Moral clarity
Bookworm on Jan 06 2009 at 11:11 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
I like Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion for proportionality in dealing with Hamas:
The charge that Israel is using disproportionate force is equally baseless. Does proportionality demand that Israel fire 6,000 rockets indiscriminately back at Gaza?
That sounds like an excellent idea. Of course, being an Israeli, Netanyahu’s suggestion is tongue in cheek, but I think it makes the point, don’t you?
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Bookworm:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3651722,00.html
Actually, Bibi’s tongue in cheek remark sounds like an excellent suggestion.
That sounds like an excellent idea. Of course, being an Israeli, Netanyahu’s suggestion is tongue in cheek, but I think it makes the point, don’t you?
The key to unconventional warfare, if you aren’t good at it, is to make it conventional. In order to make it conventional, you have to fight fire with fire. You have to equal the playing field.
In Iraq, we had troubles finding and killing terrorists. Because we were in uniform and they were not. We obeyed the rules of war and a chain of command and AQ had almost no chain of command and no rules to obey. Instead of trying to play it by their rules or allow our rules to limit us, we created an ally called the Sons of Iraq. They would make the war with AQ conventional, because every advantage AQ had, the SOI also had. Except that the SOI didn’t have nearly as many disadvantages, not with us to help them.
If you were a master carpenter but you needed somebody to help you take care of the accounting, do you re-train yourself as an accountant or do you find somebody that is already good at it? War works the same way.
Israel’s problem is that they don’t have any local auxiliaries they can use against Hamas. They need to find some. Not even the most powerful military on Earth could pacify an area like the Sunni Triangle without it. Does Israel think they can do better?
I wouldn’t take it as tongue in cheek – I agree with Sadie. What the hell, fire the rockets.
Here’s the problem: The Israelis, being thoughtful people who know how to operate at a higher mental level than the Palestinians (“Kill the Jooos, nail those 72 virgins, de-clitorize our sisters!”), will make the mistake of not discriminately firing their mssiles into Gaza.
Thus the world will heap even more scorn and condemnation on them for accurately targeting their projectiles.
Charles:
Point well taken. The Israelis are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Where is it written that a response to aggression ought to be “proportional”?
The idea that a nation defending itself from attack should limit itself to a “proportional response” is not only stupid and crazy, it is also by far the most inhumane.
The bloodiest wars have always been those in which both combatants have roughly equal military strength. The least bloody, and therefore the most humane, are those in which one side quickly and decisively overwhelms the other with superior force.
It would not only be stupid, but arguably immoral for a nation to go to war with anything less than sufficient resources and resolve to win, and not only to win, but to win in short order.
“Proportional response” is an intellectual virus which sounds good to those who do not take the trouble to think through what it means in actual practice. The reality of it would be horrible beyond measure.
That’s precisely the point, Sadie: damned if they do and damned if they don’t – so might as well.
Tiresias:
If it were me making the decisions, I’d say FIRE AWAY.
Unfortunately, Israel is caught between a Livni, Olmert, Barak and a *hard place.
* morals and ethics
[...] found a great source of Moral clarity. Let’s surf over to Yourish to read World trying to push Israel into an early cease [...]
You are absolutely right, Highlander! The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were disproporationate and that’s what brought WWII to an end. Gen. Sherman’s slash and burn march through Georgia demoralized the Southern citizenry and brought the war to a quick end. On the other hand, Europe had many wars such as you described (the Hundred Years War and the 18th-19th Napoleonic and Franco Prussion wars). The Europeans, especially, should know better.
Unfortunately, Liberal/Lefties are not only ignorant of history, they really don’t understand why history matters. All they want is a wonderful world [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sprC7dEci3Y] somewhere in dreamland.
Whoops, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sprC7dEci3Y
The Europeans, especially, should know better.
But they don’t know any better. America had to stop in, more than once, to prevent the Europeans from destroying their own continent.
And they call us the warmongers…