I guess a better question would be, if you are dropping bombs that you WOULDN'T let your kids sign, aren't you a hypocrite?

I guess a better question would be, if you are dropping bombs that you WOULDN'T let your kids sign, aren't you a hypocrite?

Not if you don't drop bombs in the first place. And why is it good or necessary to involve children in all this crap?

PS- Spell my nick right.

To: BakerSreet

Every time I bark, you jump. And, as here, whimper too. I once wrote a poem in which I described the pleasure I would feel in reading by the light of burning children. Yours, perhaps, if you have any. If I could find it I'd post it here for your edification but it's long gone, lost in one of the episodes requiring us to replace various computers.

My problem is not with the morality of war (I intend to make this as simple as possible, since I've stated my position several times now without your being able to grasp it). My problem is with the hypocrisy of those who claim to be moral - and who is more moral than the Jews, those guardians of the West's collective conscience - who protest endlessly that they are moral, democratic, civilized: while doing exactly what they condemn others for.

By all means kill any number of children: the world is heaving with excess human filth. But do not lay claim to a morality that generally condemns such killings while doing so.

My problem is not with the action. It's with the words that accompany the action.

Israeli words. American words. British words. An axis of cant and hypocrisy.

To: stutefish

I'd reply to you, but in order to do so I would need to wear lead shoes in order to sink to the necessary depth of stupidity. And I'm all out of lead shoes.

The children are already involved.

Hezbollah and others are explicitly waging war on the entire Israeli population. They say so with words, and they say so with actions.

It is the homes of these children that are being struck by enemy rockets. It is the schoolbuses of these children that are being struck by suicide bombers. It is the parents of these children that are dying at the hands of these children's avowed and active enemies.

It's easy to think that war is cleanly compartmentalized, here in America. I expect that in places like Israel, bomb signing is--or should be--as much a fact of life and a part of growing up as potty-training and learning to read.

To: stutefish I'd reply to you, but in order to do so I would need to wear lead shoes in order to sink to the necessary depth of stupidity. And I'm all out of lead shoes.

Oh, snap! The master has put me in my place! Guess I better prepare myself for the wet noodle!

Honestly, does anybody besides your wife think that's a valid rebuttal?

Outside of the third grade, I mean?

You're not a parent, are you, stutefish?

My boys have seen their daddy off to war not once, but twice in the past 3 years. We don't talk about bombs and destruction and dead children. You can chalk up to the "compartmentalizing" of war here in safe, comfortable America, but I see no need to involve my children in the horror of war any further than they must be.

As different as it may be for Israeli parents, I still find it sick to have children signing bombs.

No, I'm not a parent.

Honestly, I find war itself to be pretty sick.

I find it sick to have anybody signing bombs, in that I find bombs themselves to be pretty sick.

I don't think you're wrong to find it sick to have children signing bombs, but I also don't think the Israelis are wrong to have their children signing bombs, if that's what they feel is necessary to raise their children properly in a place where bombs go off in their neighborhoods on a regular basis.

I think you're underestimating the difference between parenting children in America and parenting children in a place like Israel that has been a war zone for generations; even more than I'm underestimating the difference between not-parenting and parenting.

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Edited to add:

I mean, Israeli parents don't have the luxury you have, TW, of teaching their children that war is a violent and horrible sickness, that only ever happens very far away, and that they can grow up in total ignorance of. That "very far away" to you is "right here at home" to them, and for the survival of their nation and their people, they can't really afford to let their children grow up in ignorance of it--if that were even possible.