Posted on 09/06/2006 5:10:48 AM PDT by Molly Pitcher
The month of September brings not only the fifth anniversary of the horrific terror attacks of 2001, but also marks the passage of 67 years since the beginning of World War II. An accurate, unflinching recollection of that incomparably destructive conflagration remains indispensable in understanding some of the key issues of the bloody conflicts of our own time. In particular, the course of World War II demonstrates the complete folly of the currently trendy notion that a just war somehow must qualify as “proportional.”
Commentators endlessly invoked this concept during the recent battle between Israel and Hizbollah, faulting the Jewish state for an allegedly “disproportional response” to the invasion of its territory and the kidnapping of two of its soldiers. The resulting 34 days of conflict led to an estimated 1,000 deaths in Lebanon—more than half of them civilians – while Israel suffered a total of about 100 casualties, most of them soldiers. By the same token, some critics of American policy cite the entire war on terror as a wildly disproportional over-reaction: we lost 3,000 innocent civilians on September 11, and the Bush administration responded with the application of overwhelming force in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in perhaps 20 times the deaths (including many civilian casualties) originally inflicted on the United States. The international Left regularly and passionately decries these lopsided levels of suffering as evidence of indefensible callousness, cruelty and irresponsibility on the part of the United States and Israel.
These critics of current conflicts, however, rarely refer to the example of World War II—surely one of the most outrageously disproportional conflicts in all human history. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and killed 3,000 Americans, virtually all of them military personnel; in the US response, some 3 million Japanese lost their lives, more than 500,000 of them civilians. In their surprise attack on Hawaii, the Japanese easily could have devastated the unprotected population of Honolulu but they pointedly avoided doing so, while the United States ended the war with atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that claimed mostly civilians, as well as the even more devastating fire-bombing of Tokyo (that destroyed sixteen square miles of the city, with one fourth of its buildings, leaving at least 100,000 dead and more than a million homeless). By contrast, the Japanese never succeeded in inflicting any civilian casualties on American victims on American soil. The comparative death toll of noncombatants on native ground, in other words, stands at 500,000 to zero.
Does the grossly disproportional nature of this conflict somehow undermine the morality of the American war effort? Do the appallingly unequal figures of sacrifice and suffering suggest that FDR, Truman and the other U.S. war leaders deserve censure for their bloodthirsty tactics? The answer remains obvious and undeniable: the American political and military leadership did what it needed to do to bring the war to the quickest possible conclusion, thus sparing the lives of additional Americans (and Japanese). Proportionality of casualties bears no connection whatever to the justice or decency of a war effort; no truly moral leader could possibly justify prolonging the death and destruction in order to avoid the “embarrassment” of one-sided casualty figures. All the greatest commanders in human history—Alexander, Genghis Khan, Henry V, Napoleon, Lord Nelson, Stonewall Jackson—have inflicted horribly uneven casualties on their opponents. In one sense, the whole purpose of war is to make the enemy bleed and die more than you do. As General George Patton reportedly observed, “The goal of war isn’t to die for your country. It’s to make the other poor bastard die for his country.”
The way to judge the morality of a military effort isn’t to consider the level of enemy death and suffering but to examine the purpose for which that destruction has been inflicted. By that token the aggressive strikes by Japan at Pearl Harbor, or Al-Qaeda against New York City and Washington D.C., stand as far less justifiable than the essentially defensive (but vastly bloodier) American responses. Whatever one’s belief about the list of Islamic grievances against the Western world, or Japanese complaints about U.S. hostility to the Rising Sun Empire, no one could reasonably expect that surprise attacks on American targets would somehow reduce the level of combat and bloodshed in the world. U.S. responses, on the other hand—like the Israeli response in Lebanon –clearly meant to reduce or eliminate the chance of future conflict. Israel and the United States fought to make themselves safe from attack or intimidation, not to seize territory or to conquer other nations or to advance dreams of global domination. One may attempt to argue that recent U.S. (or Israeli) policies did little to enhance the security of the populace and proved counter-productive to their announced purposes, but no one could confuse the long-range goals of these democracies, so eager to bring their troops home at the earliest opportunity, with the aims of unabashedly aggressive, imperialist powers like the Japanese Empire or Islamo-Nazi fundamentalists, with their open dreams of international supremacy.
