Was it right for Philadelphia Police to Bomb & Burn West Philly? (Lebanon)

[HamdenRice]

This may be before some of your times, but most people over the age of 40 or so will remember this notorious incident of spectacularly incompetent police work.

A radical, back to nature, Black Nationalist organization called Move established themselves in a house in the African American neighborhood of West Philadelphia. They "composted" their garbage on their lawns, they harangued their neighbors with long political diatribes with loudspeakers, and some of their members had been engaged in violent confrontations with the police in the past. The police finally decided to evict Move from their home.

But the method they used was spectacularly ludicrous. They dropped a bomb onto the roof of the Move headquarters from a police helicopter -- sometimes alleged to be the only time in history that a branch of US government bombed American civilians. When the Move headquarters caught fire from the bomb, the Philadelphia police decided to let it burn.

Soon the fire was out of control, and the entire neighborhood -- an entire city block of middle class African American owned homes -- burned to the ground. All the members of Move were killed except for Ramona Africa and a small child.

I remembered the Move fiasco as I watched the news coverage from Lebanon and listened to the Israeli ambassador to the UN explain their position on a news/talk show on NPR. It seems to me that the Israeli's tactics -- of destroying Lebanon to get at Hezbollah -- are pretty much analogous to the tactics of the Philadelphia police department in West Philadelphia in 1985, destroying the neighborhood to evict one house of alleged criminals.

So my question to those who support Israel's actions in Lebanon is, do you think the Philadelphia police did the right thing in West Philadelphia in 1985. If not, why not?

[Zynx]

1. What exactly would you suggest Israel does in this circumstance?

Sit there and smile at Hezbollah? Allow a group that advocates your destruction to continue to provoke you with rocket attacks for another six years? Really, tell me. What is this great plan you have for Israel to deal with Hezbollah?

[shain from kane]

3. The government got Al Capone on income tax evasion. Don't you think

it is a little too much to bomb and destroy a whole fucking country when your quarrel is with only a relatively small group of people?

[Hatalles]

34. Yes.

And in the case w/ Capone and Chicago, the mob had infiltrated itself into high places in local government.

[noamnety]

5. perhaps

something other than genocide. just a thought.

[Zynx]

14. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could kill tens of thousands

in a day. They are not intentionally killing civillians. If they were, there would be a lot more than 400 dead Lebanese. Hezbollah is the one actually attempting genocide. They just don't have the capability.

[truebrit71]

17. "They are not intentionally killing civilians" Are you mad?

Have you seen ANY of the pictures coming out of Lebanon? If they aren't doing it deliberately then they should SERIOUSLY work on their training....

Hezbollah is attempting genocide?

Whatever...:eyes:

[itzamirakul]

30. To say that "They are not intentionally killing civilians" seems almost

obscene. People are being randomly killed, but we should suuport the killers because they are not killing INTENTIONALLY. I don't know...sounds like insane reasoning to me.

You asked what Israel should do. My suggestion would be to make a prisoner exchange as they have done in the past instead of this wholesale destruction.

[HamdenRice]

7. Let's talk about what it would not involve

It would not involve intentionally destroying Lebanese infrastructure. Israel's tactics are utterly incomprehensible and have little to do at this point with attacking Hezbollah.

Country's have a limited right to engage in cross border incursions to retaliate or prevent attacks. But in Israel's case those incursions should be aimed at Hezbollah.

One can only conclude that in addition to bombing Hezbollah targets, Israel is trying to (1) ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon to create a dead buffer zone, (2) collectively punish the pro-American Lebanese government for being too weak to defeat Hezbollah by creating massive refugee flows and destroying infrastructure and (3) destablize a neighboring Arab country simply for the sake of keeping its neighbors weak and disorganized.

At this point, it unfortunately has little to do with Hezbollah.

[Zynx]

12. Did you support our operation against Serbia in 1999?

If you did you then supported the bombings of power plants, water treatment plants, bridges, roads, and the deaths of 1,500 Serbian civillians.

Hezbollah is an ogranization that does not present readily available targets. It is difficult to do anything to it without bombing what are characterized as "civillain" areas.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. Speaking of Serbia...

I'd think that if we were going to use Serbia as an analogy...

Israel would be Serbia, Lebanon would be Kosovo, and Hezbollah would be the KLA.

[Zynx]

20. That makes little sense considering the one that actually is attempting

ethnic cleansing is Hezbollah.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

21. yeah, yeah.

Milosevic made the same sort of excuses about KLA.

