Ryan Girdusky clashed with British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan on Monday night.
CNN has banned a conservative commentator from appearing on the network again after he told a Muslim journalist “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” an apparent reference to the spate of exploding pagers in Lebanon that killed members of the Hezbollah militant group last month.
Ryan Girdusky made the comment during a heated debate with Mehdi Hasan, a prominent British-American broadcaster and an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, on “CNN Newsnight” with host Abby Phillip.
The guests were discussing the racist jokes made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, which overshadowed former President Donald Trump’s rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday and continue to make headlines two days later.
As the debate turned fractious, Girdusky and Hasan sparred over whether the latter had been labeled an anti-Semite. “I’m a supporter of the Palestinians, I’m used to it,” Hasan said.
Girdusky replied: “Well I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.”
Do you think it’d be more humane if they used larger explosives?
I think being designed to maim is but one of multiple problems with this approach, which would overall not be served by more explosives.
It looks like a pager. Yes, supply chain attack blah blah only purchased by Hezbollah folks. But if it gets stolen or found by a civilian, there is nothing about it to suggest it could be lethal or that they should leave it alone. It isn’t just not marked as lethal, it’s explicitly disguised as something mundane.
Hezbollah folks could be sitting next to an innocent civilian in any number of contexts.
Related to but distinct from my first point, there is an endless list of possible ways that a pager belonging to a hezbollah operative could wind up in the hands of an innocent, or in a position to harm an innocent instead of the target, and none of them are things that could be controlled or monitored for the fleet of explosive pagers. Once sold, there was literally no way to have any idea who would actually be harmed when the triggering page was sent.
Just call it terrorism perpetrated by a state actor, and we have no argument.
All of your problems are just one and the same: statistical probability of civilian casualties. And the nice thing with discussing the ethics of the choice to do it here is that we have the exact results. Around 2750 Hezbros hit with around 10 civilian deaths.
When they destroyed ISIS in Mosul 8 years ago, they turned that dial up all the way to a 1-on-1 ratio. 10.000 innocents for 10.000 Isibro’s.
When they destroyed them in Raqqa, they went even higher, to around 1.5.
And if it makes you happy to call it ‘terrorism’ when you see civilian casualties, go ahead.
Their “success” was entirely down to luck, and all my problems were to illustrate the uncertainty built into every second that elapsed from the time they sold the pagers until the time they were detonated.