At the start of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, although not unsympathetic to Israel’s security needs, I was very concerned that this conflict not escalate into something which was a war between Israel and Lebanon per se. My view was that as the factions that opposed Hezbollah had been trying to undermine that organisation by getting Syrian forces out, it would be a tragedy if Israel’s military action undermined the pro-modernist forces within Lebanon.
And yet after reading and listening to the remarks of commentator after commentator speaking for various Lebanese factions, I now seriously question if there was ever a realistic chance of these people achieving a disarmed Hezbollah within Lebanon. It appears that views like those of Ahmed Al-Jarallah do not have much currency in Lebanon (and I urge the commentariat to link to Lebanese sources which suggest otherwise), which means if Israel was just going to wait for political development across the border to eventually neutralise the clear and present threat of Hezbollah, they would have had a very long wait indeed.
In short, I find myself inescapably drawn to the notion that not only is the Israeli action warranted, I now think there is no good reason the IDF should avoid attacking targets of strategic value to Hezbollah which are located in non-Hezbollah areas. Moreover, I would urge them to follow the logic of that position and start striking targets in Syria and (above all) in Iran in order to impose a cost on those governments for their actions in enabling Hezbollah.
Much as I support the idea of a modernist secular Lebanon, perhaps that is simply not within the power of non-Islamists in Lebanon to deliver until military realities have altered the political realities. In short, if the other factions within Lebanon do not want Israel to completely demolish the national infrastructure that Hezbollah also uses, they need to realise that they, as well as Israel, need to declare war on Hezbollah. As long as ports, roads and airfields in Lebanon can be used by Hezbollah, neutrality is simply not an option for anyone.
The delicate balance of power within the Cedar nation became untenable the moment Hezbollah in effect declared war in Israel on behalf of all of Lebanon and as a result, either Hezbollah is expelled from the government, declared a criminal organisation and confronted militarily by Lebanon’s army… or Lebanon (and not just Hezbollah) is indeed at war with Israel and must accept the consequences. There are no other realistic alternatives.
Via Power Line:
Rick Moran writes:
Daily Star of Lebanon reports on an interview Nasrallah gave to al-Jazeera that was ignored by the media here in this country but that reveals that the Hizbullah leader believes he is in the drivers seat in Lebanon – not the government. My take is here.
Not good for Israel. Not good for any International Force constituted to keep the peace in southern Lebanon. Not good for Lebanon.
I thnk you’re correct, Perry. In fact, I think this post I ran across the other day (via Hugh Hewitt) sums up the situation and what needs to be done about it rather well. Israel needs to be allowed to destroy Hezbollah as an effective fighting force. If they are made to back down yet again, we’ll find ourselves right back where we re in a few months of a few years.
Actually , I would propose that the de-stabilization of Lebanon started shortly after Khomeini and his goons seized the helm in Iran in 1979. In those days South Lebanon was being destabilized by Arafat’s boys. The South Lebanon Army was a combined Shiite and Christian Militia which sought to resist the PLO. Back then, the Shiites and Christians got along more often than not. But then Iranian goons infiltrated and subverted the local communities. They then turned on their erstwhile Christian allies, especially after the IDF withdrawal in the late 1990’s. Since then there has been a full fledged effort to subvert Lebanon and to leverage it’s failed state status to project Iranian influence.
Clearly Leb has been a defacto Nazi State for some time now with the Hez threatening the Final Solution.How Koffi Onan can call on Israel to show restraint is beyond me.He needs the restraint -a straitjacket.
No, not really. Lebanon has not been and is not a ‘Nazi state’, de facto or otherwise. Parts of Lebanon have been taken over by Islamo-fascists (i.e. Hezbollah), with the support of many Lebanese people, and other parts, which may be secularist or modernist or Christian or Druze who have no love for Hezbollah, have nevertheless tolerated Hezbollah’s existance within Lebanon rather than restart the Lebanese civil war. That does not make Lebanon a ‘Nazi state’, if anything it makes it not really a ‘state’ at all.
If people in Lebanon do was Lebanon to be a unitary state (and I am not sure if I was a Lebanese Christian or a Druze or a Muslim secularist that I would think that an unquestionably a good idea) then they cannot allow one independent elements within that state to start wars with their neighbours whilst at the same time using Lebanon’s organisational and transportation infrastructure.
“Hezbollah … confronted militarily by Lebanon’s army… ”
Easier said than done.
