should america support Israel?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Recent events completely disprove your point: there were not ONE but TWO 72-hr truces, and in both cases, no rockets were fired, indicating without any doubt that Hamas has complete control over its fighters in Gaza.

You might wish to read a little:

http://news.msn.com/world/rockets-airstr...-collapses
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/...685249.php

My opinion is that a country has a right to defend. To quote you, Not surprisingly, it's a pretty widely-shared view.

Of course. The question then becomes, [i]are the defensive actions creating the conditions for peace? And are they avoiding innocent casualties?

I'd submit that carpet bombing probably doesn't fall under that rubric.

And Israel has every right to answer that by bombing, even though civilians are going to get killed as a result of Hamas decision to shield its fighters among the population. Those civilian deaths are entirely Hamas responsibility.

"Entirely"? Not at all. Israel decides to attack those targets. Perhaps they should instead work at infiltration? Or perhaps they could ameliorate the conditions which drive the Palestinians into the arms of the extremists?

When all you have is a hammer, I suppose everything does indeed look like a nail.

I guess that Dresden had factories producing weapons for Germany had nothing to do with it.

The biggest industry in Dresden at the time of the bombing was making cigarettes. They had some optics and other factories, but those generally weren't targeted. Of course, the RAF, practicing nighttime bombing, was unable to precisely target those factories anyways, which is why they used incendiaries mixed with HE.

The only weapons produced in Dresden at that time were FlAK guns, and some small arms ammunition. Do you think that justifies 25,000 -- 40,000 civilian deaths, which the more accurate estimates settle on?

And forget that during the war, the Japanese were quite willing to Kamikaze (Stat: 3,860 kamikaze pilots died in that war).

So what? Bombing Hiroshima or Nagasaki didn't address kamikazes at all, nor were they intended to do so. We're talking about the morality of killing civilians in war, not the use of suicide fighters against military targets.

This is a red herring.

See above nonanswer.

fixed for accuracy.

No one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to post. You're the one who jumped in and started to spew your left-wing Palestinian apology.

Lol, firstly, I'm not "left-wing", secondly, I'm not an apologist for Palestinians. I was hoping you'd be insightful enough to have a good discussion; but you generate more heat than light. I think iit's a good thing to look at an issue from all sides, and I had hoped you'd be able to do so.[/b]

I won't make that mistake again ... I've taken your measure, now.