Walzer on Lebanon

For what it’s worth (and according the Chomsky haters that will be ‘not much’) the ubiquitous (in the Western press) story the current invasion of Lebanon by Israel was provoked by Hizbollah is disputed.

‘The latest phase began on June 24. It was when Israel abducted two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother. We don’t know their names. You don’t know the names of victims. They were taken to Israel, presumably, and nobody knows their fate. The next day, something happened, which we do know about, a lot. Militants in Gaza, probably Islamic Jihad, abducted an Israeli soldier across the border. That’s Corporal Gilad Shalit. And that’s well known; first abduction is not. Then followed the escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza, which I don’t have to repeat. It’s reported on adequately.

The next stage was Hezbollah’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers, (they say) on the border. Their official reason for this is that they are aiming for prisoner release. There are a few (prisoners), nobody knows how many. Officially, there are three Lebanese prisoners in Israel. (But) there’s allegedly a couple of hundred (Lebanese) people missing. Who knows where they are?’

Of course if you view the struggle in Lebanon and the struggle in Palestine as being totally and completely unconnected, no links between them at all, goodness no, then of course it is undeniably true that Hizbollah ‘started it’.

Trying to make sense of what Israel is actually doing is hard, in my opinion. I don’t believe that Israel can destroy Hezbollah by direct military action, and I’m sure they don’t believe so either. The point of their action can’t be to get the Lebanese government to act, because, as the Walzer justification insists, they lack the capacity to do so. So what are they trying to do? My guess, is that they are trying to exploit the US commitment to a post-Syrian Lebanese order to bounce the US into acting against Syria and Iran.

I too have been trying to figure out what Israel is actually trying to do. Three hypotheses, not necessarily exclusive:

1. The attacks in Lebanon have been directed against ports, bridges and other infrastructure. I wonder if this simply means that Israel is planning for a very long war, including extended search-and-destroy ground operations, and they are preparing the battlefield by attempting to isolate Hizbollah in the south and taking steps to prevent their resupply. If the plan is to gradually degrade Hiszbollah’s military capacity, by destroying weaponry and killing cadres faster than Hisbollah can aquire more, then undermining ports and existing overland supply routes would be a natural first step.

(Of course this is not inconsistent with the expanded war expalnation, because such re-supplies are likely to come anyway from Iran and Syria, which will then provide the cause for expanded US military involvement in the region – especially if it involves arms smuggling from Iran, through Iraq, and into Syria.)

2. Israel understands very well that Lebabon lacks the capacity to challenge and rein in Hizbollah. But by making life miserable for the Lebanese government and people, they somehow hope to induce them to develop that capacity, or force them to invite foreign troops (Arab troops? US troops?) into the country to do the job for them. They may be hoping that growing concern among Sunni countries about the growing power of the “Shiite crescent” will lead some of those countries to intervene on behalf of the Lebanese government against Hizbollah. This approach is also likely to lead to an expanded war.

I don’t think Walzer would be able to find a justification for this one. It amounts to pursuing a military goal indirectly by mounting a terror campaign.

3. The Israelis are expecting a hard, ugly, nasty war in the south of Lebanon, and they don’t want a lot of foreign Western observers around, listening to strories from refugees as they flow north, and relaying their views to the media. So they are scaring everyone out of the country. By selectively bombing airports, roads and ports, people visiting Lebanon are likely to think “I have to get out now while I still have the chance.”

Again, I doubt this sort of behavior can be fit into Walzer’s moral framework for war.

I would like to register my skepticism about a theme behind much of the speculation in recent days: that Israel is trying to goad, drag or otherwise coerce the US into taking actions it is otherwise loathe to take. In my view, it is more likely that the US has coordinated an overall war plan with Israel, and is now using Israel to open up the initial front, and create the circumstances for gradual escalation, and US intervention.

In observing the reactions of people in my own (US) government, one certainly doesn’t detect a sense of crisis, or pique or frustration.

Scott, that’s probably a major factor – the Likkudniks in Israel are supporting their Likkudnik brethren in the GOP.

As for The New Republican, the only other issue than the Middle East on which their credibility is lower is Joe Lieberman.

The best and simplest thing to say about The New Republican is that they’re a pack of wh*res, who occasionally tell the truth, generally by accident.

The best and simplest thing to say about The New Republican is that they’re a pack of wh*res, who occasionally tell the truth, generally by accident.

In qualified defence of the Even The Liberal New Republic, I will say that Even The Liberal David Rieff wrote a very good piece for them about Darfur, in which he actually seemed to be taking back a lot of previous interventionism.

With the continuing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and now Palestine as well, the alleged Iranian ambitions to have a nuclear weapon start to look entirely rational.

BBC News reported June 24: Israel captures pair in Gaza raid

The Israeli military said the two brothers were members of the militant group Hamas and were planning attacks on Israel.

Hamas said they were sons of a member but were not involved in Hamas. It called the abduction a crime.
…
The two captured men were brothers Osama and Mustafa Abu Muamar, sons of Hamas activist Ali Muamar.
…
Ali Muamar told Reuters news agency he awoke to see Israeli troops scaling down his wall.

“They blindfolded and handcuffed me and started beating me up with the butts of their rifles and kicking me,” said Mr Muamar, who was treated in hospital for wounds.

Mr Muamar said the soldiers seized his computer and left after about an hour.

I did find it interesting that Walzer has become a member of the editorial board of New Republic.

Walzer has in fact been a contributing editor to The New Republic since 1977. I’m certain that Proyect’s “simple materialist explanation” will be able to assimilate this information.

Coincidentally, 1977 is also the date of that joke about dysentery, which Proyect came up with when he was still known as Woody Allen.

You don’t castrate a popular organization by making it more popular. That’s just silly. They are not that stupid.

Scott Martens:

Of course, no one in the Middle East cares about the laws of war. The question is whether anyone else cares about the laws of war enough tot ake actino to enforce them.

In other words, is the point of Bertram’s rhetoric about war crimes to actually advocate those who do believe war crimes are being committed to take action against those war crimes?

After thinking it over, I’ve come to the conclusion, no. He’s being ironic.

Israel is violating the laws of war, obviously no one is going to take action to stop them, therefore the laws are meaningless.

Scott, I don’t think that in the present environment a plan of this type has to be very well thought out in order to work. Nor do I think what I am suggesting amounts to much of a conspiracy, unless you think that every time military planners execute a plan that involves some degree of stealth and a propaganda campaign, it is a conspiracy. It is not hard to predict that a war between Israel and Hizbollah will stimulate Syrian and Iranian reactions, at least of some kind, and thus allow ample opportunity to turn up the volume on the propaganda dial to ear-piercing levels. And what Syria and Iran don’t actaully do can simply be made up and passed along to the media, which will pass most of it along to the public. You don’t have to be a genius planner to carry this off, and you don’t need to predict the details. You just take whatever comes up and hype it.

