[Potemkin]

What if the Junta had just refused to surrender? That's the scenario I'm putting myself into.

Certainly, it was unnecessary to do more once the Junta accepted its defeat.

The Junta didn’t have to surrender, @wat0n. They had been expelled from the Malvinas/Falklands, and had no chance of successfully reinvading. They could declare victory if they wanted to - nobody would believe them. The British had no need to force the Junta to surrender to us, because what the fuck were they gonna do? As I said, all we had to do was wait. General Galtieri appeared on the Presidential balcony in full military uniform to make a speech to the waiting crowd, but instead the crowd pelted him with rotten vegetables. After five minutes of this, he turned around and went back inside the Presidential palace without having said a word. And that’s when everyone knew it was over. The Junta was finished.

[wat0n]

The Junta didn’t have to surrender, @wat0n. They had been expelled from the Malvinas/Falklands, and had no chance of successfully reinvading. They could declare victory if they wanted to - nobody would believe them. The British had no need to force the Junta to surrender to us, because what the fuck were they gonna do? As I said, all we had to do was wait. General Galtieri appeared on the Presidential balcony in full military uniform to make a speech to the waiting crowd, but instead the crowd pelted him with rotten vegetables. After five minutes of this, he turned around and went back inside the Presidential palace without having said a word. And that’s when everyone knew it was over. The Junta was finished.

The Junta did surrender though.

It could have done some more... Unsavoury stuff, like blocking supply flights and shipping from Chile, which the Falklands relied and still relies on to function.

[Potemkin]

The Junta did surrender though.

It could have done some more... Unsavoury stuff, like blocking supply flights and shipping from Chile, which the Falklands relied and still relies on to function.

The surrender was merely acknowledging reality. They had clearly lost; what else could they do? And it was too late to try to continue the struggle by other means - their own people had had enough, and they weren’t going to give the Junta another twenty years to try to retake the islands by blockading them. Besides, the British would just have set up new supply flights and shipping. And if the Junta had tried to attack them, we would have trounced them again. What would have been the point of any of this? The Junta ran out of road, and was overthrown. The end.

As for your earlier point that the Junta had started a war it couldn’t win in order to stay in power, this is actually not what happened. The Junta assumed that the British would not and could not start a war over this. The logistics were a nightmare for the British, and the odds favoured Argentina to win. The Junta very much did feel that this was a war they could win; in fact, they felt it was a war they wouldn’t even have to fight - the British would face reality and just let the islands go (maybe with some suitable token compensation). This was a reasonable assumption for the Junta to make at the time. They didn’t reckon on Thatcher making a fight of it, and they certainly didn’t reckon on the British actually winning.

[wat0n]

The surrender was merely acknowledging reality. They had clearly lost; what else could they do? And it was too late to try to continue the struggle by other means - their own people had had enough, and they weren’t going to give the Junta another twenty years to try to retake the islands by blockading them. Besides, the British would just have set up new supply flights and shipping. And if the Junta had tried to attack them, we would have trounced them again. What would have been the point of any of this? The Junta ran out of road, and was overthrown. The end.

The point would have been to try and make it untenable for the UK to hold on to the Falklands indefinitely, as you said the Argentinian public had had enough but the idea was feasible and if the Argentinian public was like the Middle Eastern public it would have tried that.

As for your earlier point that the Junta had started a war it couldn’t win in order to stay in power, this is actually not what happened. The Junta assumed that the British would not and could not start a war over this. The logistics were a nightmare for the British, and the odds favoured Argentina to win. The Junta very much did feel that this was a war they could win; in fact, they felt it was a war they wouldn’t even have to fight - the British would face reality and just let the islands go (maybe with some suitable token compensation). This was a reasonable assumption for the Junta to make at the time. They didn’t reckon on Thatcher making a fight of it, and they certainly didn’t reckon on the British actually winning.

Nah, the idea was pretty crazy (and desperate) from the beginning. You just don't take territory from a much stronger government for free and I think everyone can understand how bad that precedent would have been for the UK.

[Pants-of-dog]

there is no evidence that he decrease in rocket launches is due to the destruction of civilian homes, schools, hospitals, and food production.

[wat0n]

That's exactly where the rockets are stored at, and where they're launched from.

