Quote Originally Posted by Tribesman
Say for example a terrorist group does a cross border raid and kills 8 soldiers , is the country whose soldiers they were right to start shelling the terrorists positions even if they are in civilian areas ?
To complicate things slightly the terrorists also do another raid on a different country and kill 15 police , is that country also right to start shelling , and furthermore to cross the border to fight the terrorists ?
Now for the fun , is it the country whose territory the terrorists are based in fault for not controling all of its territory and disarming the terrorists or is it the fault of other forces in the territory who went in to get rid of terrorism and stop threats to the neighbours but havn't ?
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Not alot of information there. And even if there was, there really is no right answer. I would say no, since civilians are being intentionally targetted.
I suppose its weighing the moral cost of taking civilian casualties vs possibly taking hits from the terrorists again in the future.

To put your scenario into the Israeli context, Israel has no moral standing to react to terrorist attacks, since it is the expansionist aggressor with thousands Palestinian/Lebanese political prisoners, most of its used water is stolen from the Arabs and has hundreds of thousands of settlers in hundreds of illegal settlements in the remaining 22% of Palestinian land with designs of taking over that very last bit.

If Mexicans had bulldozed farms and uprooted a million olive trees in Texas (assuming that they grow there) and established hundreds armed settlements there with pillboxes and bunkers and taken over water resources for their own argricultural needs, I doubt a single American would argue about the justness of retaliating with snipers, mortars, rockets and suicide bombers.