It is also not hard to predict that, over the next few months, a number of things will happen in Iraq that can similarly be pinned on Syria and Iran – the usual stuff: IDF’s and other weapons used against US soldiers that have come from Iran, safe harbor provided to terrorists, etc. Border incidents are also easy to manage, since there are usually no reporters there to see what really happened. Again, you don’t have to be able to predict the details. You just hype them in the right way as they come up. Maybe one day instead of just ignoring the news of the deaths of some soldiers, which is Bush’s wont – he decides to hold a press event with tearful relatives of the soldiers’ families in attendance, and incriminating photos and stern words about the diabolical Iranian assistance in supplying the IDFs that killed them.

Eventually the sense can be created that the US and Israel are both under siege from Iran and Syria, and the requisite fury, vengefulness and hysteria can be manufactured. You add a few final little news items like a report that “intelligence sources have revealed that Iran is far closer to a nuclear weapon than previously realized.” You then arrest a few people in the states and accuse them of being Hizbollah operatives, and scare the shit out of everybody. And there you go – off and running.

And frankly … congress-shmongress. When in recent US history has the congress successfully blocked a US military action that the President really wanted to take? If the White House decides it wants to go to war against Iran, I believe they can get the war they want.

I suppose I may be more cynical than you about how easy it still is, in the present environment, to work the American public up into a war frenzy, especially against Muslims. You may think that there are now a lot of Iraq war critics in America, who have grown skeptical and wary of government statements, are weary of war, and have learned from experience. But Americans are “optimists”. Most of them are only skeptical about the lies of the past when they have been forced over a long period of time to understand they were lies. But they are ever receptive to new lies that offer the promise of an uplifting patriotic cause, an opportunity to redeem the errors of the past, and a reason to reaffirm their faith in the essential goodness and honesty of our leaders.

People have been way too eager to believe that there has been some big “Condi and the realists are in charge” sea change in the US government. Rumors of the death of the Bush doctrine have been, in my opinion, greatly exaggerated. Bush and Cheney are still in charge. I think Gingrich’s recent words are closer to the view at the top than conventional punditry recognizes.

I suspect you are right that Bush is not planning on intervening on behalf of Israel against Hizbollah. That would be a very hard sell. But he is planning to go to war against Iran, and wants to allow the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict to develop so as to prepare the way for that conflict. And that’s why he is so opposed to cease fire calls. He doesn’t want to put out this fire before it spreads where he wants it to.

I did think initially that he probably wanted to wait until after the fall, in order to help moderate Republicans keep their seats. But I now think they have made a different political calculation. They think they can bring back the war fever glory days, and help Republicans in that way by moving the public back toward them.

Leaving aside the various loony left ravings, and most definitely ignoring those who believe that if Hamas says someone is innocent, it must be true, and noting that there seem to be more baby milk plants in the Arab world to get hit by Israeli or American bombs than there are in all of New York City, we are left with the question of what the Israeli government is trying to accomplish. The most plausible answer is to degrade Hezbollah’s war fighting capacity to a more tolerable level by destroying missile emplacements, safe houses etc., inflicting casualties, possibly killing a number of leaders etc. There isn’t any reason to think that Israel’s plans are poorly-made: this is a very experienced and successful military, and I’m sure the operation is at least as well-planned as the average academic conference. The attacks on non-military targets seem mostly to involve transportation facilities (plus the baby milk plants, of course!), which would fit in with a “preparing the battlefield” strategy. (As Colin Powell said, “First we’re going to cut it off, then we’re going to kill it.”) So Israel’s actions seem perfectly explicable without reference to the Zionist world conspiracy.

Will Israel’s plans work? In war, there are two (at least!) sides who get to participate. We will who is indeed the party of God, I guess, or whose God is stronger, or something.

It’s a joy to read the post and the comments on it; it’s like reading science fiction. Joining Sebastian, this seems as the fiction-based community. Have another beer on me.

‘I don’t mean to be rude, but hasn’t it occurred to anyone here that if Israel’s real goal was just collective punishment against Leabanon instead of attacking Hezbollah, they could be doing a lot more damage than they are now.’

Well yeah, but everyone functions in a political context. After all, if Israel really wanted to create some havoc they could use all those nuclear weapons they don’t have. But the fact is that even our outrageously slanted media will feel duty bound to report dead Lebanese children if the numbers get high enough (although always being careful to point out that this is all Hizbollah’s fault really). All armies fight two wars: the ‘real’ war and the propaganda war.

In any case it is unlikely that Israel’s aim is just collective punishment. Just what Israel’s real aims are, however, is somewhat mysterious. It cannot be said often enough that we have been here before. The current ‘buffer zone’ idea is nothing but “Operation Peace for Gallilee” which was such a triumphant success in 1982 in creating the past quarter century of peace security and happiness for ordinary Israelis. There is also the matter of injured pride. The current bunch of no-hopers and imbeciles planning this insane operation, are, on the whole, the same bunch of imbeciles and no hopers who planned and ‘fought’ (i.e. made other people fight) essentially the same war back in the ’80s. The fact that the result was Israel’s most humiliating defeat, destroying the Israeli army’s ill deserved reputation as some sort of a great fighting force, has rankled ever since. Therefore, like the World War 1 generals, they have a new, fantastic plan…let’s do it all over again! Only this time, let’s really fuck things up.

In terms of political goals, who knows? All one knows in advance is that whatever they are, they will be moronic, unachievable and counterproductive (and mindless applauded by non-soldiers who like the idea of fighting but not as much as they like the idea of sitting on their arses and watching Big Brother). However here’s a guess: ‘THE REAL aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government. That was the aim of Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed. But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have never really given up on it. As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the US. As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite. That’s the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda.’

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1152991173“

When I use the term “right” to describe Walzer, I don’t mean that he is about to hook up with the National Review although some of his fellow travelers certainly might–Hitchens above all. I am instead speaking of a drift to the right among Democratic Party liberal intellectuals and social democrats. In 1968, when many of them were young, you can bet that they would have backed Eugene McCarthy. Although I never would have voted for a Democrat, McCarthy’s strictures against “policing the world” were embraced by the student left, including a number of people who went on to cheer NATO’s war in the Balkans. In many respects, this sordid episode prepared the way for many of these people to become propagandists for the American Empire. Despite extreme cases like Paul Berman and Christopher Hitchens, it is not exactly Bush’s foreign policy. It is Madeline Albright’s. That is what we have come to and it is really pathetic. When people like Walzer were undergraduates, I’ll bet that they would have been appalled by statements to the effect that it was necessary to cause the death of 500,000 children in a country on the USA’s hit-list. But as they became tenured professors or got jobs with newspapers like the NY Times and the Guardian, it became a lot easier. Whatever pangs of conscience they had, it was salved by the knowledged that they would finally be able to buy that West End Avenue apartment they lusted after.

