this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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By not killing civilians maybe. By engaging in actual normal warfare if it insists it cannot achieve success peacefully. By not encouraging persecution around the world or siding with nations such as Russia and North Korea. By respecting human rights within its borders. Can't be too much to ask.
What is "normal warfare?"
Warfare that is self-contained, distinguishes between combatant and non-combatant, does not cause damage that ends up being permanent, and doesn't make metaphorical deals with the devil.
There is no such thing as "normal" or "good" or "moral" warfare. War is war. And war is hell. Regardless of where it's happening or what reasons are given to justify it. Every bit of time, resources, and effort directed toward war is time, resources, and effort stolen from advancing humanity and uplifting ourselves. By it's very nature, war has no rules. The dream of a "self-contained, limited-casualty, non-permanent damage" warfare is frankly naive. My experience may be colored by having grown up in and witnessed war in various times in my life, but there is NEVER a reason for war. Because at the end of each and every disagreement, conflict, war...etc., one thing happens: they have to sit down and talk. So it's all just futile and wasted effort. We steal from ourselves and our children only to end up doing the very thing we should have been doing all along: putting ego (in the psychological sense) aside and talking.
That is assuming war is a single entity. War is more like a series of actions due to how blurry it is. Certainly a hacking is far better than sending a nuclear missile for example. It is these actions that are condemnable when we say war is condemnable. Sometimes a war is even one-sided enough we don't even call it a war. In Palestine's case, had they not resorted to what amounts to forcing the burden, they'd have less dismissal than, say, simply sending regular units.
This is a justification (and not a good one, imo), like the ones I was talking about above. There is no just war. No just response. It just creates more death and destruction.
I think it's when
both countries have a military
the countries at war are not bound by occupation law.
How could they engage in normal warfare?
Edit: also, does killing civilians make a whole country fair game to be attacked violently or something?
Let me put it this way, how many of us are anti-nuclear-arms? I'm sure most of us are. Nuclear assault is seen as the epitome of abnormal warfare as it kills people who have nothing to do with a conflict, and nuclear war, defined as when the two nations start throwing nuclear weapons at each other, is seen as absolutely unnecessary escalation under any circumstances considered normal as well as no better just because someone fired the first shot. If there is no distinction between "normal" and "abnormal" warfare though, surely nuclear attack wouldn't be off the table.
Other forms of warfare follow this logic. Biological weapons attack indiscriminate people and spread in a population and even cross borders. Arson spreads and doesn't care what it consumes. Landmines like those still littering previously war-torn nations, including those we discuss here, are not programmed to factor in political or religious allegiance. Such things are akin to boxing out of a ring and are highly condemned. If Palestine and its allies don't change its stance on how warfare is supposed to work, then if they did become fully independent, it would be a shameful new existence, built on national character flaws that would haunt and define any who call themselves Palestinian patriots.
When the Ismaili Muslims were still around in the 1100's, their mode of warfare was simply to have spies sneak into a fortress and eliminate the leader, sparing the people who do the dirty work, with the intention that the heir would yield, like how in chess you wouldn't eliminate the other pieces besides the king if you don't have to. It was called fedai warfare and this was the world's most peaceful form of open warfare and perhaps more normal than what we call normal. What a leap we took in modern times, where nobody is safe and nothing is off the table.