Dave Smith: belief

Transcript context

…Absolutely. But there is, I think, a powerful ethical difference when you mentioned about the 8-year-old girl, right? If in your stated goals of the war, is to do everything you can to avoid the death of that girl, versus saying, “We love death more than we love life” And Israelis democracy or not are pro-life for life. I mean, okay, I don’t 100% disagree with you, but I think if I were to say the degree to which that matters… At a murder trial after somebody’s been convicted and before sentencing, sometimes the judge will allow them to give a statement. And if their statement is like, “I’m very sorry for what I did, and I’m so sorry to the family, and this or that or that.” That might be life without parole rather than the death penalty. You know what I mean? It might make that bit of difference in that. And if you get up there and you’re like, “Hey, I’m happy for what I did, screw the family, [inaudible 01:13:22].” That might make a judge who was going to give you life without parole, give you the death penalty or something like. It’s that type of margin around the edge. Let’s say you’re a really bad guy, and I want to kill you. And you are at home with a bunch of women and children, and I know there’s women and children there. I know for a fact that if I blow up this building, it’s going to kill all those babies. What I would be charged with is murder in the first degree. And the fact that I went in there and said, “Well, listen, hold on. It’s a shame that I had to kill those babies, I really just wanted to kill that one guy, I wish the babies weren’t there.” And they’d be like, “Yeah, but you knew they were there, and you did it anyway. You get murder in the first degree.” Maybe it would make some little difference tinkering around with the sentencing at the end of it, but it doesn’t like in kind change what the crime is there. And so I just think at a certain point, if you’re doing something like… Look, I’ll say maybe with a little bit of an edge. Let’s say Barack Obama wants to drone-bomb this place to kill a terrorist. And he thinks he can do it without killing any innocent civilians. Does it, and then it ends up killing some innocent civilians. That’s one thing. But once you’ve done it over and over and over again, and every single time it kills innocent civilians. And then there’s a wedding and you order a drone bomb strike on a wedding. “No, you murdered those people. That’s murder in the first degree. again, and every single time it kills innocent civilians. And then there’s a wedding and you order a drone bomb strike on a wedding. “No, you murdered those people. That’s murder in the first degree. And so yes, whether you say out loud, “Oh, it sure is a shame that we got to kill all these kids.” When you’re doing it over and over, and you know the action you’re taking is going to kill more kids. Yeah, it’s a little bit different, but really not that much. It’s still pretty much a… And then also when you mix in with that, the fact that, I mean, if you go… And I’m not taking an opinion on the word genocide, I don’t even like to get into that conversation. I feel like it just derails it anyway. What Israel’s doing, whether you think it’s a genocide or not, it’s certainly not what most people envision when they hear the word genocide. But if you could look at South Africa’s case that they promoted at the International Court of Justice, the whole thing is just quotes from Israeli leaders. And I’m just saying, by the way, it’s not like they’re always saying, “Oh, it sure is a shame that we had to kill that 8-year-old girl.’ They like half the time they say that when they’re talking to the international community, and then the other half the time they seem to basically be saying, “There’s no such thing as an innocent 8-year-old girl.” And so I guess I just don’t find that argument to be very compelling, especially when the thing has been going on for so long.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.