I like how Kamm felt the need to point out that Proyect’s joke was from Woody Allen (namely Annie Hall). It’s not exactly an obscure film and I suspect Proyect thought people at a website that probably shares demographics with people who watch Woody Allen films would get the reference. Though Proyect does use it whenever Dissent comes up.

“Oh no, people are going to think he came up with that! I must tell them about Woody Allen!”

(Admittedly, I think I disagree with Kamm’s politics and likely agree more with Proyect’s. Just a disclaimer.)

If they wanted to they really could target all the hospitals.

Sure they could, Sebastian. And if you wanted to you could deal with a claim which isn’t a straw man. Or did someone actually say that Israel’s real goal was just collective punishment, that and nothing more? It’s a means to an end and the issue is whether the end justifies the means.

Sorry but this wonderful piece of logic has to be brought to the attention of the world.

‘Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan insisted the Israeli army never targets civilians but has no way of knowing whether they are in an area it is striking. “Civilians might be in the area because Hezbollah is operating from civilian territory,” Nehushtan said. ‘.

If Bertrand Russell were alive today he’d be spinning in his grave etc.

…ravings about everything from the WTO to the World Bank….

That’s a bit weak isn’t it? A bit like “everything from Bank to Moorgate”.

What’s your sane explanation from the Right of the phenomenon being discussed here, Eamonn? Please share, don’t be shy.

Kind of a different thought, but normally when terrorists use civilians as human shields, the civilians are not a party to making this decision to be used as human shields. But in Palestine, and to a lesser extent in Lebanon, this isn’t the case. Palestine voted into power a terrorist group that regularly uses civilians as human shields. And Lebanon’s government has at least shown tacit support for Hezbollah which does the same.

Do the rules of war change if the civilians are a party to the dicision to be used as human shields, especially the Hamas example?

The talk of legitimacy here does seem to be the debate of an Olympian supreme court deciding whether to permit Israel’s actions and also seems focussed on what method would be allowed with relatively little attention paid to exactly how they are to be used. By that I mean that some of the discussion procedes, for example by saying that attacking Israeli soldiers on the border is casus belli and therefore they are allowed to use tactics x, y and z in any way they see fit.

As a matter of practicality that might seem desirable but it’s not how I understood just war theory to work. As I recall the idea of just war was geared to allowing a good catholic to work out how he could maintain the safety of his soul in the context of a war. I can think of two differences that makes in this context.

One is the requirement that the fighting be thought likely to be successful. Past experience would seem to suggest that the Israeli attack on Lebanon is something of a long shot. I’ve seen few explanations of how it is supposed to work beyond the assumption that bombing people makes them do what you want them to. Note that this is not necessarily a heavier burden than is imposed by strictures against collective punishment or soldier/civilian distinctions — if killing 300 lebanese civilians would put an end to the dispute , even if they were randomly selected, it might still be just.

The second is that killing people is bad because it is bad for the killer, not because it is bad for the killed. In this discussion that latter reasoning often seems to be the tacit assumption and leads to the idea that the lives of Lebanese civilians might somehow be forfeit. It is very odd that a US President who sometimes takes a very absolutist view on the sanctity of life should seem to take such a view.

Of course it is helpful to know in advance if actions are just but in the absence of an ideal authority we can only turn to the UN Security Council and since the US has a veto and will prevent any censure of Israel and is even against a ceasefire, Israel’s actions are plainly legal.

jet, did you see the names of the abductees above?

What is your standard for legit?

Anyway, I think your question assumes that only the opinons of Americans count in this. Whatever you think there will be a lot of people keeping score with an exchange rate for lives that isn’t ten to one. Even if you do not accept their judgement that has practical implications.

jet,

You will recall that your logic in #43 was the justification (or sometimes plea in mitigation) used in relation to 9/11. There are no innocent American civilians, because they can all vote? Do you really want to go there?

Jack,
Yes I saw the names from above and saw that they were closely related to a terrorist organization (Hamas). Hardly compelling evidence of their innocence, as I see Hamas as the more violent offshoot of an organization that has driven nails into the heads of their victims as a slow method of execution.

My standard of legit are targets which can be used to support military action, but they must be minimally disabled. For instance, I approve of Israel’s attack on the power station set up transformers. Simple equipment to replace. Also I approve of the airport bombing. They could have used airport specific munitions which buckle the ground creating huge heaps of earth, requiring lots of time and equipment to make the ground solid again. Rather they used normal bombs which create simple holes in the ground, easily bulldozed over and repaved.

How is my question American specific? And my acceptance of exchange rates goes up in direct correlation to their civilian approval of terrorist actions.

‘If Israel misses a legitimate target and hits a civilian target, that is unfortunate—really crappy in fact—but not a war crime. If Israel’s intelligence isn’t 100% (and no military intelligence ever is) such that what they thought was a legitimate target is actually a civilian structure, that is not a war crime. And if it hits things like airports and blockades sea ports to prevent resupply, that is wholly legitimate even if it also damages the civilian economy’

‘An entire neighborhood of a southern Lebanese village is no more: All 15 houses were destroyed Wednesday in an airstrike by Israelis apparently determined to stop Hezbollah’s frequent rocket fire from this region….Israel’s onslaught, now in its second week, has wreaked its worst damage in the poor farming regions of southern Lebanon. Warplanes have blasted bridges and roads and turned villages into ghost towns as civilians flee, abandoning the area to Hezbollah guerrillas who continue to fire rockets on Israel and engage any ground force that advances from the border 12 miles to the south.’

‘‘Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan insisted the Israeli army never targets civilians but has no way of knowing whether they are in an area it is striking. “Civilians might be in the area because Hezbollah is operating from civilian territory,” Nehushtan said.’

Pithlord,
Lebanon does not have the will to police itself, so why should Israeli soldiers die instead of Lebanese civilians? Should Israel keep a standing police force in a DMZ in the south of Lebanon suffering slow attrition because Lebanon won’t remove/disarm Hezbollah? I’m saying Israel has the right to shift risk to the irresponsible parties involved. Lebanon should be begging for outside military help in putting down a rebellious faction endangering their sovereignty.

This too will pass.

You would think the decent left would be torn about this issue. The heroic representatives of the purple revolution in Iraq, waving their fingers in the air, have suggested they would even volunteer to help Hezbollah. Now, since these people represent liberal democratic values, as enshrined in the immortal words of the Constitution, the Euston Manifesto, and the little tab that you aren’t supposed to rip off your mattress, I would expect that the TNR, Kamm and the Harry’s place people would be gathering money to send the fighters against Israeli aggression to South Lebanon. Or is this something we just put in the side of the decent left brain labeled “does not compute”? How much space is left, there, anyway?

#58: is there some cool new expression that can be used instead of ‘blatant straw man’? Becuase I am getting really tired of having to use that phrase every time I read a post around here about the Eustonites.