While the Lebanese military was under Christian command prior to the civil war up to 1975, the new army, built while Lebanon was under Syrian rule, is probably mostly muslim and sympathetic to Hezbollah and Syria.
There is a bigger chance of the Lebanese army joining Hezbollah, as it’s commander said they will do, than confronting it.
The Lebanese opposed to Hezbollah and Syria are powerless; Syria still runs the show in Lebanon, the pullback of the Syrian army was window dressing, they are still firmly in control via their proxies and supporters.
By control I mean military control, not only political – the two go together – if you don’t have a military force you have no political power.
I think Hezbollah is too powerful and has too much support for Israeli intervention to remove it and leave modernist elements in Lebanon to prosper. Either, Hezbollah will be temporarily weakened, Israel will withdraw, and we’ll be back to square one in three years time, or Israel will destroy Hezbollah entirely, Lebanon will collapse, and everyone from Syria to the CIA will set about trying to come out on top of the resulting bun fight for control and influence.
Hezbollah will almost certainly come off worst out of this. There’s no way they can avoid suffering badly in a fight with Israel. Many who support them will die, many who have tolerated them will be turned against them.
It looks like Iran may be the winner in all this, perversely. If it can goad Israel into do something stupid, like bombing Syria, then the US and UK will be obliged to stop aggressively pursuing the nuclear issue while they run around trying to stop all out war and patching things up.
But my vote is for option one. Limited incursion, Israel kills as many Hezbollah as possible in 3-4 weeks, and then leaves. Hezbollah retreats and re-groups.
That is quite possibly true jacob, but if I was a Christian or Druze, I would be seriously thinking about reactivating old militia’s and declaring for Israel right about now. By preventing Hezbollah from using infrastructure in their areas, that would very effectively remove it from the IDF target list. The Lebanese stae has failed to protect the interests of other factions, so the other factions should look to their own defence. If Hezbollah can declare war on Israel unilaterally, why can others not declare peace on Israel by taking control of their patch of the country?
Hezbollah have now proven beyond all shadow of a doubt that Lebanon as a unitary state is gone. All that remains is how the various people who did not vote Hezbollah into power decide to salvage the situation.
I disagree. It is by escallating things that Israel can win. Forcing Syria and (above all) Iran into action NOW when Israel is militarily strong and there are US forces in Iraq, rather than in 5 or 10 years when things could be very different indeed, is exactly what is needed. There is no down-side to destabalising Iran in particular.
I hope they have your good sense, Perry.
I have not seen everything said by that old favourite, “bug eyes” Walid Jumblat of the Druze from his mountain retirement, but he was signalling that Hezb Allah was the real problem and needs to be neutralised, so that is a step in the right direction.
Lebanese that i read are more afraid of civil war than living with Hizballah in its side.
Yes, that is also my take on this, but the true cost of that approach is now revealed.
TimC
No one in Lebanon is to be believed except Hizballah. Jumblat says one thing in January and another thing in February. Kerensky is what reminds me of Lebanon Spring. Good intentions only soft power.
I too think that Israel should attack Syria directly – but I think they are hoping to drag out bodies (kicking and screaming or not) of Iranian Revolutionary Guards…
that would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Can you imagine the reactions just in the crescent from Eygpt to Kuwait? (excepting the bloody Yemenis, who seem determined to find themselves on the dead side of history).
The whole thing is really pissing me off.
All this talk on the news about “the poor innocent lebanese people”. These people have reaped what they’ve sown.
If our government was doing nothing about terrorists launching missiles at France, we’d all be angry at the government, if for no other reason, than that we would expect retaliation from France.
During the Cold War, or WW3, there was a recurring scenario in various parts of the world whose example is applicable here.
A revolutionary “People’s Army” would start making attacks against the government of a country friendly to the US, or a non-aligned country in a strategic location.
Very quickly, apologists for the revolutionaries, who invariably espoused some form of marxist blather, would claim that they were an independent, indigenous group which arose out of frustration with the repressive society of the country in question, and that the US should stay out of the situation, and the countries’ government should use restraint against the rebels.
The tactics, and excesses, of the rebels were always underreported and passed over, but any real or alleged atrocities on the part of the nation’s forces were immediately reported in blaring headlines, especially if the US had advisors or supporting forces there.
If the countries’ army seemed to be winning against the rebels, there were constant calls for restraint, disengagement, caution, and constant complaints that the US was interfering in an internal problem of a foriegn country.