[Pants-of-dog]

If the argument is that 100% of all hospitals and food production facilities, as well as 70% of all homes and schools, and most businesses were used to store rockets, then Hamas would heed to have more rockets than are available on the planet.

Or, if the claim is that Hamas moves the rockets, then bombing the buildings is ineffective.

[wat0n]

Or maybe Israel didn't just hit rockets, but arms depots, command centers, fighters themselves, logistic routes (particularly those underground), arms manufacturing facilities, etc.

[Pants-of-dog]

The ridiculous implausibility of it still stands:

Hamas would heed to have more materiel, men, bases, and other resources than all the armies in the Middle East combined.

And/or be able to move all of this magically, invisibly, and safely, while under fire and at a moment’s notice.

And still no evidence for this claim.

[wat0n]

@Pants-of-dog no, it does not.

There's a reason why Mosul saw a similar level of destruction, you seem to believe tunnels are somehow not several km long, that fighters and many arms cannot be moved through those yet to be found tunnels and so on.

Urban warfare is inherently destructive, and indeed it has been reaffirmed by experts in that field. Yours is just baseless speculation, not unlike the conspiracy theories you have been parroting elsewhere.

[Pants-of-dog]

If the soldiers and materiel are being moved through tunnels, then it is ineffective to bomb the buildings.

I am still waiting for a plausible explanation as to why bombing all the buildings is effective.

[wat0n]

@Pants-of-dog it is certainly effective to destroy tunnels, and it is also certainly effective to bomb Hamas' positions to access them by ground.

I will still note you have yet to cite any military experts agreeing with you. I, on the other hand, can point out that American military experts from West Point itself have written at length about why urban warfare is extremely destructive.

[Pants-of-dog]

No one is arguing about the destructive nature of urban warfare. We even saw evidence that the use of precision bombs leads to more buildings being destroyed, showing they are less effective than conventional bombs.

The argument is whether or not bombing the majority of civilian infrastructure is an effective tactic for anything at all.

There is no evidence that it is, and the fact that it is ongoing suggests that it is not. It is good for destroying communities and laying the groundwork for settlement.

[wat0n]

There is certainly evidence that it is, which is why Hamas' ability to fire rockets has been greatly diminished and why it managed to defeat ISIS in Mosul, leading to the end of their Islamic State.

[Pants-of-dog]

Still no evidence being provided.

Please provide a link and a quote and a short explanation as to how the quoted text supports the claim that bombing the majority of civilian infrastructure is effective.

[wat0n]

I already provided the evidence.

If you are interested feel free to read the linked article, since all of it is relevant.

[Pants-of-dog]

A link to an article that may or may not be relevant is not evidence.

A quote.

And an explanation as to how this quote supports the claim.

At this point, it seems like a religious knee jerk defence of a genocidal tactic: urbicide, and the resulting destruction of communities that lived in those urban areas.

This whole tangent started when I pointed out that almost no one in Gaza can live a normal life anymore. This is because the community fabric itself has been torn apart, with all the buildings necessary for a modern community having been destroyed.

This was not contested or refuted. This is accepted fact.

This whole tangent is merely a Zionist attempt to justify this destruction of communities and cities.

[wat0n]

@Pants-of-dog it is up to you to read the link, and point explicitly what parts of it you disagree with citing opposing expert opinion.

I will note that the effectiveness of the bombings is hard to dispute in cases like the battle for Mosul and the end of ISIS' ability to govern there (and elsewhere).

The consequences of those bombings to Mosul's civilian population were very similar to those in Gaza, despite the extensive use of low-powered precision weapons, yet nobody claimed it was genocidal.

This is an accepted, indisputable fact, and his deliberate disregard of them just underscores that the genocide accusation is just @Pants-of-dog's way to retroactively justify October 7.

[Pants-of-dog]

“It is up to you to make my argument for me” is not an argument.

There is still no evidence.

——————

…..

Urbicide: the murder of cities

"The word ‘urbicide’ means the killing of cities ('urbs' + 'cide'). More generally, it refers to the deliberate, widespread destruction of the urban environment. It refers to more than just the destruction of strategic targets or houses, but a wide range of urban fabric," explains Martin Coward, head of the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London.