I rather doubt the whole thing is some kind of complicated conspiracy, and I don’t exactly cheer when a Hizbollah missile lands on an Israeli city. Is that really some kind of deviation from an approved leftist line that warrants so much energy and creativity to be put into opposing it?

To bad Arabs ain’t embryos.

Israeli aggression on Lebanon

Gruesome pictures, not work friendly.

I think, Soru, you miss the point. The whole raison d’etre of the ‘decent’ left was that Bush was serious about the democratisation of the middle east. Now that might have been true, false, half true, or whatever. But now we have a situation in which Israel (a democracy, admittedly, but then it always was) is attacking Palestine (a democracy) and Lebanon (another democracy). Now whatever one thinks about this, it is clear that Israel has always been a democracy. Its democracy is stable. The same can hardly be said about Palestine and the Lebanon. Their democracies are new and fragile.

Therefore, what can Israel’s assaults possibly, conceivably do except destabilise these democracies? Apart from the flagrant lie that the Lebanese are really welcoming this invasion of their sovereign territory (and you just have to imagine how the British would have reacted had Israel invaded the UK to ‘disarm’ the IRA in the ’70s to imagine how well this logic is almost certainly going down with the average Lebanese citizen) what do the Eustonites have to say about this? This invasion cannot conceivably do anything except put back Middle Eastern democracy (which is, I think we will all agree, a worthy goal) by years, perhaps decades. [It will also, of course, damage Israeli democracy (wars always do damage democracy) but that damage is likely to pass under the radar of the ‘decents’.]

Like it or not, to talk about ‘Hizbollah’ as though it is somehow ‘other’ from the Lebanese democracy, and the Lebanese political system, is a joke. The party stands in elections, and wins seats in the Parliament. You may also be interested to know that whereas the Americans (of course) class it as a terrorist organisation, the EU does not. Attacks on Hizbollah, as things stand, are attacks on Lebanon, which is a democracy.

The tone at Harry’s Place is getting increasingly nasty, I have noticed, as talk of democracy and human rights is abandoned, the the former leftists become increasingly exulted at the wielding of hard, military power by their new political masters.

brucer: see #13 above.

jet: The Israeli abductees are soldiers.

soru: I think #58 is suggesting “cock-up” over “conspiracy”

abbi (no. 30): You are right, nothing Israel has done seems to have worked. Occupy the Gaza Strip; withdraw; occupy Lebanon; withdraw; refuse to negotiate with the PLO; negotiate with the PLO; whatever–everyone still hates the Jews. I think the only answer is for the Jews to march en masse into the sea, so we don’t have to think about them anymore.

Louis Proyect (no. 34):

1. Not everything you read in Harper’s is true.

2. The existence of feckless, dishonest and incompetent soldiers does not demonstrate that the military operation in which they are engaged is ill-planned–every military operation involves some bad apples.

3. How do you think your heroes in the Red Army behaved? I realize that to insult any Allied soldier is a mortal insult to Belle Waring, but did you ever wonder why the Poles et al. weren’t more grateful to be liberated? Where were all the American and British left/liberal types demanding war crimes trials for Stalin and Zhukov? I would almost suspect hypocrisy, except that I know those on the left are incapable of that.

abb1, I didn’t notice Israel living in peace prior to 1967. There were three wars in the 20 years that Israel was within the boundaries you suggest. Are you seriously defending the proposition that if Israel withdrew to those borders, terrorism in Israel (including missile and mortar fire from Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza) would cease?

I don’t need any lessons on how to live in New York. Our politicans don’t tolerate terrorists or people who babble about the Zionist world conspiracy here. We have peace because we have discipline, thanks to Mayor Giuliani.

abb1,

I don’t think Bertram will answer, but you might. If one believes that Bertram is correct and Israel is commiting a wrong, even war crimes, and one lives in a on-middle-eastern country, say one in the EU, what should one do about it? Is one obligated, morally or otherwise, to do anything other than go on a blog and say, “Israel is wrong”?

I don’t think Bertram has an obligation to say what Israel should do, but I am curious what he thinks he should do?

I am confused as to why all the opposition to the US and Israeli foreign policy has so little action to show for itself.

Are his objections impotent?

‘We have peace because we have discipline!’

Christ! Is it legal to read this blog in New York? Or do you have to get a special dispensation from the cops or something? Couldn’t have subversive thoughts disrupting all that discipline now could we?

Kevin,

In my galaxy, if you believe that the USA is using security council resolutions to protect war criminals, you get together a group of like-minded folk and write a document starting “When in the course of human events…”

You see we have a procedure for these kinds of things, its called revolution, welcome to planet earth.

What happens in your galaxy?

Walt,

Exactly my point.

People are going first all over the world. Didn’t the US Army bring about a revolution in Iraq?

Walt, Kevin, abb1, Bertram, anyone,

What I’m really trying to figure out is what its worth, if anything, to have the the support of the population( as contrasted with the government)of an EU country (and the answer may be different depending on the country) on your side when you are in a war.

Is the European response basically constrained to a range of “give some support to the USA” on one hand to “stay out of it” on the other.

And if so, why?

nick s: “In fact, the Star in Lebanon has reported on the bombardment of churches and hospitals in Christian districts. Which means either Israel has really crappy intel, or Sebastian is a really crappy apologist for something that looks an awful lot like collective punishment.”

Well, that’s the whole point. At this stage of the game, I have a feeling that the Eustonians are in it mostly to get attention like the RCP/LM of the mid-90’s. “Did you read what Frank Furedi wrote? Good grief, he came out in favor of thalidomide using a quote from the Grundrisse.” Christopher Hitchens: “Everybody knows that the answer to Islamofascism is a well-placed nuclear bomb. Hiccup.” After coming up with these shock jock type statements, the giggle to themselves about how outrageous they are. It is certainly not about moving people into action like serious politics is involved with. It is being the class clown once again at the age of 55.

Israel’s aims have been murky: what started as an ostensible effort to free captured soldiers now is said to be an effort to degrade Hezbollah’s military capacity. The transporation infrastructure — airports, sea-ports, bridges, roads — can be used to resupply Hezbollah or move its equipment around to avoid airstrikes on weapons caches and emplacements.

Strikes on Hezbollah’s television station are like the NATO strikes on Serbian television in 1999. It assumes that the psychological effects and denial of propaganda will have an impact on Hezbollah’s military capacity. Outside the USAF and IDF, I don’t most strategic analysts believe that this is true. Attacking Hezbollah’s material capacity to fight will be effective, however.

But it strains credulity that the IDF thinks that airstrikes alone will decisively limit Hezbollah’s military capacity. Rather, it seems that Israel wishes to inflict pain on Lebanese society in order to compel the Lebanese government and its European and US supporters into taking some decisive action against Hezbollah, but it hard to see what that would be.

So either Israel is over-confident in its estimate of its ability to degrade Hezbollah or it is conducing primarily punitive attacks in order to provoke some unspecified action by extra-regional actors. Neither scenario is particularly reassuring.

