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July 20, 2006
Proportionality
So when does Israel stop?
The International Committee of the Red Cross and other international aid agencies cited growing concern over the number of Lebanese civilians being displaced by the Israeli air campaign, particularly in the hard-hit villages and towns of southern Lebanon. The number forced to leave their homes by Wednesday was estimated at 500,000 in a country with a population of 4 million.[...]
In Tyre, aid officials said estimated that some 12,000 residents remained caught in a worsening humanitarian crisis. Food stocks were dwindling and medicine was in short supply. For days, electricity and water have been cut. Many residents feared that roads leading out were too dangerous to travel. Others headed for Beirut, flying white flags from their car antennas or sunroofs.
"If you don't die of something from Israel, you're going to die of sickness, food or thirst," said Katya Taleb, 26, who gathered Wednesday with hundreds of others at the beachfront Tyre Rest House, seeking shelter and hoping for evacuation.
I have plenty of sympathy for their unwillingness to allow Hezbollah's aggression to go unchallenged, but to displace 500,000 civilians in a futile effort to bomb a diffuse terrorist group out of existence demonstrates extreme myopia and courts questions of cruelty. No one believes Hezbollah will actually cease to exist after Israel finishes pounding Lebanon -- they will reconstitute, and they will find their recruits in the froth of despair and hatred comprised when hundreds of thousands of middle class innocents find their their livelihoods destroyed, their homes rubble, and their new residences refugee camps. Israel, who's already seen attacks and terrorist sympathizers spring from Palestinian refugee camps should know better. And even if they have a tactical disagreement, their own sense of justice should confine their vengeance to some rough approximation of the guilty.
There's been some talk about how the sustained deployment is radicalizing once-sympathetic Lebanese. Less covered, but true in my experience, is that the ferocity and seeming indiscriminate nature of the counterattack is discomfiting and disappointing their Western supporters as well. At a point, saying "Israel, right or wrong" is really just a way to avoid saying, "Israel, wrong."
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Comments
God Bless Democracy in the Middle East.
Posted by: spike | Jul 20, 2006 1:02:09 PM
Well, this should be fun.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Jul 20, 2006 1:06:14 PM
God yes. These seems more and more an Israeli disaster. A huge temper tantrum striking wildly at anything they can hit. Maybe as well thought out as the US Iraq invasion - or Lebanon 20 years ago.
And yes, Israel does have every right to defend themselves. They are in a tight spot, one sole democracy in a sea of dictatorships, whose press whips up anti-Jewish hate every single day.
But this, indiscriminately killing thousands, displacing 100,000 of people, shredding a whole nation's economy. That's just not right.
Posted by: Samuel Knight | Jul 20, 2006 1:24:47 PM
questions of cruelty
Yes,that. But it is a violation of the laws of war to target innocent civilians. We did it in Dresden and Japan, to our everlasting shame.
What are the Isreali leadership thinking? They are crazy, period. There is no realistic gain to be had from these tactics. And no defensible rationale that holds water. They are substituting a likely hostile neighbor for a largely neutral (non-Hezbollah) country. Negative incentives for the Lebanese government to control Hezbollah will not work, but positive ones could have.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Jul 20, 2006 1:46:00 PM
Umm, is anyone here actually making an effort to understand Israel's goals? Thinking they include "a futile effort to bomb a diffuse terrorist group out of existence demonstrates extreme myopia and courts questions of cruelty" demonstrates extreme myopia and courts questions of not giving a damn about the facts.
Hizbullah has developed an infrastructure in South Lebanon and to some extent in other places which allows them to direct more violence into Israel than some raggle-taggle bunch of angry young men with Kalashnikovs could ever hope. Taking out their missile emplacements and their offices will make them more like a raggle-taggle bunch and less like a military force. The ultimate point being reducing them to the level at which the rest of Lebanon (one can dream) or another UN force could cope with them and secure the area.
Posted by: rilkefan | Jul 20, 2006 2:18:14 PM
I think you are misreading the situation to a degree. If you go read Lebanese blogs, you'll see that they overwhelmingly blame Hizbullah for what is going on. There is a new political space for the government to displace Hizbullah which simply was not possible before.
I also would not be too quick to call the bombing campaign "futile." If the IAF takes out Nasrallah and the senior leadership, that will have unquestionable value.
Posted by: Mastiff | Jul 20, 2006 2:19:15 PM
Like this one?
"I can't believe some of the things you can find in the Western medias. Foreign journalists have little understanding of Lebanese politics, I can't just watch CNN anymore. I am really disgusted by what is happening. Hezbollah may have initiated the crisis, but the scale of the reaction is not disproportionate, it is immoral."
Or this one?