[TomInTib]

2. That is a pretty good analogy.

That was a bizarre chapter in American History.

I remember the Mayor and Chief of Police and their ever-changing justifications for that massacre.

[Lerkfish]

4. I remember it vividly.

totally disproportionate response.

[MissWaverly]

18. so do I since I lived in Philadelphia then

I spent hours outside watching to see if the flames would reach my house, fortunately they
did not. Mayor Wilson Goode said that at first he didn't take it seriously; he thought what
he was seeing was just interference on the television. (The smoke rising from burning houses.)

[reichstag911]

40. Me, too.

I had pulled an all-nighter cramming for my final exams, and I heard the choppers going over the dorms (at Penn, just a mile or two from the "action") early that morning. At the time, I didn't know what the hell was going on, but I found out later that day. Typical police-state power display (with the typical ineptitude shown by any bureaucracy).

[MissWaverly]

41. yes, I think it all started back them

the 1000% overkill approach

[reichstag911]

42. That's the way it's always been.

Read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, if you haven't already. The US government has always overresponded to anyone who in any way threatens the moneyed interests, either by directly opposing or by opting out of "legitimate" society.

[MissWaverly]

43. Good point, I hadn't thought of it that way before

the have vs the have nots

[dsc]

6. I think there are some pretty big differences here

One, the majority of the city as in all but that one house, weren't harboring MOVE. Presumedly Philly could have cut power and water to the house, bulldozed the house, ran over the house with tanks, or put the fire out after the bombed it, all without any kind of danger that the neighbors would join in. Lebanon is different. Israel can only either invade on the ground or bomb from the air. They are choosing bombing. I doubt that many people who oppose the bombing would support an invasion coupled with a door to door hunting of Hezbollah soldiers.

[HamdenRice]

9. Lebanon is not "harboring" Hezbollah

The government of Lebanon is not actively supporting Hezbollah; they don't have the military force to expel it.

Why is Israel bombing so many non-Hezbollah targets and purposely targeting Lebanese infrastructure and civilian neighborhoods?

[KurtNYC]

19. I'm confused -- aren't Hamas and Hezbollah part of the new

government of Lebanon?

edit to add:
After the 2005 elections, Hezbollah won eight new seats, giving the group twenty-three seats in the 128-member Lebanese Parliament. In addition, Hezbollah has two ministers in the government, and a third is endorsed by the group.

So I'm not confused afterall.

[Ms. Clio]

25. um, Hamas is not a Lebanese party

[dsc]

22. Then why are Hezbollah politicians in their cabinet?

[shain from kane]

23. Mineta, your days are numbered.

Norman Yoshio Mineta (born November 12, 1931) is an American politician and member of the Democratic party. Mineta most recently served in the President's Cabinet of George W. Bush as the United States Secretary of Transportation. Mineta was the only Democratic Cabinet Secretary in the Republican George W. Bush Administration.

[dsc]

28. and the Democrats got a huge number of votes

so they got one seat. Of course, Bush didnt' have to name him. If the Democrats had a milita attacking Mexico with rockets and Bush did diddly about it, I think Mexico would have a very valid claim that he didn't care if Mexico was attacked.

[HamdenRice]

27. Because they won seats

Hezbollah, like the African National Congress/Umkhonto we Sizwe and the IRA/Sinn Fein before it, are both political parties and armed movements. The political party won seats. Lebanon has had since the end of its civil war, coalition governments. But the official position of the Lebanese government is that Hezbollah, as well as all other armed militias, must disarm.

They just don't have the muscle for force them to do so. But they do not support Hezbollah's strikes against Israel.

[PaDem]

8. I couldn't disagree more..............

I know some of the folks involved in the decision making around the MOVE "bombings". MOVE was tragic and was an accident of significant proportion. Those involved will have to live with the responsibility of crafting a plan that went terribly wrong and cost people their lives. The intent was to smoke the residents out of their homes. Fire was not considered a risk. Obviously the officials involved miscalculated. Israel on the other hand is dropping bombs on Lebanon, knowing full well that the risk of innocent casualties is 100%. The situations would be comparable if authorities in Philadelphia dropped actual explosives on the MOVE homes. The motive in Philly was to get people to come outside of their residence. The motive in Lebanon is to destroy infrastructure and to kill people.

[HamdenRice]

11. Move also was not just an "accident"

Although the police officials who came up with the plan were never prosecuted, an independent commission basically decided that they committed manslaughter. It may not have been their intent to destroy the neighborhood, but their crime was analogous to shooting wildly into a crowd. For that matter, if you commit arson for mere monetary purposes, like collecting insurance money, and people are burned alive, it is considered murder.