“everyone still hates the Jews”
y81
There’s more hatred now than there has been for a long time, but it’s only directed at “the Jews” because the men responsible for causing that hatred are hiding behind and among “the Jews” – in much the same manner the men who have done such egregious harm to the people of Iraq are hiding behind and among “Americans”.
Americans are, in the great majority, decent honest people. As are the great majority of Jews. And Arabs. And Kalahari Bushmen for that matter.
The hatred’s real, because its causes are real. The masks are cunning and well-fixed. It takes discernment and real effort to see past them.
What’s there is not “Jew” or “American”, and our inability to name it accurately makes it hard to place the blame where it should go, and much easier to fall back on sterotypes and collective accusation.
Comments like yours, and the craven attitude behind it, only worsen an already awful circumstance.

Martin, I’m the last person to ask what to do. I’m pretty much a determinist who believes that the ‘free will’ concept is greatly exaggerated; that due to the circumstances beyond our control, various limitation of physical, social, psychological, etc nature, most of us generally have such a narrow range of possible choices that it doesn’t really matter.

Chris Bertram writes, “But Israel hasn’t limited itself to [supressing Hezbollah], it has attacked other Lebanese targets.”

This is not true – every target that Israel has bombed has in one way or another been associated with Hezbollah. For example, no infrastructure was bombed in Shiite areas not close to the Israeli-Lebanaese bomber; infrastructure was only bombed in areas with suspected Hezbollah bases.

Lake Qaraoun Dam suffered a direct hit yet wasn’t destroyed. Do you think that if they wanted to destroy the dam they umm would have destroyed the dam? Maybe hit it enough times to destroy it? Sheesh.

y81: So, brendan, you hate New York and Israel? But you’re not an anti-Semite, right?

So if I hate New York, I’m an anti-semite? Can I hate Isreal but not Jews? Can I hate New York and Jews? Can I hate Jews but not Isreal? Does anything you ever say make the slightest bit of sense, even by accident?

Sebastian Holsclaw: Lake Qaraoun Dam suffered a direct hit yet wasn’t destroyed. Do you think that if they wanted to destroy the dam they umm would have destroyed the dam? Maybe hit it enough times to destroy it? Sheesh.

As neat a bit of argumentative lunacy as I’ve seen. Point A is made (every target is associated with Hezbollah). Point B appears to refute this (Dam is bombed, hard to see its relationship to terrorism, note point B makes no reference as to whether the dam was destroyed). You then counter by agreeing that the dam was, in fact, bombed but as it was not destroyed Point B is thus crazy talk. Genius.

I think the letters ‘b’, ‘l’, ‘a’, ‘t’, … , ‘m’, ‘a’, ‘n’ are getting noticably worn out out my keyboard.

Umm… who the fuck is “blat man”?

Sebastian,

Partial destruction of a dam seems consistent with my theory: the idea is to intimidate. Now, if it was likely to intimidate Hezbollah that would perhaps be within accepted notions of proportionality. But it seems a lot more likely to intimidate Hezbollah’s partners in government. “Nice dam. Shame if anything was to happen to it.”

I really don’t see how you can consider it an attack on a military asset. But since you evidently think Beirut airport is an important supply line for Hezbollah, I suppose anything is possible. They might be using FedEx.

perhaps Tony Blair is Blat Man

Yeah, except that the current policy of not breathing a word which might offend our overlords, to the point where the Tories can offer a stronger criticism of Israel’s tactics than the government, is not exactly heroic. I suppose keeping your mouth shut when told to is the price of conviction. Or something.

Tthe heart of the problem in the Middle East is that each side sees itself as the victim of a long list of injustices committed by the other side. It then uses these injustices to mobilise support for committing further injustices against the other side. So Israel justifies the atrocities it has committed against Lebanon in the past week or so by pointing to the Hezbollah capture of its soldiers that occurred first. Hizbollah says it captured the soldiers to try and secure the release of its own soldiers. Israel says it still holds the soldiers because they were involved in terrorism. Hizbollah will respond by pointing to something else Israel has done, which Israel will do as well. Before you know it we are getting back to 1982 (or even further behind) and atrocities being committed then.

The situation with Palestinians is the same. Israel justifies bombing Gaza because of the capture of Gilad Shalit, which Hamas says was a response to the kidnap of 2 Gaza civilians, which Israel says was a response to shelling, which Hamas says was a response to….yada yada blah blah etc. You get the point.

The really tragic thing in the whole mess is that people are so trapped by their history, stuck in one way narratives of history and prejudices about the other. Yet this isn’t a complex problem, there has been almost universal consensus behind the solution to the problem. This solution of course is a 2-state solution based upon the 1967 borders. Issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the right to return and the future of settlements are slightly more complex, but enough has been written about solutions to these issues that a rational person would have no trouble finding a solution. In the case of the issue of settlements, this would not have been an issue had Israel obeyed international law in the first place and a two state solution implemented sooner.

The only problem with implementing this solution has been that each side has been behaving like 6 year olds, and refused to realise that it is the most reasonable and practical solution on the table. Israel used Oslo to expand settlements, has never accepted the 1967 borders for a Palestinian state, and was often late in implementing its own side of the deal under the Oslo agreements (if it did at all).The PLO on the other side were more interested in enriching their bank accounts than pushing for a real Palestinian state, and thus eventually were (rightly) kicked out by the Palestinian population.

Given this childish refusal to solve an obviously solvable problem, both sides should be treated like 6 year olds and have the choice taken away from them. I therefore propose the 2-state solution should be forced on them by military means, both regimes would be overthrown and replaced with puppet governments backed up by a UN lead that would have a 5 year mandate to raise living standards. Elections would then follow in the hope that the economics of the situation would persuade the civilians not to vote for children, but adults instead. After 10 years of substantial economic growth and peace each side would have too much to lose by reverting to violence.

And the chances of it happening are zero because the 6 year old’s fighting have a younger brother sitting in the white house. One who is supported by a political party more interested in creating Armageddon for theological reasons than finding peace.

…each side sees itself as the victim…

Planeshift, there’s no symmetry, one side is the victim and the other side is the aggressor.

The indigenous people are the victims and those who attack them are the aggressors, it’s just this simple. Why all this sophistry, what can be more obvious?

Abb1, Israel certainly doesn’t see itself as the aggressor, it sees itself as the victim. Whether objectively speaking it is either of those things is not the point I was making.

Well Chris, I’m not sure how you managed it, but this thread has been an exception to the usual rule by which any discussion of I/P inevitably degrades into pointless name-calling. Maybe it had something to do with the way you framed your question in the original post. Or maybe it’s that the situation is so diabolically complicated and so goddamn depressing that there are relatively few True Believers willing to spout off about how simple and obvious it all is.

Sebastian, in your opinion, is Isreal conducting an attack on Hezbollah or the Lebanese state? Or both?