If, on the other hand, the rebels were winning, there were only calls for no interference on the US’ part, and demands that we recognize the new rulers as legitimate. There were, mysteriously, never any calls for restraint on the part of the rebel army.
This was the chain of events in numerous cases around the world, from Vietnam to Cuba to Nicaragua to any number of other wars and insurrections.
Upon the fall of the SU, it was found in their archives that almost every one of these rebellions and marxist movements had been bought, directed, supplied, led, and even provided advisors, pilots, and trainers by the agents of the Soviets. These insurrectionists were, as many opponents had claimed all along, little more than proxies of the Soviets, playing out the scenario of the Spanish Civil War over and over again, in a continuous and convoluted effort to destabilize and damage the West in general, and the US in particular.
Now, mirabile visu, we see the Israelis attacked by two shadowy, stateless groups, Hamas on one side and Hezbollah on the other. Furthermore, we are witness to continuous insurgent attacks in Iraq and Afghan, supplied and supported by the well documented help of Syria and Iran, the same two hostile states who are openly acknowledged to be the sponsors of Hamas and Hez.
And, in a bizarre case of deja vu, the same voices that consistently supported past revolutionary movements as independent, indigenous expressions of the people, now claim in this instance that these Islamicist groups are somehow independent actors who must be dealt with as, and afforded the same consideration as, soveriegn nations, even to the extent of negotiating cease fire agreements.
In fact, in a case of a “secret” so widely known as to be no secret at all, these groups, along with several others, are nothing more than creations of the Baathist and Iranian regimes, utterly beholden to their creators for funding, direction, equipment, training, and special assistence, such as rockets or high powered IED’s.
Hamas, Hez, the various Iraqi insurgency groups, the reconstituted Taliban in Afghan, all are proxies, fueled less by some type of righteous anger than by the convoluted plotting of the masters they work for, surrogates marching to the tune played in Tehran and Damascus, nothing more.
Israel will do what it decides to do, and the US will do what it decides it can do, but this ludicrous fiction that these are multiple flare ups of violence disconnected from each other must be seen through and refuted.
There is no Hamas or Hezbollah or any other spontaneous uprisings of outraged Islamists. There are only the devious and deadly schemes of the very same fanatics who have dragged Iran back into the 13th century, and made Syria a despotic hellhole.
sdf sdf: Well, actually, if British terrorists were launching missiles at France, Britain could expect France’s surrender within 48 hours, along with an offer of free cheese. That is the difference between France and Israel, and why France hates the latter.
I am not interested about Israel’s war with Lebanon, or about anyone who is dying or injured there. Why do I have to pay the BBC to tell me so much about it when all I want to do is watch the Premiership on Sky TV?
Mike Lorrey: That was a pretty stupid comment; so stupid that the mind boggles. Where were you, Mike, when the IRA was bombing us & was rewarded with seats in our Parliament?
I agree that you (and everyone else) should not be forced to pay for the BBC. As all you care about is football rather than anything which actually matters, why indeed should you be forced to subsidise people who see the world differently?
I have no wit or wisdom to add to this one
I’m afraid.
What will be , will be.
Heh I was going to leave it there, but then I remembered my dry rot anecdote!
Waddia mean you dont want to hear it?
Ok I’ll keep it short.
My entire bathroom was riddled with it.
My bathroom is an appendage to the rest of the house, but if the rot spread, then the house would go too, and probably the one nextdoor.
This is a parable— Go figure
But Perry this war is different from the past as all future wars will be in the foreseeable future. Hizbollah/Iran etc, have cells in the US and Europe and probably many other Western nations. If any wider war happens even if the UK and US are not directly involved there will be terrorism on our streets, we will feel it directly.
And how has this situation happened that the enemies are ‘ready’ to strike on our door steps? hmmm.
Don’t know where you’ve been hiding Dave, but the Islamist scum have been killing us here in the USA since at least the first World Trade center bombing in 1996.
Go Isreal!
From what I can gather, much as a lot of Lebanese dislike Hezbollah, they also dislike Israel in equal measure. Having ignored or even secretly approved of Israel being attacked from their borders on a daily basis, they are now stepping up their hatred of Israel. To your average Israeli, they couldn’t care less if this recent action means Lebanese hate them a bit more than they did before – they were always hated, and always will be.