But I see your point.

[Ms. Clio]

10. I was just thinking of this yesterday, but couldn't remember the details

Some survivors claimed that bombs were dropped during the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, as well.

[sandnsea]

13. There a lot of differences

Some of which have been addressed. The key difference is that the Philadelphia police had the authority to arrest MOVE and therefore didn't need to take extraordinary actions in the first place. Kind of like Waco, they didn't need to attack the compound because they could have just arrested Koresh and key followers when they were in town. That's because it's one country where law enforcement has authority and actually uses it.

That's not the case with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Nobody was stopping their illegal attacks against Israel.

[HamdenRice]

16. Not exactly correct ...

The key reason the Philly police came up with that plan was, as at Waco, their concern that Move was armed. They did not want to put the arresting officers in danger.

But the really spectacular error was their decision, once the Move house was on fire, to let it burn -- to try to burn the Move people out. At the same time, as Move members tried to leave the building and surrender, they came under intense police fire and were force back into the building to meet their firey deaths.

But the analogy with Israel is that the police intentionally allowed that neighborhood to burn, at least until they realized the fire was out of control.

[sandnsea]

29. They were bad plans

But the fact remains, they had the authority, and responsibility, to exercise any number of plans to bring about the arrest of these people. There was much less need to take drastic action because of the sheer numbers of options available to them. Israel just did not have those same options.

[MrSlayer]

24. MOVE soaked the rooftops surrounding their bunker with gasoline.

They sought the confrontation and they got what they wanted, much to their chagrin. The police dropped the concussion bomb but MOVE was the cause of the fire that happened after. Shooting at the firemen wasn't a good idea either. Hezbollah caused what's happening in Lebanon, much the same as MOVE brought about their own downfall and the destruction of Osage avenue.

[HamdenRice]

26. At least you're honest

So you think the police were right to burn down that West Philly block to get Move and Israel is right to destroy Lebanon to get at Hezbollah.

All I can say is that that position is not consistent with my values, but to each his own.

BTW, I believe that whether Move used gasoline or shot at firemen is disputed by the blue ribbon commission that examined the events.

[MrSlayer]

32. No. They did not intentionally burn down the neighborhood.

This is like a Hannity argument. I did not say "the police were right to burn down the neighborhood" I said "the neighborhood got burnt down due to MOVE's actions". The police were correct in their actions. And my father was a police officer right there on the scene, they did shoot at the firemen and they did soak the rooftops with gasoline.

I still have the bullets they were shooting at my dad. I know exactly what happened there.

[Demit]

35. And they begged MOVE to send the children out. MOVE refused.

That's how I remember it. Birdie and Ramona got out. I think the others could have too. It was an awful awful day. Stupid decision, to let that fire burn. Bad decisions on the authorities' part, all around. But MOVE, with their bunker and their armaments, were trying to provoke another confrontation. Back to nature group my foot.

[MrSlayer]

38. Exactly.

But we can't let that get in the way of a good "Cops are evil" story.

[reichstag911]

44. No, cops are wonderful...

...if you happen to be white and have one as a father, otherwise.... http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/coptort19.html

Also, you mentioned that you still had the bullets fired by MOVE at firemen/cops, right? Isn't (or wasn't) that -- oh, I don't know -- evidence? How'd ya get 'em?

[HamdenRice]

36. There are many levels of culpability in criminal law

If you close your eyes and fire a pistol into a crowd, that is a criminal act even if you did not intend to kill anyone. It can be criminally reckless or depraved heart indifference.

Similarly, dropping a bomb on a house in a residential neighborhood and restraining the fire department was a criminal act, according to the investigative commission, even though they were never prosecuted.

[Hatalles]

31. It's like Elliot Ness bombarding Chicago because of Capone and the mob. nt

[shain from kane]

33. See my message #3. n/t

[SoCalDem]

37. and there's always Waco..

pesonally, I believe that nutcase torched the place himself, BUT the rightwingers who blamed Janet reno and Clinton, wailed about how they killed all those innocents when they really only wanted Koresh..

just sayin...

[treestar]

39. It is analogous, the basic idea being not caring who gets killed

so long as the undesirable, or the criminal, or the whatever, does.

No attempt to distinguish between them, saying it's OK to kill anyone around if they are near the target.

You could maybe say that about Hiroshima, too. The US knew it would kill noncombatants.

The old days of the war being off on a field and the combatants having the "honor" not to harm women and children are over, if they ever existed.