That large percentage is not 100%, it may not even be 95%, but it is well over a majority.

And your evidence for this is what? Long service in the Israeli air force? The fact that you’re actually commenting from Lebanon right now?

When Israeli bombs go astray, they are a threat to civilians—and that is what happens when you allow a militia in your country to make war against another country.

“Also, that short skirt meant she was asking to be raped.”

They have the capability to complete destroy every building at the airport and make the runways very difficult to repair by using munitions with that very purpose.

“But at least she wasn’t murdered after being raped.”

Destroying a large dam is something that requires more than one bomb.

Sebastian, in the course of your extensive study of military matters, did you ever hear of a guy called Barnes Wallis? Really, you have a brass neck lecturing people about failing to understand military matters. You really haven’t a clue.

(As my earlier comment makes clear, I’m not suggesting that the Israelis necessarily wanted to wanted to destroy the dam.)

How is “a short skirt meant she was asking to be raped” an argument about proportionality?

“Sebastian, in the course of your extensive study of military matters, did you ever hear of a guy called Barnes Wallis?”

I don’t mean to be rude, but are you aware of context? Of course if you really mean to destroy a dam you can design a bomb with specifically that purpose. I’m quite certain that Israel has something even better than the bouncing bomb that Wallis invented.

That is precisely my point. If Israel was targeting the dam they would have used the right munitions for the job. If they wanted to cause the intense devestation that “boming a dam” would create they would have done it. The fact that reports of “a bomb” hitting the dam coupled with the fact that the dam wasn’t destroyed suggest that the bomb which hit it wasn’t a dam destroying bomb. If Israel were really targeting the dam they would have used either a single dam destroying bomb, or if that weren’t readily available they would use enough standard munitions to destroy the dam.

Since the dam is still standing, it is rather freaking obvious that they weren’t targeting it. It isn’t as if the dam ran away and hid.

“And your evidence for this is what?” Miltary logic.

Ooh, a perfectly meaningless answer. And only a breath away from ‘military intelligence’, that famous oxymoron.

Again, since you dodged it: is it more morally problematic to throw rocks indiscriminately or fire off a machine gun indiscriminately? Does the ability to attack with greater destructive power and greater precision change the moral calculus? This is very generic moral philosophy.

I don’t give a damn about your obsession with the dam, although I do note that your retreat into issues of civil engineering and keyboard kommandoism (rather than, say, the circumstances that levelled a Greek Orthodox church) suggests a certain unwillingness to engage with questions of proportionality.

In fact, you’re teetering on the brink of saying that since Israel hasn’t nuked Lebanon seven times over, it’s obviously pulling its punches, and therefore all arguments of disproportionality are invalid. And you have indeed said that the Lebanese were just asking for it.

See, the thing is, you tacitly accept my premise: that the capacity to make all of Lebanon look like the ruins at Baalbeck imposes greater moral constraints than the capacity to lob rockets into northern Israel. This obviously doesn’t mean that lobbing rockets is morally justified, and one imagines that Hezbollah would be far less discriminating than Israel if it had F-16s and Apaches at its disposal. But the reason why states get fighter jets and assault helicopters, in general, is that they are presumed to be beyond all that.

I don’t mean to be rude, but are you aware of context?

The context is a dialogue like this:

Alex: “…every target that Israel has bombed has in one way or another been associated with Hezbollah.”

Nick S: “The St. Gregorius Church in Rachaya al-Fokhar suffered a direct hit, as did the Lake Qaraoun Dam and the ambulance donated by the Emirates in Dahr al-Baydar.”

SH: “Do you think that if they wanted to destroy the dam they umm would have destroyed the dam?”

I really don’t much care whether you mean to be rude, or whether it’s just that you are a bit steamed-up. Nick S corrected a false statement. Your response to him doesn’t advance the discussion at all, for reasons already explained.

What are the Israelis complaining about? Statistically Haifa is far safer than Washington DC.

Sebastian, despite its much greater accuracy Israel is killing ten times as many as is Hezbollah. It’s not an accident if you know it’s going to happen.

More seriously, do you really think this is going to work? So far we can only be sure that Lebanon is now a failed state again. Another neighbour with a grudge and nothing to lose, great. How have things have improved since the Syrians left?

It seems to me self indulgence of a kind that is not even practical.Israel can continue living by the sword for the time being but it’s not a long term plan. Sharon seemed to have some sense of urgency about obtaining a peace of some sort. Now it looks like the general who spoke of turning the clock back twenty years will have his way. I don’t think that’s good for anyone.

A question about proportionality.

What is a proportional response to a threat? Is it a proportional response to the action to date or is it proportional to the threatened action?

It seems that the USA, which will not say that it won’t use nuclear weapons first, believes itself justified in responding to a threat of destruction with actual destruction.

“You maintain that the distinction between “targeted” and merely “bombed” is ethically unimportant for Hezbollah because of their primitive targeting capacity.

Not at all. I maintain that with Hezbollah’s primitive targeting capacity, the target is at the level of “a city”. In general, a target at the level of “a city” is not a military target. There may in theory be some instances where a military base is large enough to qualify, but that isn’t in fact the case with say Haifa or other current Hezbollah targets. They have illegitimate targets.

Israel is bombing things at the individual building level and individual vehicle level. They sometimes miss, their intelligence is sometimes wrong, but their targets are legitimate.

129: Israel is bombing things at the individual building level and individual vehicle level. They sometimes miss, their intelligence is sometimes wrong, but their targets are legitimate.

I don’t know how you know this beyond taking the IDF’s word for it, but I’ll leave that be for now. My main problem with this argument is that it only holds if Israel’s initial decision to escalate the conflict is itself legitimate; otherwise, no matter how “precise” Israel’s targeting is, the IDF would have escalated a conflict unnecessarily in the full knowledge that it would cause significant civilian death.

So, I’m wondering if you can think of another theatre in which it would be acceptable to launch an operation of this scope in response to a border skirmish. That’s what the question of “proportionality” is really about. That’s why I asked earlier about Turkey, who have threatened to invade Iraq due to border skirmishes with Kurdish guerillas. Does that seem reasonable to you? Why or why not?

131: I don’t understand how you can consider rockets into Israeli cities as a “border skirmish”.

Sebastian, the recent round of Katyusha attacks started after a border skirmish between Hezbollah and the IDF prompted the first airstrikes on Beirut. Surely you’re aware of this.

I take it your reluctance to answer the question about Turkey means you don’t think they should be conducting similar operations in northern Iraq right now. Is that correct?

133: Beryl, a thought for future reference: if you’re going to be reduced to snarking vaguely at strawmen in lieu of actually contributing something, maybe it’s better to just walk away from the keyboard.

Israel is bombing things at the individual building level and individual vehicle level. They sometimes miss, their intelligence is sometimes wrong, but their targets are legitimate.

