[Vicious Love]

Double strawman! Double strawman! You're BOTH misinterpreting each other's arguments! And I love you both! Love you like my children! Furthermore, I appear to be channeling Spider Jerusalem in his "friendly/manic" mode.

Edit: For the record, I'm Israeli myself. And methinks the problem is, as with so many ill-conceived "empire of light" Dominions mods, the Search for the Good Guy. Too often we refuse to see just how bad the situation is, and so the moment one leader, or government, or unabashedly murderous military or terrorist action is found "unacceptable", we immediately assume the opposing side are the good guys. There's blood on everyone's hands, and not because it had to be done for the greater good, but because politicians were greedy, self-serving and/or hateful, and the public moronic enough to support them. Also, why does no one seem to grasp that individuals are not nations, and vice versa? Just because you aren't in the electoral majority, nor in the loudest and most violent mob, doesn't mean you're bulletproof when some nation or other decides to settle some score or other. Goddamn atavistic national anthropomorphization whatsit.

I mean, sure, executing a bunch of Kurds in cold blood is naughty. But bombing the flick out of some country so you can loot its corpse, stir up perfectly justifiable anti-pretty-much-everyone sentiment and leave its government even worse off than it was before, and having the audacity to pass that off as a humanitarian act? Not nice.
The Rape of Nanking=bad, one aspect of bad in a colossal, many-terraced continuum of bad. Nuking Hiroshima, "a military base", not all that nice either. Nor Nagasaki, for that matter. You know, Oppenheimer and company demanded that the Bomb be usedon an unoccupied island in Tokyo Bay, as a bloodless show of force. They were even polled, since the people responsible for the poll assumed they'd be in favor of nuking a few innocent civilians. When the results were contrary to what had already been decided, said poll was swept under the rug.

Getting back on topic, I'd be the first to call each and every one of these violent rioters a troglodytic waste of life. I'd also be the first to admit the Hamas are murderous scum, plain and simple. I'd also say the same about pretty much everyone in my own government who backed the Occupation. And I don't think all that highly of George Dubya, either. Say what you will about my faith in humanity, at least there's no nationalist sentiment here.

Yet another edit: Y'know, they didn't even give Japan any warning. Just the usual "surrender or be utterly pwn3d" announcement, then, bam, right on their civilians, for maximal Shock and Awe. That's just plain rude.

And another edit, for good measure: Whoa, I didn't know these boards had a profanity filter. Lemme just change that to "flick", so as not to appear to be one of those peculiar individuals who insists on using profanity, but can't bring himself to actually... well, use profanity. You know, the ones that spell it a**. I don't know what's up with those. I really should get some sleep.

Final update. Honest!: Sleep is for the weak and sickly. One rant begs another: Honestly, what's the friggin' deal with Pearl Harbor? The bombing thereof, I mean, not the actual harbor, or the movie. It was a perfectly legitimate strike against an almost entirely military target, with negligible civilian casualties. Also, by WWII standards, 2000 soldiers were also practically negligible. Does today's average American have any shade of a clue what Japan was doing in Manchuria at the time? Now that was atrocity. You know what else verged on atrocity? Staying out of World War II. When you consider that it just might have prevented Hitler remaining in power that much longer, and dispatching a few million more Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and whatnot in the process, I think there's no doubt the attack was ultimately a good thing, and would have been better had it happened sooner.

I'm still not entirely clear on why the attack is considered such a national tragedy, but I think it has to do with either:
A) It being a dishonorable sneak attack, or
B) It being a Japanese victory over the heroic, unvanquishable American navy.

I'm not sure which of the above reasons is more idiotically macho, nor which has less to do with the reality of warfare. I could expand upon the sheer stupidity that is national machismo, but I'm still too tired to be properly interminable. Hope what I already put down wa relatively coherent, and a welcome diversion from the flame war this thread was threatening to become.