Posted by
DC Musgrove on Friday, July 28, 2006 4:15:00 PM
Did I hear this right? Israel, surrounded on all sides by terrorist condoning - if not downright sponsoring countries - is supposed to pay any attention to world opinion on how to protect it's own borders? Are we seriously expecting them to curry public opinion to help them explain why they need to protect their citizens from daily rocket attacks fired deep into their territory by anti-semites who would joyfully wipe out every Jewish man, woman and child?
And the United Nations, which is anything but, should remain invested with some sort of authority to condemn Israel, because they won't conduct their battles with "proportionality"? When faced with extinction, what other nation on Earth would worry about killing their enemies with a proportional response to ensure they remain blessed by uninvolved 3rd parties? It appears Israel too has suffered from the deadly disease afflicting America, with the most powerful military on Earth. Before we take any preemptive action to protect our citizens abroad, or even behind our own borders, from terrorists who hide in civilian populations, we have to worry about some deadbeat nation's opinion in the UN concerning our proportional response! Proportional response has come to mean there is some acceptable ratio of civilians killed to eliminate a legitimate military target. Unfortunately, any student of military history will tell you the best proportional response applied when trying to persuade enemies from further attacking you, is to kill or maim as many of their civilians as you can in persistent, relentless displays of overwhelming force. If you get some bad guys in the process, you're really batting a thousand. Now more than ever, when terrorist groups shield themselves amongst civilians (and our hand wringing about potentially killing civilians is the reason they do), the real art of proportional response should be applied liberally!
No one but the news media relish seeing displays of mangled innocents. But, instead of these pictures being used to dissuade public support of a nation's right to defensive military actions, they should better serve as an example of what not to do if you're a civilian; and that is to hang around in areas where terrorists are likely to set up camp. Lebanon is such the classic example of many of it's civilians lending tacit support to Hezbullah. Instead of careful and limited incursions to protect "civilians" and demonstrate a "civilized" proportional response to the world, the IDF would be better served to carpet bomb their way North and drive the terrorists out like rats before a flood so they can kill them in the open for once. If they fight this war, like the true war it is instead of some display of chivalry, the conflict would be over between Sabbaths. And if Hezbullah cries Uncle quickly, a lot of property and innocent lives, they seem all to willing to sacrifice for their cause, could be spared in record time.
And as for Syria and Iran, they seem to forget that if Israel were really pissed off and truly as unconcerned about proportional response as they would be if the roles were reversed, they'd be serving them nukes for breakfast. War is supposed to be horrible. That's why no sane government goes to war if they can help it. But if you're faced with an enemy that doesn't play fair and they want to kill your people by using your weakness against you, all bets should be off.
And as for the UN? We should contribute only enough money to keep that crowd in ample supply of their logo coffee mugs for use in their erudite klatches on conflict resolution.