Wars make sense to some - but they shouldn't to most

rom6553612 hours ago

This story is long - I'm sorry.
My dad was a US Marine in Da Nang, Vietnam, at he had a story to tell about that. In 1968, at the height of the Tet Offensive, they would have rocket attacks pretty much every night. The siren would blow, there'd be some explosions, and dad would be out in a field, face down in the mud - in the rain - waiting for them to blow the all-clear signal.

One night, as he lay there in the mud, he looked through the barbed wire fence and saw a Vietnamese man chasing his pigs around in the street - they had broken the fence and gotten loose. Dad was a Kentucky farm-boy, and had done that very same job a million times, and he knew exactly how hard it is to catch scared pigs in the dark. And that's when dad realized, if he had any business in Da Nang at all, he should be out there helping that man round up pigs. He had more in common with that Vietnamese farmer than he did with the men issuing his orders.

The food, music and garden vegetables might be different, but that Vietnamese man grubbed in the mud for his dinner, just like dad did back in Kentucky. He didn't have a rich daddy and a diploma from Yale. A little over 20 years later, and dad was begging me to not join the Marine Corps. I thought he made a very convincing argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QmxW4YUWSc

Birthright Citizenship and chain migration

Killing civilians in cages is an old Israeli hobby, it seems - Massacre at Sabra and Shatila Refugee camps in Lebanon

Extract:
...

Israeli troops surrounded the camps to prevent the refugees from leaving and allowed entry of the Phalange, a known enemy of the Palestinians. The Israelis fired flares throughout the night to light up the killing field - thus allowing the militiamen to see their way through the narrow alleys of the camps. The massacre went on for two days. As the bloodbath concluded, Israel supplied the bulldozers to dig mass graves. In 1983, Israel's investigative Kahan Commission found that Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defense Minister, bore "personal responsibility" for the slaughter.

READ MORE: Survivors recount Sabra-Shatila massacre

The massacre at Sabra and Shatila was a direct consequence of Israel's violation of the American-brokered ceasefire and the impunity bestowed on Israel by the US and the international community.

source:
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/remembering-sabra-shatila-massacre-35-years-170916101333726.html

https://imeu.org/article/the-sabra-shatila-massacre

Extract from:

The direct perpetrators of the killings were the "Young Men", a gang recruited by Elie Hobeika, the Lebanese Forces intelligence chief and liaison officer with Mossad, from men who had been expelled from the Lebanese Forces for insubordination or criminal activities.

^[10] The killings are widely believed to have taken place under Hobeika's direct orders. Hobeika's family and fiancée had been murdered by Palestinian militiamen, and their Lebanese allies, at the Damour massacre of 1976,^[11][12] itself a response to the 1976 Karantina massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims at the hands of Christian militants. Hobeika later became a long-serving Member of the Parliament of Lebanon and served in several ministerial roles.^[13] 

Other Phalangist commanders involved were Joseph Edde from the South, Dib Anasta, head of the Phalangist Military Police, Michael Zouein and Maroun Mischalani from East Beirut. In all 300-400 militiamen were involved, including some from Sa'ad Haddad's South Lebanon Army.^[14]

In 1983, a commission chaired by Seán MacBride, the assistant to UN secretary general and president of United Nations General Assembly at the time, concluded that Israel, as the camp's occupying power, bore responsibility for the violence.^[15] The commission also concluded that the massacre was a form of genocide.^[16] 

In 1983, the Israeli Kahan Commission, appointed to investigate the incident, found that Israeli military personnel, aware that a massacre was in progress, had failed to take serious steps to stop it. The commission deemed Israel indirectly responsible, and Ariel Sharon, then Defense Minister, bore personal responsibility "for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge", forcing him to resign.^[17]

Proud and honest politicians! ?