If forced to choose one or another (as is the case now), I have little doubt that most Lebanese will choose Hezbollah, because that is in effect what they have been doing for years. A good indicator of the duplicity of the Lebanese is their championing of the Palestinian cause and tacit support of Palestinian attacks on Israel, at the same time as keeping tens of thousand of Palestinian refugees living in squalid labour camps and refusing to allow them to work.
Lebanon will never become anything other than a failed state so long as the vast majority hate Israel more than they hate Hezbollah.
I think Perry is largely right in posing of the problem, but wrong in his solution.
The Lebanese question may have been before this last couple of weeks how to stabilise the state with parts of it under militia occupation. If declaring war on Hizbollah and driving it out had been a plausible approach, they might have done it. But it looked to me like they were trying instead to normalise and curtail it by political means – just as they drove out Syria without starting a shooting war that would have been lost.
But it is just impossible for the other Lebanese to declare war on Hizbollah now. Israel has ensured that.
It is unclear whether any further devastation makes life better for Israel in the longer term. It is clear it makes things much worse for the Lebanese. I have no pre-determined support for either side, and I don’t assume Israeli interests trump Lebanese ones. Nor do I take the utilitarian view that the welfare of the Lebanese population now can be unilaterally disposed for anyone else’s (or for putative benefits to a future collective entity called Lebanon). On that basis I oppose what Israel is doing.
Dave,
this war is different from the past as all future wars will be in the foreseeable future
The future is not forseeable – that’s what makes it the future – but your black assertion is simply a statement of faith that takes the millenarian nutters at their own evaluation. The world is a complex mess, which can go in all sorts of unpredictable directions, as Lebanon very well illustrates.
What I am prepared to predict is that a century, two, three centuries from now, the world will still be full of people saying that this time it is different the enemy is infinitely more fiendish and subtle than any we have faced before.
An interesting point here is that the action in Leb is supported by 95% of the Israeli population. Israelis seem to have appreciated that accomodations with Islamo-fascists are impossible. I assume this means Israel is in this game very seriously and playing for keeps.
This could be a turning point in the “War on Terror”. I hope it is. I hope that the Israelis kick seven shades of Shi’ite outta Hez and Hamas. It might give the Islamicists pause for thought. If Damascus and Tehran get whacked with the big stick that would be a bonus.
I hope this current battle is focussing the minds of the West on how utterly impossible to live with is the prospect of a nuclear Iran. The Ayatollahs need to be shown that any further prosecution of their nuclear ambitions will result in their country being bombed back to the dark ages. Current Israeli resolve seems to be showing that this is possible. I hope President Armanidinnerjacket is keeping notes. I hope he’s scared. I hope he is reading the writing on the wall – the writing that says that at least one Western nation is prepared to stand-up against Islamic obnoxiousnous and do some very loud stomping.
Except I think I’ll be dissapointed. Hez are an Iranian sacrificial lamb which is diverting attention from Iranian nuclear research. The Iranians are playing a long game and Hez are merely a pawn to be sacrificed while they achieve their ambition to develop nukes.
Once the Iranians have nukes they can indulge in whatever mischief they fancy with complete impunity. State sponsor of terrorism – we ain’t seen nothing yet!
Any Western leader who allows this to happen under their watch ought to be hung drawn and quartered.
And don’t even get me started on what will happen to the Pakistani nuclear arsenal when Musharref is deposed by Taliban types.
“The Lebanese question may have been before this last couple of weeks how to stabilise the state with parts of it under militia occupation. If declaring war on Hizbollah and driving it out had been a plausible approach, they might have done it. But it looked to me like they were trying instead to normalise and curtail it by political means – just as they drove out Syria without starting a shooting war that would have been lost.”
Guy, with what we have learned of Hezbollah’s capabilities in the past week, it seems very unlikely that they would have just sat back and peacefully allowed themselves to be gradually disarmed. Instead, I think it’s clear that unless stopped (in the manner occurring now), it would not have been all that long before Hezbollah simply shrugged off the pretences and assumed absolute political power in Lebanon to go with their unrivalled military might.
So long as Hezbollah existed in its pre-war form, and so long as its existence was tolerated, a democratic Lebanon was nothing more than a sad illusion.
Yes, this war could have been avoided, but it could not have been avoided through diplomatic and political maneouverings. Instead, if the Lebanese government had appealed for help long ago, and the international community been wise enough to offer assistance, Resolution 1559 could have been fulfilled with arguably less civilian bloodshed than has occurred in the past week or so.
