wilde
Oh my...
Has this been verified?
Awesome quotes Clock.
Cheers!
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