“It is deliberate and not proportional to the strategic goals of war, and therefore violates the laws of war. Urbicide implies that this violence destroys something specific to the city – the plural, shared nature of the city. It is a way of making it impossible for those that are different to you to live in an urban space.”

The starting point for Coward’s research was the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, when urbicide was frequently practiced.

“The destruction of cities was about preventing people from coming back. So even after a heavily shelled city was under the control of a particular armed force, they would still go in and do things like dynamite houses. They would dynamite mosques and make them into a car park.”

Destroying cities has historically been used as a way to evict people considered to be the enemy – recent examples include Sarajevo, Grozny in Chechnya, Aleppo in Syria, Mosul in Iraq, and Mariupol and Bucha in Ukraine.

“The deliberate killing of civilians is a crime, but there is also the long-term destruction of all the infrastructure necessary for people's lives,” says Coward. “Explosive weapons destroy the fabric of the city, particularly infrastructure, meaning that it becomes unliveable even for civilians who aren't killed.”

If you look at Bakhmut or other cities that are on the front line of the Ukraine-Russia war, “you see exactly this kind of pattern of destruction”, he says.

Three hundred bombs a day dropped on Gaza

In the case of the Gaza Strip, the means used by the Israeli army since the start of the war against Hamas have been "disproportionate and inappropriate", says Guillaume Ancel, a former French army artillery officer and writer. "Binyamin Netanyahu had two stated objectives: to destroy Hamas militarily and to free the hostages. When you use one-tonne bombs, you're not targeting anything – you're destroying," says Ancel, who publishes the blog Ne pas subir (Never give in).

“A terrorist organisation is a shadow army; you don't hunt it down with bombs. You don't free hostages with mass shelling. It's completely contradictory. From the start, the means used were incompatible with the stated aim.”

For its part, the Israeli army says it “reviews targets before strikes and chooses the proper munition in accordance with operational and humanitarian considerations, taking into account an assessment of the relevant structural and geographical features of the target, the target’s environment, possible effects on nearby civilians, critical infrastructure in the vicinity, etc.”

The army adds that “the clear majority of munitions used in strikes are precision-guided munitions”.

By the end of the first week of the war against Hamas in October 2023, Israel had dropped 6,000 bombs on the Gaza Strip.

A report by the NGO Handicap International released in December highlighted the “unprecedented scale” of the offensive on Gaza. In the first seven weeks of the war, 12,000 bombs weighing between 150kg and 1,000kg were dropped on Gaza, which the group calls “one of the most intense bombing campaigns in history against a populated area”.

By comparison, the US dropped 7,423 bombs in Afghanistan in all of 2019, according to US Central Command.

Ancel notes that Gaza is hit by "300 bombardments a day, which is colossal”, adding: “The Israeli army has dropped thousands of one-ton bombs, which are designed to devastate an entire area, not a military target.”

The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, rejected all criticism of its tactics in response to questions from FRANCE 24. "There is no IDF doctrine that aims to cause maximal damage to civilian infrastructure regardless of military necessity," an army spokesman said. “IDF actions are based on military necessity and in accordance with international law. The IDF's sole objective is to neutralise the threat posed by Hamas. Any claims about intentionally making Gaza uninhabitable are baseless and ignore the primary culpability of Hamas in the ongoing conflict."

The war has left major Gazan heritage sites in ruins, including the Great Omari Mosque (Gaza's largest and oldest), Palestine Square, Anthedon Harbour, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, and the Pasha’s Palace Museum, whose structure was originally built in the 13th century.

…..

https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east ... live-there

Hamas is still around.

The hostages are still not free. In fact, only seven have been freed by the IDF.

The tactic of urbicide as way of releasing hostages and stopping Hamas (i.e. the stated aims of the IDF and Israeli government) is clearly ineffective.

[wat0n]

@Pants-of-dog I already posted the evidence.

This urbicide bullshit was not ever mentioned re: Mosul, and Mosul has been rebuilt since then. It is, therefore, just unverifiable speculation (you're on a roll here) that Gaza cannot be rebuilt like Mosul was.

Israeli military pressure and rescue operations have already released over half of the hostages (directly and by forcing Hamas to agree to do so). And rocket fire has largely stopped.