the targeting of civilians cannot be encouraged. yeah, he thinks they're his enemies, and a bank robber thinks the tellers are his enemies and everyone any murderer kills was his enemy. you cant justify killing someone because he's an enemy or else, all killings would be justified.

> Red_Rooster wrote:

> okay, so they reason ppl say suicide bombing is immoral is only because they target civilians? So there is nothing wrong with suicide bombing itself, just their targets?

I would agree 100% with this.  The simple concept of sacrificing oneself to defeat an enemy isn't in itself immoral, as that would mean people fighting relatively unwinnable battles in war were immoral... which just doesn't make sense.  The problem lies with the targeting of civilians, which is extremely contrary to military conduct.

> Red_Rooster wrote:

> I would agree that targetting civilians is wrong... if both sides of a conflict agree to the rules and adhere to them. But it would simply be unfair to put that burden of not targetting civilians on one side only and not punishing the side that violates the agreement.

Since suicide bombing itself is not wrong, I don't believe it can be said that targetting civilians with suicide bombing is wrong either if your enemy does not care for civilian lives either. Granted that your cause is a just cause.... like fighting so that the lives of your children and grandchildren dont have to be oppressed

define a just cause. what makes a cause just? everyone thinks their cause is just. does that mean some liberal fresh out of college is morally right to kill Rush Limbaugh? ofcoarse not. oppression is subjective; what is just is subjective, what is morally right is subjective. however, something that is universally discouraged on earth, is the targeting of civilians; whoever does it is gonna lose support for their cause. there is no excuse to target them. also, disguising yourself as civilian is also discouraged internationally, because disguising as civilians endangers civilians.  yes, you are free to think targeting civilians isnt wrong and you're free to think slavery isnt wrong; and there is no logical way to disprove you; because morals arent logical. but most countries will not support you.

theres a difference between killing civilians and targeting them. if both sides are targeting civilians. one is dressing up as civilians, thats one worse for them. if they're suicide bombing thats another lvl of worse. targeting civilians bad. disguising civilians bad. escaping all responsibility for your actions by blowing yourself up also bad.

What does the atomic bomb have to do with suicide bombing? They're two totally different subjects. One does not negate the other. This is not paper, rock, scissors...

You have already been answered and you retreat into leftwing romanticism about just causes enabling any method.

You were answered fully in the Tamil thread when you argued that a minority who didn't get enough fat jobs, didn't get what it considered to be a fair share of a national budget, failed to persuade the public its cause mattered, and got its ass kicked on the battlefield, was enititled to blow up women and children because its cause was just.  The fact that it was a defeated and discredited cause only legitimated its crimes in your view. You said we had no right to demand a defeated and unpopular group fight humanely.

You can't accept the logic because it would mean you'd have to agree that your own views would not be upheld, and you'd rather have terrorism than capitalist democracy.

"Avogrados argument is focusing on one side being bad"

wrong, i said both were bad.

"One question i would like to ask... was dropping the atomic bombs any more morally justified than suicide bombing?"

yes it was. because the only morally bad thing about the use of the atomic bomb was the targeting of civilians. while suicide bombings do a number of them. Truman accepted responsibility for the atomic bomb, he didnt kill himself to hide from any repercussions. the united state millitary did not disguise as civilians to carry out the attack. and millions of people that were in immediate danger of loosing their lives, had their lives saved. none of which suicide bombers can claim. it was also done at a time before it was widely accepted that targeting civilians during a war was morally wrong; the british bombed germany during the night so that their planes were harder to hit, bombing at night also meant that their bombs would be less precise, so they decided to try to destroy entire cities instead of targeting German millitary, while the americans flew in the day where they could be more precise and limit collateral damage, even though that would mean they would be much more vulnerable to aa fire. and then ofcoarse the targeting of civilians was nothing the axis wasnt familiar with either; the atomic bombs were dropped in an era where targeting of civilians during war was accepted; attacking the US for the atomic bombs, is like attacking Thomas Jefferson for the two slaves he had.

"u cant answer my questions so u just go off on ur rants about democracy and terrorism. You remind me a lot of Bush. Chris you really are a weak debater... I tried arguing your way but it always ends in a loop because you flat out deny anything exists such as separate ethnicities and popular support for a separate state."

It ends in a loop because you are stuck on square one, demanding I concede something.

chris i am not here trying to dodge your questions. You ask me and I ask you. Lets have an intelligent debate and you can start if you want.

The reason im doing this is because I truly believe i can beat you and hopefully make you change your mind.

The Japanese Army did plenty of truly horrific stuff in their rampage through Asia but the atomic bombings were plainly unnecessary.

There was quite a bit of opposition to it then by ppl like Einstein, General MacArthur, Eisenhower...etc, interestingly enough there is probably retrospectively more support for it today due in no small part to plenty of Cold War indoctrination.

The main problem with suicide bombing isn't so much the act itself but the fact that it most often consists of cynical, fanatical, old men funding and arranging for the bombs to be produced and then going about "persuading" the especially vulnerable (increasingly they seem to have their eyes set on younger victims) to do the ultimate dirty job for them.

I have no problem with you or anyone else going out into a field and blowing themselves up. To be polite, they ought to at least pay for the cleanup before they do so. Mental cases kill themselves every day. I don't lose sleep over it.

It's generally the murder part of suicide bombing I take issue with.

....in my opinion every act has an agenda, so the "war" has the agenda of stopping terrorism at it's route and "helping" another change it's government to a more democratic one than the one that was/is in power now, suicide bombings are (in the main) intended to outrage the public (just as parading captives and/or beheading,etc on television/internet, etc) because the best way to have an effect on another nations government is by public "ousting" using their voting power....so in a way "they" are using the "shock-factor" to turn democracy and it's values against itself....also each conflict has it's own agendas and reasons/underlying causes which in turn alter the answer (in my view)....such as if a large power (with lots of military hardware) attacks a smaller power (with not so much/if any) then after the bullets, etc have no where near the desired effect then you would obviously choose an alternative method and suicide-bombing is one such method against a much larger force....but just because an answer is "legitimised" does not mean it is right....you could say (as above) that the nuclear attacks on Japan ended the war there but it still wasn't right (in my opinion), so in essence what i am saying is yes it is acceptable to target civilians and no it is not acceptable to target civilians....it all depends on the circumstances as well as the background "stuff" (such as religious beliefs, peoples identity, politics, history, etc)