That is correct that they did not have the military ability to destroy Hezbollah prior to the current war but now everything has changed. Moreover it is by no means clear that they would have ever succeeded in neutralising Hezbollah politically (and in the meantime Hezbollah stockpiles more and more weapons). Hezbollah is clearly popular in parts of Lebanon plus it has Syrians and Iranian support.
It is simple: either the non-Hezbollah factions accept that Hezbollah can attack Israel from Lebanon (thereby making Lebanon a legitimate military target for Israel) or they can take themselves off the menu by in effect disassociating themselves with Hezbollah, which means using armed force to deny them use of Lebanon’s infrastructure.
Reducing the warfighting capabilities of an enemy does exactly that, and that makes them less able to fight you. Moreover ‘Lebanese interests’ surely extend to preventing third parties starting a war with Israel. If Lebanon really cares about its own interests, it would not just allow Hezbollah to do what it does.
Sorry but you completely fail to address the core issue. The Lebabese population needs to decide if restarting the civil war is worse than allowing Lebanon to become a legitimate target of the IDF because Lebanon is being used to attack Israel. If the roads and town you use are also used by Hezbollah then people can either accept that or reject that. If they do not reject that then they have no right to complain if Israel does what it does bacause Israel has the right to not have itsv territory attacks and cities struck with rockets fired from within Lebanon.
The factions within Lebanon need to once again look to their own interests and not the failed nation-state of Lebanon’s interests. If communities reactivate their militias and deny their areas to Hezbollah, they can make themselves non-legitimate targets. If they choose not to do that…
Alan Dershowitz wrote an article on exactly this topic – what is the culpability of a civilian? Is a civilian ever a legitimate target? Morally, are the Hezbulla supporters subject to attack?
I think Israel has already adopted Dershowitz’s ideas.
Dershowitz is right. Some civilians are more culpable than others.
The view is made worse by the fact that nationalistic interests compel peole to irrationally support states, even monstrous ones. And even the lowest farmer of an enemy state, by supplying food for the arms factory worker or the soldier, becomes a legitimate target. This is total war.
Total war is the quick, fast, brutal solution. But we have shied away from brutality, and instead convinced ourselves that there’s a better solution.
This other solution is the long, drawn-out war we’re waging now. It’s only possible for us because we’re in a position of strength, not of weakness. It may even be the better solution, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
Wobbly Guy,
I’m a big fan of your posts but…
You’ve equivocated on this one too much. The idea of fighting a long drawn-out war is never a good idea.
A war is always best fought by using extreme violence and trying to get the whole sorry mess over with as quickly as possible.
The Arabs need to be shown true shock and awe. They need to be shown that Allah is no match for the latest products of Lockheed Martin. If the free world can truly appall the camel fuckers with it’s fury then we might achieve something.
I know this sounds like blood-thirsty grandstanding from a home-office in Manchester but… As I see it it’s gonna end up this way and if we’re gonna have to get brutal we might as well get it over with.
You’re right Wobbly Guy, we have a position of strength. It’s a position we’re not using properly though. We can slaughter the buggers on an industrial scale but instead we prefer dhimmitude. No wonder they don’t respect us.
Europe needs a Charles Martel. Look what we’ve got instead…
I disagree with the notion that every civilian – including the farmer that feeds the arms factory workers – is complicit. Dershowitz did not come close to saying that either.
A woman who allows weapons to be hidden in her home is complicit in a way the farmer is not. The woman’s two-year-old is in the line of fire. I think we have been fooling ourselves to assume that the mother is not the responsible party to her child’s death. The mother – and the faction or gurrella movement she supports – is allowed to claim victim status for their own misdeeds. Since reporters have little incentive to investigate further, few will know the truth of the matter.
Hiding weapons and providing material support may be actions that mean these “civilians” are not considered protected persons under the Geneva Conventions. And I realize this makes it more difficult to determine who is a protected person, especially during a battle.
This has serious implications for all of us.
Wait a minute.
One side of this conflict dresses as civilians, lives and works among the civilian population, hides weapons and bases in civilian houses, facilities, and towns, uses civilians very consciously as shields, and fades back into the civilian population when threatened.
It is part of the civilian government of the country, and, as such, has a significant level of support from the civilian population, which cooperates with, allows, and facilitates its activities, and, to some extent, make up some portion of its membership.
