4 ms·

Why would you assume this targeted three people? I assume the most likely scenario is that the attackers targeted as many Hezbollah members as they could, and w

Why would you assume this targeted three people? I assume the most likely scenario is that the attackers targeted as many Hezbollah members as they could, and were extremely successful at it.

rbanffy 2y ago
That's a very good point - if the goal was to disable comms and incapacitate as many targets as possible, then collateral damage numbers are much lower. It's unknown how many were family members of targeted individuals, and whatever the number actually is, it'll be misreported.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Why would the family members of a Hezbollah operative be carrying a pager tuned to Hezbollah's private communications network? A reminder that Hezbollah operates a parallel phone system, and is in many ways more sophisticated and organized than the de jure government of Lebanon, whose military forces Hezbollah outnumbers.
  - seadan83 2y ago
    The family member would not necessarily need to be carrying the pager, just near it. Picture a child standing next to adult, pager on hip would be next to the kids head. Pagers are not always worn too, could be on top of a table, etc..
    - tptacek 2y ago
      Right. Yes. That's more than plausible. I have no reason to dispute the accounts of bystander casualties.
  - runarberg 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - sitkack 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - tptacek 2y ago
      First a style point: I don't think you get very far with things like "the only conclusion we can draw is that I'm right". I know I never sound like it, but the one thing I can confidently state in these kinds of discussions is that nothing is unambiguous. When it comes to conflict in the Middle East, if I have to be potentially wrong about things, so do you! As I've remarked several times on this thread, the standard I'm using for this attack isn't one in which no innocents (or even innocent children) are harmed or killed. I don't like war and would happily confiscate every firearm in North America, but that standard is one no active military in the world meets. Rather: the "state of the art" in targeted strikes is air-to-ground weaponry, which routinely kills civilian bystanders at ratios far exceeding 1:1. Here, my guess is that the ratio is something far south of 1:100, making this strike --- I think? --- unprecedented in precision in the last 100 years of warfare. We'll learn more as the day goes on, and if/when I'm wrong, I'll certainly say so. "Terrorism" has nothing whatsoever to do with my thinking on this. Hezbollah is a large, sophisticated, organized, well-supplied combatant force, a military peer to its neighbors, and it is in open armed conflict with Israel.
      - runarberg 2y ago
        [flagged]
        tptacek 2y ago
        We'll see, but I don't think it's very likely that Hezbollah school teachers are carrying Hezbollah pagers. There were a bunch of news stories written about why Hezbollah fighters are carrying pagers. Ordinary Lebanese people, from what I can see (I actually looked up market data here) carry Android phones like everybody else does. And I don't think Hezbollah is handing out pagers to random janitors in Dahieh. Note Reuters reporting on the concentration of reports of strikes here: it's not uniformly spread across the population of Lebanon.

Why would you assume this targeted three people? I assume the most likely scenario is that the attackers targeted as many Hezbollah members as they could, and were extremely successful at it.

rbanffy 2y ago

That's a very good point - if the goal was to disable comms and incapacitate as many targets as possible, then collateral damage numbers are much lower. It's unknown how many were family members of targeted individuals, and whatever the number actually is, it'll be misreported.

tptacek 2y ago
Why would the family members of a Hezbollah operative be carrying a pager tuned to Hezbollah's private communications network? A reminder that Hezbollah operates a parallel phone system, and is in many ways more sophisticated and organized than the de jure government of Lebanon, whose military forces Hezbollah outnumbers.
- seadan83 2y ago
  The family member would not necessarily need to be carrying the pager, just near it. Picture a child standing next to adult, pager on hip would be next to the kids head. Pagers are not always worn too, could be on top of a table, etc..
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Right. Yes. That's more than plausible. I have no reason to dispute the accounts of bystander casualties.
- runarberg 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - sitkack 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - tptacek 2y ago
    First a style point: I don't think you get very far with things like "the only conclusion we can draw is that I'm right". I know I never sound like it, but the one thing I can confidently state in these kinds of discussions is that nothing is unambiguous. When it comes to conflict in the Middle East, if I have to be potentially wrong about things, so do you! As I've remarked several times on this thread, the standard I'm using for this attack isn't one in which no innocents (or even innocent children) are harmed or killed. I don't like war and would happily confiscate every firearm in North America, but that standard is one no active military in the world meets. Rather: the "state of the art" in targeted strikes is air-to-ground weaponry, which routinely kills civilian bystanders at ratios far exceeding 1:1. Here, my guess is that the ratio is something far south of 1:100, making this strike --- I think? --- unprecedented in precision in the last 100 years of warfare. We'll learn more as the day goes on, and if/when I'm wrong, I'll certainly say so. "Terrorism" has nothing whatsoever to do with my thinking on this. Hezbollah is a large, sophisticated, organized, well-supplied combatant force, a military peer to its neighbors, and it is in open armed conflict with Israel.
    - runarberg 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - tptacek 2y ago
        We'll see, but I don't think it's very likely that Hezbollah school teachers are carrying Hezbollah pagers. There were a bunch of news stories written about why Hezbollah fighters are carrying pagers. Ordinary Lebanese people, from what I can see (I actually looked up market data here) carry Android phones like everybody else does. And I don't think Hezbollah is handing out pagers to random janitors in Dahieh. Note Reuters reporting on the concentration of reports of strikes here: it's not uniformly spread across the population of Lebanon.