"
The world made the wrong move. Taking out Hezbollah will not make Israel safer. It will not weaken Hamas or the Syrian regime. It will not stop the war in Iraq. It will not stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. In fact, the opposite is probably true.
Hezbollah's supporters are more supportive than ever. Hamas' support amongst Palestinians and Arabs will most likely grow. Syria is being placed in a power position. The UN investigation against Syria's involvement in the Hariri assassination is off the table. The Iranians now have ever more impetus to quicken their nuclear research."
And those are just the first two I randomly clicked from Truth Laid Bear's aggregator. And even though they prove my point, I'd be very careful about trying to sample general opinion through blogs.
Posted by: Ezra | Jul 20, 2006 2:32:50 PM
Ezra:
I think you're mistaking a definitional problem for a methodological problem. Supporting the current Israeli actions is the only prerequisite for being a True Citizen of Lebanon.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Jul 20, 2006 2:56:40 PM
"Like this one"
Anecdote, data, plural. Though making any comment about what Lebanese blogs say without taking selection effects into account is, uhh, futile.
Posted by: rilkefan | Jul 20, 2006 4:11:55 PM
I agree with everything said in the article. Particularly the sentiment ramifications after displacing 500,000 people. It seems a government in Israel's situation should do everything it can to weaken Hezbollah internally, rather than attacking with force. You're right, this won't destroy the Hezbollah movement, they will reconstitute, and they'll have plenty of recruits.
So why did Israel respond like this? What do they intend to gain with this campaign?
Answer that question, and then tell me how they can go about it differently. If you disagree with what they're after; tell me what they should be doing.
I can't imagine diplomacy is particularly effective with a group whose sworn mission is to destroy Israel, and a government needs to respond when attacked; so what options do they have?
Posted by: Sam Guinan-Nyhart | Jul 20, 2006 4:14:07 PM
I came back to my comment without seeing all of the others.
Rilkefan, you're right, they can weaken Hezbollah militarily, but do you think that's how this fight will end?
What I want to know is why, taking into account everything that Ezra said two posts later, they went on with their campaign.
Posted by: Sam Guinan-Nyhart | Jul 20, 2006 4:23:46 PM
There really is no reason for either side to stop. They are both attempting to achieve their stated goals. 1. the destruction of Israel. 2. The defense of it (so they seem to think) from the respective side.
Israel has the military to fight with and is seeing some gains politically and militarily against a definable enemy. Hez. wants to do damage to Israel regardless.
If you fight a war its going to be messy. The only war without innocent casualties is chess.
The start of this was certainly caused by Hez., the escalation certainly by Israel. It seems like the solution could certainly be up to Lebanon however.
Either the Lebanese support the Hez efort, or they do not. If they do not, and they feel that Israel is and can do untold damage to their country, they need to unite and cause Hez to cease fire. They could do this through diplomatic means, through policing means, and/or through military means.
If they think Hez is right and Israels destruction is good and possible then they should back it and continue the fight. Through inaction and allowing Hez to use civilians and civilian structures for their cover and support they are in essence backing them. As long as they cry to the international audience they look like the poor innocent victims. Hopefully maybe the great US will even step in and shower them with money to stop the conflict as has been our habit in the past.
Neither side is an innocent victim in this. Both sides need to solve it.
Posted by: david b | Jul 20, 2006 6:00:55 PM
I just noticed something I thought in my head but didnt write above.
When I spoke about stopping Hez through 'policing and military means' Im not unaware that they were thought to be incable of this on their own. They could however offer to help the IDF to work to the defeat of Hez. Not that they ever would given the history, but it is possible if they truly wanted to end the conflict.
Posted by: david b | Jul 20, 2006 6:04:04 PM
So what should Israel do?
If Al Qaeda set up camps in northern Mexico and started firing rockets in LA and Houston, what would you do? What if Al Qaeda was an official political party with seats in the Mexican congress?
Would you invade Mexico and invariably kill thousands of civs in the process?
Would you airstrike the camps, only to have Al Qaeda start firing rockets out of "civilian" houses? Would you then start airstriking these civ homes, invariably hitting surrounding civ houses and causing many civ casualties?
Would you declare war on Mexico until they kicked Al Qaeda out? Would you bomb Mexico City, invariably killing civs to force them to kick out Al Qaeda?
Give me your bright ideas guys
Posted by: joe blow | Jul 20, 2006 6:51:27 PM
Well, I probably wouldn't blow the holy hell out of the airports and blockade all the seaports, as well as gunning down civilians in cars.
I'd also be damned careful about strikes on civilian targets, weighing whether the target is worth the damage.
But that's just me.
