Posted on 07/28/2006 4:50:06 AM PDT by knighthawk
In fight vs. Hezbollah, it's wrong to expect restraint
What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world and given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security? What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities - every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians - and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?
Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world - governments, the media, UN bureaucrats - has completely lost its moral bearings.
The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate," as in the universally decried "disproportionate Israeli response."
When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands to rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No.
When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right - legal and moral - to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.
Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did Britain respond to the blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate" aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill orchestrated the greatest land invasion in history that flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.
The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.
In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. The rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.
But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents also must die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty.
On Wednesday, CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do?
Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead, it attacked dual-use infrastructure - bridges, roads, airport runways - and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more.
Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in south Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed.
Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?
Ping
As much as I hate to say it, Israel will not *win* the war because it is like trying to kill cockroaches with a hammer.
There are too many of them and they breed too fast and there are too many cracks and crevices to hide in.
Israel can reduce their numbers, make it harder for them to inflict injury upon Israelis, and secure the border areas, but they can't win without the same level of force that we used against Japan in 1945.
They will need to shock these guys into realizing that a continuous state of war is bad for them...the only way to do that is to hit them so hard they don't know their own names.
bttt
Less than 1% of Beirut has been hit. Yet the MSM
will not present that because these have been ultra-precision
attacks against terrorists (and the civilian shields and UN toadies).
The black in the maps is what the Israelis have taken out.
The MSM focuses on the same buildings over and over.
Very well put.
There is a big problem with a cease fire: It gives Iran "Safe Harbor" for their nuclear weapons program. Its hard to imagine the strike by Israel or the US, hinted at over the past year or two as a possibility, occurring AFTER a UN Cease fire in Lebanon.
Explain how this situation can be viewed any differently than this well written description of OUR and Israel`s terrible postion.
But considering that the enemy believes it is doing allah's will and the reward is martyrdom, I'm not sure they can be convinced. IMO, the islamic armies are like zombies, the only way to stop them is to kill them or deprogram them (and I don't know if the latter choice even possible).
"Seldom, if ever, has a guerrilla movement been able to so openly and exquisitely weave itself into the fabric of a society as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon."
Second Amendment? I don't think so.............
OMG...is this map for REAL?! JUST the black spots?
This is quite stunning. Listening to the media it seems that Beirut is leveled. WOW.
Well, that is kind of what I said.
When I said they will have to use the same level of force that we used on Japan in 1945, I was not kidding.
If Israel were to nuke Damascus, Tehran and Riyahd, it *might* shake these folks into realizing that they need to try a different approach.
Short of that, I suspect they will continue with the way they are until they drop WMD on Israel, then Israel will finally do it.
Stunning Map.
Thank you, Diogenesis!
This new war strategy of dropping leaflets broadcasting attacks has to be the dumbest thing ever thought up. The people who are against whatever military action the leaflets are about disregard it and complain anyway.
All they do is provide the enemy time to duck and cover, or worse setup ambushes. It needs to stop. War needs to be violent, messy and destructive otherwise it will never end. Once war is declared the only way to win it is to kill all of the enemy or break their will so that they surrender. Being kind to them flies in the face of both objectives.
Whichever Clintonoid thought up that idea needs to be put behind a desk in the remotest outpost we have.
"Israel is experiencing the same pressures that the United States encounters whenever it tries to take decisive action against terrorists. Israel is endangering its own troops by providing limited air support in order to minimize civilian casualties. Does it receive any credit for this restraint? Of course not. On the contrary, international press coverage of the conflict is limited almost entirely to hysterical body counts, which, on the Lebanese side, don't even distinguish between terrorists and civilians."
Support John Bolton - call your representatives.
Cut costs and reduce storage by combining resources. May I suggest a Pinto?
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