In all the media frenzy over Israel’s actions in the past few weeks, one thing that keeps coming up in the news stories, the commentary and the diplomatic mind-games is the repeated accusation that Israel has “disproportionately” responded to the death of several Israeli soldiers and the capture and hostage-holding of two more.
None of these people who are accusing Israel of such a response have ever, so far as I can tell, accused Hezbollah, Hamas or other Islamist fascists of “disproportionate response.”
But isn’t that exactly what terrorism is? Isn’t it a pre-meditated disproportionate response intended to direct attention to a real or imagined political grievance? Are these people who are so quick to accuse Israel of “disproportionate response” implying that Beslan, 9/11, the Khobar Towers, and decades of suicide bombings in Israel are all “proportionate responses?”
Isn’t that the logical conclusion you have to reach since you never hear the words “disproportionate response” when such atrocities are committed, yet you hear it within hours of Israel or the U.S. responding by trying to root out and destroy the terrorists?
Well, it’s the conclusion I’m reaching anway. And it is a very distressing one to reach.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThe principle of proportionality is partly responsible for terrorism. Terrorist states know civilized countries won’t obliterate them. It allows them to fight a war of wills and prolongs conflict. Do you think if Iran realized they would be held accountable for Hezbollah and turned into a smoking hole they would continue to supply them?
There can BE no “proportionate” response to terrorist attacks. Most terrorist attacks are against civilians. In order to be proportionate, the response would be to target civilians, not attempting to eliminate the terrorists, with the possibility of harming civilians in the process.
In Lebannon, the terrorists live and fight from neighborhoods. Israel roots some of them out. They move further back into new neighborhoods. Rinse and repeat. At no point can Israel get them to commit to a “definitive” battle. And, the skirmishes, due to our sensibilities (and the MSM’s coverage) result in a “win” in the PR campaign for the terrorists.
The ONLY way to reduce the amount of terrorists is to reduce the number of places they spawn. Iraq, eventually, will be another oasis where terrorism will find less fertile ground. Afghanistan, too.
Lebannon needs to be beaten into submission, rebuilt with a government that doesn’t put up with terrorists operating freely within its borders.
Then Syria….then Iran.
This is the ONLY way I can think of to reduce terrorism, and is the ONLY “proportionate” response.
Ummm, since when was war ever about proportionate response. Your objective in war is to destroy the enemy’s will to resist in the most direct and efficient manner available to you. If that means carpet bombing cities into the ground – launch the bombers. If that means stockpiling enough nukes to convert the enemy country into a boiling sea of glass – stockpile away. If that means hunting down every Imam in Asia, and bombing every mosque into the ground . .. well darn. It’s getting to that point. Fighting a war is certainly what we haven’t been doing ever since the end of WWII, and the results speak for themselves.
And, that is the point, isn’t it?
In a “war,” you are ABLE to target military and non-military targets, destroying both their capability and will to wage war. Against terrorists, however, the very acts which, ordinarily, would be expected (and accepted)(Dresden, Hiroshima, etc…) simply are not viable options.
Israel isn’t at “war” with Lebannon. They are not at “war” with Palestine. Accordingly, they fight, not the military (who, generally, tend to attempt to minimize the death toll of THEIR citizenry) but a collection of home-grown and imported terrorists who purposely cause the deaths of the citizens of Lebannon (or wherever they either attack or hide).
Israel, I think, if they have the political will (and if the U.S. has the political will to either support Israel or simply get out of their way) has the opportunity to make Lebannon into a country which no longer actively or passively is a base for terrorist activity. Rice has made many remarks which relate to this as a goal, along the lines of: “There cannot be any cease fire until such time as Lebannon is in control of its own borders.”
This is the ultimate goal. Either Lebannon IS in control of its borders, or it is not. If it IS, then Lebannon is RESPONSIBLE for the actions of the terrorists in their attacks against Israel, in which case, Israel is legimated in declaring war on Lebannon, defeating them, and installing a government which WILL take control of its borders. If it is NOT, then Israel must do what is necessary to remove the threat to both Israel AND Lebannon, restoring a legitimate government which can control its own country.
There will be no “peace” until such time as there is no place for the terrorists to hide, and, accordingly, it is necessary to have governments in place which actively root out terrorists within their own borders.
Until such time, there is no value in talking of “proportionate responses.” (And, there are “proportionate responses,” of course. Say, for example, North Korea sent a batallion acorss the DMZ into South Korea, killing a couple of our soldiers along the way. There are responses well below the threshold of “nuking them into the stone age,” which could be characterized as “proportionate.”)
And..of course, I failed to mention the obvious.
If Israel razed Lebannon to the ground, the terrorists would simply set up shop in Syria. If Israel razed Syria to the ground, they would set up shop in Iran. Etc.
There IS no possibility of “defeating” them in the conventional sense, as they have no country, but an ideology.
Which is why I support taking whatever actions are necessary against the COUNTRIES which support them which make it too risky to continue supporting them, so that THEY police their own borders, rooting out the terrorists because it is in THEIR best interests to do so.
I just don’t think we have the political will to do so.
This (going after the countries that support terrorism) is why Iran’s current overt support for Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qada is so worrisome to me.
Here is why I will never be President.
If I were the President, I would hope I had the political courage to do the following things immediately.
1. Announce to the world that due to decades of incompetence, corruption and outright hostility to the U.S., the U.S. would withdraw immediately from the U.N. and no longer consider U.N. resoultions to be binding.
2. Announce to the world that the United States had ironclad evidence of Syria and Iran supporting terrorism across the world and that according to the “Bush Doctrine” that meant we were in a de-facto state of war with Syria and Iran.
3. Send overwhelming force into Iran and wipe its leaders off the face of the earth.
4. Send overwhelming force into Syria and wipe its leaders off the face of the earth.
5. Tell the world that they could clean up the mess, but if other countries wanted the same treatment, all they had to do is export fascism and terrorism or target U.S. vital interests.
6. Pack up, go home and secure the borders.
OK, I probably wouldn’t do that, but it felt good to say it.
Actually, that is probably exactly what needs to be done. Anything less simply results in creation of MORE terrorists. That is inevitable, so long as GOVERNMENTS continue to create them (even our “allies”).
These GOVERNMENTS must not only be held responsible for their explicit or tacit support of terrorism, they must also be held responsible for supporting the CREATION of them (through what is taught in schools, etc..)
One of the great failures of our leaders is the political cowardice when it relates to the education of the American people. We should be seeing (on Fox, if no where else….) from our leaders what is taught in Saudi Arabia’s schools (let alone in Jordan, Iran, etc.) how they pay for people to commit “murder bombings,” what the various charters of the various terrorist organizations actually SAY…and such.
There is an abject lack of any understanding of what these fanatic Islamic organizations and GOVERNMENTS stand for…and teach.
Failure to do so allows the general populace to be led by the MSM by the heartstrings as they see dead children and women who were shields (knowingly or not…we don’t know, do we?)
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