Proportionality is Ridiculous....
All of this hand-wringing over proportionality in Israel's response to terror is misplaced.
Readers of my recent column on the Middle East can accuse me of many things, but not a lack of realism. I know Israel's imperfections, but I also exult and admire its achievements. Lacking religious conviction, I fear for its future and note the ominous spread of European-style anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world -- and its boomerang return to Europe as a mindless form of anti-Zionism. Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood. But the world is full of dislocated peoples and we ourselves live in a country where the Indians were pushed out of the way so that -- oh, what irony! -- the owners of slaves could spread liberty and democracy from sea to shining sea. As for Europe, who today cries for the Greeks of Anatolia or the Germans of Bohemia?Please read the whole thing...
These calls for proportionality rankle. They fall on my ears not as genteel expressions of fairness, some ditsy Marquess of Queensberry idea of war, but as ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only state in the Middle East that is a democracy. After the Holocaust, after 1,000 years of mayhem and murder, the only proportionality that counts is zero for zero. If Israel's enemies want that, they can have it in a moment.
posted by GayandRight @ 11:12 AM
2 Comments:
Proportionality is not just a legal concept. It makes common sense. Israel is destroying civilian infrastructure. This does not degrade the terrorists ability to wage war on Israel. It is out of proportion to the threat or military advantage. BUT, it is creating a generation of Lebanese that will live with hardship and poverty as it tries to rebuild its basic services. Israel is creating the next generation of people that will hate it. Not smart by Israel, although it will feel good in the short term. Israel could attain its military onbjectives and not degrade LEbanese civilians lives. That would be the smarter move.
Israel could attain its military onbjectives and not degrade LEbanese civilians lives.
Is the answer to the question, How?, so obvious or has it yet to be answered by any military that has encountered such an enemy as the Hezbollah?
Are you hoping for invention of some kind of a "smart-neutron-bomb" that would distinguish between combattant and non-combattent, and which would do little, if any, damage to civilian infrastructure even as it disables military assets?
Or some new hand-to-hand and door-to-door combat tactics that would ensure the same effect?
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