Furthermore, this side routinely targets civilian populations, is now engaged in repeated attacks against purely civilian areas, and states unequivocably that it would kill every last person on the other side if it could, making no distinction between the military and civilian populations.
The other side is a standard military organization, uniformed and equipped, well marked and identified, which attempts to avoid mass civilian casualties with varying degrees of success.
There comes a point at which all this moralizing about civilians has to finally deal with the facts of this situation, instead of demanding that one side maintain a high level of differentiation between military and civilian targets while allowing the other to mix and blur the distinctions until they are meaningless.
Hezbollah, Hamas, and many other Islamicist terrorist groups and their apologists are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
If, as we are constantly told by Islamic spokemen, religious leaders, politicians, and ordinary citizens, the Moslem population approves of and supports these groups in all their intents and missions, votes for them, and welcomes their actions, then all this civilian-are-off-limits stuff is pure bunk, PR spin, and hypocritical victimology.
If you vote and support Hamas, you are Hamas. If you vote for and support Hez, allow it to operate in your country, give it seats in your government, you are Hez.
If you go out into the streets dancing and chanting “Death to Israel” or “Death to America” to celebrate some terrorist attack, that’s your choice, but you have chosen.
I would contend that if a population routinely sends its sons and daughters out into the world to blow up, shoot, and generally slaughter others regardless of their military or civilian status, they have forfeited any later claim that THEIR claim to civilian staus be treated with respect and caution.
What goes around comes around, and it’s long past time to let it come around as hard and mean as possible. War is hell, and if you start one, that’s what you should get.
We have tolerated the Amenyar/Vendicar status quo for far too long.
I tend to agree that people who demonstrate as veryretired indicated have a moral responsibility for the outcome of their actions and support. and morally can be targeted. Whether this will be allowed is another matter.
It seems to me that the usual justification for adhering to the Geneva Conventions is not valid any longer. Our soldiers are not protected by the Convention, so there is some justification for either withdrawing from the Conventions, or modifying them to clarify non-state gurrella movements. That’s been attempted, but the Soviets compromised the effort to support their “spontaneous” revolutions.
Modifying the Conventions is likely to be difficult without making things worse. There are groups (HRW, Amnesty International, U.S. Supreme Court, etc) which seem to think international law is meant to constrain the U.S. and Israel only.
I’m not quite willing to adopt the attitude that we should kill them all and be done with it. And I’m not sure how to solve the problem with “civilians”. So I can’t give a definitive answer to the practical questions. I’m not even sure there is are answers that would satisfy everyone.
There is an old saying in the military about “deciding if this hill is worth dying for”.
Lebanon ain’t that hill.
There will be no Druze/Christian/Moslem denial of service attacks against Hisballah. The Lebanese Army would decide that this is something that they could handle and they’d be back to civil war. Nobody in Lebanon wants that and Hizballah knows it.
Destroying Hizballah is impossible as they have a natural center of gravity in their representives in the government. The best you can do is degrade them for a couple of years. The Lebanese Army is riddled with Hizballah supporters and is worthless to an independant Lebanon as a counterweight.
Putting in foreign troops on the border just means that Hizballah shoots over their heads into Israel….and Israel has a harder time getting at them.
Lebanon will be another failed state and haven for Islamists until Syria and Iran are out of the picture.
At the end of this war, Hizballah will be beaten up but still around. Lebanon has seen it’s last tourist. And at best Israel will get a couple of years breathing space before longer range missiles start falling again.
We’re throwing nerf balls at barbarians when we should be pounding them back into the desert for another 400 years. That may happen eventually, but it’ll be harder and more costly each passing day.
expat: Where in my post did I say anything about the IRA? And please, point me to a single instance when the IRA was lobbing missiles at France, inquiring minds want to know. No, the stupid comment is yours, due to your horrendous reading comprehension. Go back and read it again.
Dale,
I think Israel has already adopted Dershowitz’s ideas.
Perhaps Dershowitz has adopted and popularised Israel’s – or, more to the point, the IDF’s – and came to his generalised theories out of consideration of the actions of the Israeli state. The sequence suggests that way round.
Example: “Special measures” in interrogation (i.e. exceeding in undefined ways the moderate physical and psychological pressure normally permitted by law) have been formally authorised in “ticking bomb” cases in Israel since 1994. Dershowitz started offering helpful suggestions about the legalisation of torture by notionally liberal states, founded on the ticking bomb conception, from about 2002.
NickM,
If the free world can truly appall the camel fuckers with it’s fury then we might achieve something.
