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Dangerous Toys

Entry 371, on 2006-07-27 at 13:56:15 (Rating 4, Politics)

Good move, Israel. Blowing up UN peace-keepers is always a good way to make friends! I'm not sure which is worse: the official line that it was an accident, or the more controversial claims that it was a deliberate move by the Israeli military.

If it was an accident there must be considerable incompetence in Israel's military command. there were 10 requests from the peace-keepers to stop bombing the area, and the weapon used was supposed to be a "precision" weapon. So if they didn't want to bomb the building and presumably the precision weapon had the capability to zero in on its target more effectively, what went wrong? It must have been incompetence.

It certainly casts considerable doubt on Israel's ability to hit militant targets and minimise the damage to civilians. We would have to have a lack of confidence in claims of that in future. And because these weapons were presumably sourced from the US, what does this tell us about their ability to be selective in their attacks? Maybe that explains the huge civilian death toll in the Iraq war.

And what about the other possibility - that the attack was deliberate? Surely that can't be true. Why would Israel risk the support of allies in the UN by behaving like this? It just doesn't make sense.

Ironically, if it was true I would be less worried because I would know that the military machine is capable of carrying out precision attacks against military targets, they just didn't choose to do so. That's just disgustingly cynical. The possibility that powerful weapons like these can't be adequately controlled because of incompetence is far more worrying. Either way, Israel should stop playing with its dangerous toys and try to find a real solution to this problem.

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