Also, God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

It’s an astonishing moral conjuring trick: Israel always aims to aim properly, says Sebastian, and any blown-up Greek Orthodox churches are primarily Hezbollah’s fault, but also the general Lebanese population’s fault for not having the military strength to challenge Hezbollah.

You don’t have to nuke a dam in order to destroy it.

You’re still talking about this bloody dam? Guess what: you don’t have to hit human beings with lots and lots of high explosive in order to graze them.

So, we’ve established that for Sebastian, ‘targets’ are a thing of pure metaphysics, and no matter how little relation the actual points of impact bear to anything that might be considered a legitimate target, we must believe that Israel really, truly meant those bombs to bonk Hezbollah fighters square on the head. And if they didn’t? Well, it’s just the fault of people who happen to be in non-targeted areas during this precise and measured campaign.

I think we have a ballistics expert in the making.

You require perfection, which is ridiculous at the current level of available technology.

Which was my bloody point about the moral calculus that comes with increases in both accuracy and destructive potential — the latter outweighing the former. If the Entebbe raid had been conducted through airstrikes, they’d have probably got all the hijackers too.

In the meantime, you impute perfection of intention to Israel, with precious little to back it up.

If you want to take a pacificst position that no war is justifiable feel free. But wars do kill civilians–even unintentionally. Just war procedure is to try to target the combatants. That is why we have rules about combatants distinguishing themselves from non-combatants. Unsurprisingly people on this board don’t seem to care about those rules–even though they would do more than almost anything else to protect civilians in war. Perhaps you don’t care only because they cut against Israel.

140: I can’t tell if that’s meant as a response to the question about Turkey or not, Sebastian. Is it? If so, how?

Dr Slack, please note that referring to comments by number gets confusing – comments stuck in moderation screw up the numbering.

Its so interesting to me the difference in how people view what is acceptable in war.

I think a lot of the difference in the posters here is between people who think we haven’t had more wars like WWI and WWII BECAUSE morals have really changed and people who think that stated morals have changed BECAUSE we haven’t had more wars like WWI and WWII and if the wars came again we would return to the old code.

I’m undecided, but receptive to the idea, that once that first bullet flies by your head, morals fly out the window.

Just war procedure is to—

“The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.”

Perhaps you don’t care only because they cut against Israel.

We’ve got the straw man and the cowardly lion, so all we need is a tin man for the set. The Candide-like display from Sebastian is quite staggering, though. Everything is for the best in the best of all possible Israeli airstrikes.

So my conclusion is that Israel is attempting to send a fairly direct message to the Lebanese: “We have the ability to bomb you back to the stone age; and you are powerless to stop it.

Israel seems to have a schizoid attitude in times like this: it beats the shit out of the states on its borders then complains that those states can’t control the resentment of their populations. A cynic might wonder whether Israel actually wants to be surrounded by prosperous Arab neighbours, especially given its reliance upon Palestinian labour. I also think this is a not-very coded message to Iran.

‘sfunny. I remember a story from somewhere about a shepherd boy with a slingshot…

The argument that the Israelis are reacting disproportionately would entail that any targets, after a certain point, are illegitmate. A truck, a damn, a refugee camp. But it isn’t disproportionate if Israel is targetting the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon to destroy Lebanon as a viable economic, social and political entity. This, in the end, seems to be their aim. They couldn’t destroy Hezbollah when they occupied the country for ten years, and I doubt they are going to destroy the organization with some quick knock out blow. Instead, they are going to destroy the conditions that modify the activity of the organization — an act of sheer, Sharon like witlessness.

Since Hezbollah seems to be extremely popular among the Shiite who comprise as much of the Lebanese population as white males comprise of the American population — or more – it seems to me mere rhetoric to talk about how Israel is just “targetting” Hezbollah; if Hezbollah is to be disarmed — a much more distant prospect, now — it would only be to normalize them as a Shi’ite party.

As for the laughable idea that the Lebanese are jumpin’ for joy at the bombing of their country — If a group were bombing American cities claiming just to target white terrorist American males, I don’t think the rest of the country would sit back and go, all right then.

To my mind, I can’t see a good result from Israel’s action. The kind of military strength they are displaying says one thing, from the Middle Eastern perspective — we need an Islamic power as powerful as Israel. The bombing and apparent preparations for invading Lebanon are going to play a role in justifying Iran getting an a bomb. The Gulf countries are flooded with dollars at the moment, and the longer Israel craters Lebanon, the more real democratic currents are going to lap at those American lapdogs. It is notable that not one democratic Middle Eastern country has approved of Israel’s course.

It’s errant to claim that the majority of Israelis will kill to prevent a one state solution while only “many” Palestinians wouldn’t consider it. The portion of Israelis that would support a one-state solution is far greater than the number of Palestinians who would support it – last figures I heard were around 35% of Israelis would support it, and 12% of Palestinians. It isn’t a hugely popular notion on either side.

Gosh it seems like only yesterday that the causus belli of the current invasion of Lebanon was the seizure of Israeli soldiers. Whereas now it is, apparently, the ‘unending missile attacks’ from Lebanon that are the problem. Oh wait, it was yesterday.

More seriously, despite its importance in domestic law, I think it is at least arguable that the debate about ‘intent’ is the key one here. I mean, does ‘intent’ really matter in debates about international law? The context of this is not, as in domestic law, a situation where (as in manslaughter) a situation where you didn’t mean to kill anyone, but accidentally did. The situation is where you DID mean to kill someone (or a lot of people) just not ‘civilians’. But how is that to be demonstrated? After all, when the Israeli’s attack ‘Hizbollah’ they attack places where they know for a fact civilians will be, and they also know for a fact that the civilians will die, but then they go back and claim that they did not ‘intend’ to kill them. But does that really matter? Say I want to destroy, I don’t know, a PC in a building for some reason. And the building is occupied 24/7. So I burn the building to the ground. I didn’t ‘intend’ to kill the civilians. But I knew nevertheless that civilians would die as a direct consequence of this action. What, really, is the difference? And what would a court say?

We also have the problem of transparency. In a civilian court, we presume (wrongly, but it is a necessary fiction) that everyone is going to try and tell the truth, that the relevant documentation will be available and so forth. But in a military situation we can never have that. Soldiers and general and their spokesmen are paid to lie. In fact, ‘government spokesmen’ (and I suppose Hizbollah spokesmen, not that there have been too many of them on the radio or TV recently) are paid to lie. It’s their job. They would be fired if they told the truth. Failing that, there are issues of military secrecy involved.

For example, take Sebastian’s statement: ‘They (the Israeli’s) are targeting Hezbollah and sometimes missing’. Now it goes without saying (actually, he believes it, so it clearly doesn’t) that whether this satement is right or wrong or half right, either way, Sebastian cannot possibly, conceivably know this. How does he know what Israel’s intentions are? All he knows is what the Israeli army chooses to tell him, but all that can and must be discounted.