The whole idea of judging wars by comparing casualty rates depends upon the assumption of moral equivalence: since there is no meaningful distinction among powers, no significant contrast between the United States, say, and the old Soviet Union, then the only way to evaluate the performance of these nations is to consider the relative damage they’ve inflicted. That argument leads to the conclusion that the Soviet intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia to impose Communism counts as less objectionable than the (ultimately successful) U.S. intervention in Greece to resist Communism – because more people died in Greece than in the restive Eastern European satellite nations. Only if one employs the values of moral relativism – that we can’t judge al Qaeda more harshly than the U.S., or Hizbollah more harshly than Israel – does the talk of “proportional” war make any sense at all.
Of course, context counts far more than merely counting dead bodies: not all nations are created equal, and not all military struggles deserve equivalent respect or support. The obsession with “proportionality” represents one more misguided contemporary attempt to substitute the bogus application of “objective,” numerical analysis for value judgments – the necessary distinctions between good and evil, decent and corrupt – which still constitute the core of all contemporary conflicts.
The answer to this question is that since the Powell Doctrine says that the key to winning is the use of "overwhelming force" the only reason you'd want to use "proportional force" is if you want to lose.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Proportional warfare is everlasting warfare.
pinglist.
It's the socialist DBM's attempt at military strategy... don't forget... most of them got into the business to “make a difference”.
Two related essays at:
http://johnib.wordpress.com/2006/09/03/playing-to-win-two-essays-on-civilian-casualties-rules-of-engagment-and-values-guiding-war/
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel.
also Keywords 2006israelwar or WOT [War on Terror]
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...and if not us, then whom? Our children? Our grandchildren? who says we would even make it to grandchildren if we were to allow the muslim extremists to have their way with us.
The abject stupidity of moral equivalence equals moral relativism or an eye for an eye, one of ours for one of yours ought to be apparent to the blind and dumb, except of course stupid seems to negate all attempts at change.
If all nations were held to the moral equivalence standard, then any nation attacking another of greater population would automatically be the loser.
The most interesting and lost on the left, point of this silly doctrine, is that only one side is saddled with the doctrine. The other side is free to wage war by whatever means they deem appropriate.
And by no means lastly, what idiot would tie both hands together before going in to battle. Of course no one with a lick of sense. It really isn't about moral equivalence is it? That is just the excuse. It's really about being antiwar and that little notion will get them in even more trouble, for who I ask you is not antiwar?
I agree 100%.
Which is exactly what those who have been condeming Israel want.
Below find the words of River Rat, he understands:
Americans need to consider carefully the decision for war... Be clear on who their enemy is, and determine to destroy that enemy. Recognize there is no clean, polite or gentlemanly way to kill a stranger. If you are not prepared to kill all those that stand with and support your enemy,then surrender to him,for he has already defeated you. From Freeper River Rat's home page
scorched earth......eliminates the enemy and sends a strong message to all comers.
A "disproportionate" response on the order of 100 to 1 or more is the effective way to prevent others from attacking you. When I hear about "proportionate" responses, I always think of Sean Connery as Malone in The Untouchables and his advice to Elliot Ness: "If they pull a knife, you pull a gun. If they put one of your men in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue..."
the only way to win is to destroy.
the reason for war is to eliminate the enemy. Any one who suggests otherwise must be removed from the debate. Such a person is become the enemy.
The USA since WWII. That is why we have lost just about every war we fought since then. (Korea was at best a tie, and Panama and Grenada could be called wins if they can be called wars. Gulf War I left the job unfinished.)
The idea of proportional repsonse came, I believe, from Kennedy. The world then had a bipolar power structure (tripolar if you believe the non-aligned nations were really nonaligned), with the US and the USSR at the poles. The US and USSR both believed that war with the other would lead to nuclear annihilation of both sides.
Therefore, the idea became to fight limited wars, usually by proxy. You really didn't want a war to get 'hot' enough that the other power would respond in kind, as it was believed that such response would lead inevitably to nuclear war.
Fifty years of such thinking has blinded us to the historical reality that to win, you must destroy the enemy's will to fight. One of the easiest ways to do that is to respond with overwhelming force.
From the terrorist perspective, terrorism is war against democracies and life. It is meant to cause death, suffering and anguish among civilian masses in pursuit of political gain.
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: Therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. That thou mayest love the Lord thy God and that thou mayest obey his voice and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for He is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.
Deuteronomy 30:19, 20
The terrorists have chosen their god, and it is Satan. We are in a spiritual war, and the Islamofacists are not going to prevail.
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