If you read my blog, you know that it’s not a place for political diatribe.
That remains so. But I am concerned with the calm reportage of exploding devices in Lebanon. None of the reports describe them as devices of terror. They not only target the intended targets of Hezbollah. They also kill and injure nine-year-old children and innocent bystanders without discrimination. The indiscriminate nature of who and where the destruction occurs prompts me to describe this as an instrument of terror.
You say that Hezbollah are terrible people, and I vehemently agree. But looking beyond the use of this new weapon against a group of terrorists, I see a new theater of warfare and worldwide terror opening up.
Let’s not be naive and think that the devices and their mode of operation won’t be duplicated elsewhere. Will we regret silence when some clever idiot on our shores uses it to eliminate political foes?
The problem with clever ways of killing at a distance is that they are like evil genies – once they are out of the bottle, it’s hard or impossible to put them back in.
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I agree with you. Cellphones and walkie talkies now. Pagers, maybe? Using a particular app or using your phone camera? And we all fear hacking into our computers? This is a step far beyond that.
It’s funny but Internayional Law categorises booby traps exactly as that – instruments of terror. I’ve a lot of time for international law because it was formed collectively at a time when cooler heads prevailed.
It does worry me that in the current war, the trend seems to be to kill civilians, if they get in the way. I’ve got not time for Hamas (or Hezbollah, much) either but it’s not credible to think that *everybody* there belongs to these militias.
Thanks for the comment. I did not know that booby traps were already categorized as weapons of terror. And your observation that much international law was formulated when cooler heads prevailed was spot on!