Posted by: Demosthenes | Jul 21, 2006 6:53:00 AM
If Al Qaeda set up camps in northern Mexico and started firing rockets in LA and Houston, what would you do? What if Al Qaeda was an official political party with seats in the Mexican congress?
Likewise, what would you wimpy liberals do if Martians invaded? What if H.G. Wells was secretly a collaborator, a scout a century in advance? What if they conquered Europe with terrifying ease, and we didn't know just what the range of their poison gas was?
I refuse to take liebrals seriously on national security until they demonstrate they have a plan for this.
Posted by: Cyrus | Jul 21, 2006 9:06:06 AM
I would strengthen the Mexican government in such a way as to have the ability to solve the problem itself. That is of course assuming that the Mexican government was interested in stopping the conflict with the appropriate help. If not, then diplomatic and political pressure ought to be put on them to do so. If they refused, enough of a show of an international effort translated to the public ought to be enough to sway the leaders. It would be clear in that case and in this, that the people would not want bombing or even a war. The majority would be against Al-Qaeda as they are the Hizbollah.
There is ofcourse a matter of timing and the number of deaths caused by the rockets. Public opinion on the other side of the conflict could be so strong as to limit the options of the more powerful force. However, we have the advantage of geography, in that displacing our citizens away from the border would be less painful than the Israeli's and likely not unwelcomed to much, until the conflict died down. Israel does not have that luxury. Then again, I'm not versed enough to know the kind of pressure their government is getting.
Posted by: Adrock | Jul 21, 2006 11:01:53 AM
I would strengthen the Mexican government in such a way as to have the ability to solve the problem itself. That is of course assuming that the Mexican government was interested in stopping the conflict with the appropriate help. If not, then diplomatic and political pressure ought to be put on them to do so. If they refused, enough of a show of an international effort translated to the public ought to be enough to sway the leaders. It would be clear in that case and in this, that the people would not want bombing or even a war. The majority would be against Al-Qaeda as they are the Hizbollah.
There is ofcourse a matter of timing and the number of deaths caused by the rockets. Public opinion on the other side of the conflict could be so strong as to limit the options of the more powerful force. However, we have the advantage of geography, in that displacing our citizens away from the border would be less painful than the Israeli's and likely not unwelcomed to much, until the conflict died down. Israel does not have that luxury. Then again, I'm not versed enough to know the kind of pressure their government is getting.
Posted by: Adrock | Jul 21, 2006 11:02:07 AM
..Mexico.
I would say that if we had a case of cross border attacks coming from mexico that were not state sponsered there would be a fairly straightforward solution. Our government would talk to the Mexican Government, and tell them to have this stopped immediately.
They could refuse. They would through inaction be allowing an armed contingent of their citizens commit acts of war against us. This is no different then a group of 'renegade' generals from a country taking their forces and attacking. These would be equivelent to the state of Mexico as a whole declaring war on the US. We would crush them, and move in a freindly government.
They could agree. They would then move to control their rogue citizens, killing and detaining whoever was necessary. This solves the problem internally which is the most desired.
They could agree in principle, but be or claim to be unable to take on the rogue elements. Since the government lacks the capability we would insist that they allow us to 'assist' them in routing the attackers and then return control to them after the fact. This is mostly internal, but we aid in the protection of our own borders to the extent that is necessary.
The last could have beena desired course for the Lebanese and Israelis to follow. It seems however that the first is the course that the Lebanese have chosen. Through that however it does seem that Israel should just declare war outright on them and get it overwith. But modern international politics is too PC for that.
Those are my thoughts on the issue.
Posted by: david b | Jul 22, 2006 7:58:56 PM
Oh come on! Disproportionate! Immoral! And we continue to arm these people. We're going to all burn in hell for this one.
http://www.correntewire.com/snowflakes_from_faraway_lands
Posted by: A. Cottreau | Jul 23, 2006 7:00:57 PM
These Israeli bastards are evil. Someday we will get what we deserve for our unblinking support and assistance in their greed and bloodlust. I'm speaking about the corrupt leaders with control of all the money and weapons. I'm sure most jewish people are like most americans are like most Lebonese are like most Palstinians etc etc.But these fuckers fighting their "holy" wars for oil profits and world power are pure evil.
Posted by: joeblowjob | Jul 26, 2006 12:13:21 AM
I keep on reading about Western support for this invasion. What garbage. In the US perhaps but public support for Israel in this in the developed world is minimal. There is an overwhelming belief across the political spectrum in Europe and Asia is both unjustified and immoral.
We outside the USA scratch our heads and wonder how much longer the US can continue to justify the clearly unjustifiable. As a nation, how far you have shifted from the standards you claim to exist on...
Posted by: Rena | Jul 26, 2006 6:24:08 AM
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