Not going to work.
1. The more Islamo-fascist-obsessed comentators here are right to point to the existence of a death-cult – though we differ widely as to its pervasiveness – and the attempt to shock with violence only adds to that, to the extent that it succeeds at all. It gives post-hoc justification to claims that there is an exterminatory global conflict, a crusade. If you expect it to be reported in the same context of critical fact across the Arab world as in the free world, and therefore to carry the message you would like, then you’ll be disappointed.
2. However, extreme violence will have much less impact than you think, because the Arab media is chock full of extreme violence already – hours of footage that is far too grisly even for cable in the west is put into their general news packages by preference. Extreme expression of collective suffering, extreme rhetoric, extreme emotional reaction are part of a public culture that doesn’t value reticence or understatement. (Indeed suspects it as cold and calculating: take the difference between British and US standards for public emotional expression and at least double it.) What’s more government-by-terror and mob-violence on the street are part of normality in many places.
Mike Lorrey: You didn’t; I did. Let’s try it again:
Brit terrorists bomb France. They surrender, offer cheese.
IRA terrorists bomb UK. We surrender. Offer seats in Parliament.
Geddit?
Guy,
I don’t think you understand my concept of Ultra Violence. I appreciate what you say about this being a region in which blood is as cheap as air but I was talking about astonishing with violence.
All these Arab scumbags have an idea of a “worst case scenario” in terms of what the US, NATO or the UK will do to them. All of these WCSs are surviable because they are not expecting true shock and awe. Perhaps we ought to up the ante and coventrate Damascus.
“Proportionality” is a concept best left to Kofi Annan. This is World War IV and the West needs to show that we will not be stepped upon. Soon the US Aiforce will drop the number of B-52s they have to 58 from nearly 100. This is our last opportunity to crack and burn Damascus and Tehran.
Blood-thirsty, war-mongering – possibly. But a spectacle might make these islamo-nuts think twice,
We have to do something truly devastating for them to listen to us.
An interesting point here is that the action in Leb is supported by 95% of the Israeli population.
If your statistic is correct, that means the majority of Israeli Arabs/Muslims support Israel’s action – a point you might want to consider before calling them camel-fuckers.
In boxing, heavier gloves often mean a more brutal fight. Why? Because it’s almost impossible for a knockout blow to be thrown – so the fighters slowly beat each other to a pulp.
I agree wholeheartedly with NickM – it would actually be a greater kindness to the Arabs if the west were to demonstrate to them, unambiguously, that the fire burns when touched.
Right now they can calculate the cost of various actions: suicide bomb in a pizzeria = a couple of houses bulldozed and some arrests. Israel should unbalance the equation, so that it reads: aggress against Israel = unfathomably violent reaction.
Convincing that Arabs that they will not ultimately prevail is the only way to peace. Either that, or surrender.
I would urge the IDF to start bombing Chelsea. There’s bound to be a house belonging to some rich Arab who has been financing Hezbollah.
Christ Perry, sometimes you can be such a twat.
If you have a coherent argument to make, make it, otherwise, sod off.
What matters is what military forces the Lebanese can raise against the Hez.
The old army of Lebanon was mostly Christian – but that army seems to be gone. Of course it was betrayed many times by many powers.
I am told that many Lebanese Muslims want a tolerant country and a secular state.
I do not doubt this, but it is not relevant unless they have military forces that can defeat the Hez. And the will to take them on – i.e. THE ABILITY AND THE WILL TO KILL.
If they do not, then the Chritians, the Sunni, the mainstream Shia and the Druze – none of them really matter (politically not in moral terms).
If the government of Lebanon could not take on the Hez with a reasonable hope of victory then that government was (no matter how nice the people in it) a joke.
The latest B.B.C. (although the rest of the media is much the same) tactic is to stress the number of Christians in south Lebanon (in case we did not care enough about the Muslims there), actually most of the Christians of south Lebanon have been eliminated since the 1970’s – they have been killed or they have fled.
As for Israel.
It is being much too slow.
All the efforts to keep down civilian casualities have done it no good – the B.B.C. (and so on) do not care if it is hunreds or thousands of civilians who are killed. As long as they can find one dead baby to wave about they will be happy and they will let rip at the evil Jews (sorry evil Israel – we media types are not antiJewish, apart from money Jews [etc] of course).
Israel should have gone all out from day one.
In fact that would have reduced civilian casualties in total.