I have no idea what the Israeli aims are in Lebanon (and neither does Sebastian). As I have pointed out before, (even) wiser men than me think that the intention of the current invasion is to destabilise Lebanon and lead to the creation of a Israeli controlled Lebanese puppet government. Indeed, it is obvious to anyone that whether this is true or not, the current invasion MUST lead to the destabilisation of Lebanese democracy. It also must, inevitably, lead to more attacks on Israeli civilians, although whether Israeli politicians and military leaders care about that too much is a moot point. Every suicide bomber in Israel leads to support for a certain kind of politics in that country, and it is not at all clear to me that the likes of Sharon etc. actually disapproved, in any meaningful way, of Palestinian tactics: after all, every suicide bomber, Hizbollah missile attack, etc., made his job (of portraying arabs as subhuman animals unfit for democracy) all that much easier. Moreover, the task of destroying Arabic democracy has long been an important one to Israel (it seems to me): hence the current attacks on the democracies of Palestine and Lebanon. Israeli’s know that the real threat will come when Arabs are no longer controlled by US backed dictatorships (Saudi, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, etc).

In any case, it is simply common sense that an invasion requires months if not years of preparation. The current ‘causus belli’ is self-evidently an excuse: so we know that all the talk about ‘kidnapping’ etc. is a lie. But then we knew that anyway.

In any case, to return to the point at hand, one would be hard pushed to get a Rizla paper between missile attacks that are ‘aimed’ at civilians, and missile attacks that are ‘aimed’ at ‘military targets’ but which are also ‘aimed’ at civilians (necessarily), although civilians are not ‘the target’.

Gosh it seems like only yesterday that the causus belli of the current invasion of Lebanon was the seizure of Israeli soldiers. Whereas now it is, apparently, the ‘unending missile attacks’ from Lebanon that are the problem. Oh wait, it was yesterday.

Read the news reports more carefully. The action that resulted in the seizure of Israeli soldiers was accompanied by a heavy barrage both on Israeli military positions and on Israeli villages along the border. There’s no reason at all to separate the two provocations.

I don’t know anything about Lidice attrocity, but this’s been in the news lately:

Branded by opponents as an Arab Stalin for the scale of his alleged crimes, Saddam’s legacy in Dujail had been just a footnote in history books. Locals hostile to his Ba’athist regime set up an ambush after a tip-off that his convoy would pass through the area. They fired on the vehicles and apparently killed several guards but failed to wound the president, who was in an armoured car. Within hours, security forces arrived to wreak vengeance, according to survivors. At least 15 people were said to have been executed immediately and 143 others were executed after show trials. Some versions put the final death toll as high as 400, including women, children and babies. Around 1,500 residents were arrested and many spent years in prison. Crops and date palm groves were destroyed as an additional punishment.

Look from the moral point of view it is possible to show that Israeli actions are permissible… if one can show that the harm was not intended and was a side effect of aiming at a good end. I think I can show this. [THE END]

I have a very good word for this “argument” that this margin is too polite to contain.

engels — dont look at me look at Thomas Aquinas ( or Warren Quinn more recently )

before I forget anyone who accepts that killing in self defence is permissible tacitly accepts the DDE and threfore cannot consistently object against some ( mabe most ) IDF actions. Of course if you dont accept that taking life in self defence is justified…

Kevin — it should be obvious how the argument goes. The proponenets of DDE like E. Anscombe recognise that proportionality condition must be met but this is persuasively construed as a point about good effects outweighing the forseen bad effects. So roughly in the current case killing one important Hezbollah person brings closer the good of Israel surviving and this outweighs the harm caused to one hundered civilians .

…100 civilians per Hezbollah fighter…

Is it Hezbollah fighter or Hezbollah member? 40% of Lebanon population are Shia Arabs and Hezbollah won 18% of the Parliament seats in the last election. It sounds like at least a few hundred thousand adults in Lebanon can be called ‘Hezbollah’.

I kinda doubt you can find a Hezbollah fighter in Beirut; perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they prefer to kill some Shia Arabs (or just Arabs) rather than, say, Druze or Armenians.

Nice try Dan-troll , but the earlier discussion that you reference was about when recourse to war is justified and this discussion is about acceptable conduct in the course of war. For jus in bello it certainly and obviously isn’t that case that jus in bello obligations must be reciprocal. For example, no amount of massacring and torturing of non-combatants by one side would make it OK for the other side to deliberately kill or torture even one non-combatant.

Huh? Why on earth would getting brutal dictatorships to agree to a set of universal standards regulating justifications for war be any more or less necessary than getting brutal dictatorships to agree to a set of universal standards regulating the conduct of war?

Sure you can say, for instance, that targeting civilians is always wrong, with or without reciprocality. But, then, you can say that starting a war purely for territorial expansion is always wrong, with or without reciprocality. Either way, you either need the consent of all nations or you don’t. If you do, then the stuff about not killing civilians goes down the drain as surely as the stuff about not building an empire. And if–as I believe–you don’t, then a principle like, “democracies get more credibility when resorting to war, or to particular tactics, than non-democracies” is perfectly valid, and you’ll have to find some other grounds for excluding it.

(As for my being a troll, I’m sorry that you regard me that way. I can assure you that I never post unless I believe a useful discussion will ensue, and I frequently quit or avoid exchanges that look like they’re generating more heat than light.)

Slightly off-topic, but notice that it has taken Israel about a week to kill roughly 200-300 civilians. According to Iraq Body Count, the number of civilian deaths they can unequivocally attribute to coalition forces during the third year of the occupation of Iraq is 370.

So either the US is successfully suppressing news of civilian casualties we inflict (my choice) or else Israel is inflicting civilian casualties at a rate dozens of times higher.

Roy, you’re right, that makes sense too – if they intend to bomb Iranian enrichment facilities later this year.

Zdenek, since you assert that it is not that difficult to show that there is proportionately grave reason for bombing Shiite neighbourhoods, roads, bridges, airport runways and for disrupting the economic development of an entire country, why not go ahead and show it, rather than asking Chris Bertram to show that there isn’t such a reason?

Or has it dawned on your claim was a little rash?

kevin- the view ( my view )expressed in #171 is difficult to defend ( btw I dont have a problem with changing my mind about these issues ) , instead what I am suggesting now is another way of seeing whether Walzer position is the right one and hence Chris’ position is the one that needs defending. I am suggesting that the burden of proof in this debate is with people who assume that Israel actions against non combatants is obviously and palpably morally wrong . I think this doesnt work without supporting argument thats all.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israeli bombing of a Beirut neighborhood where Hizbollah had its headquarters has breached humanitarian law, a senior U.N. official said on Sunday.

“It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses,” Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told reporters as he toured the shattered Haret Hreik district. “It makes it a violation of humanitarian law.”

“It’s bigger, it’s more extensive than I even could imagine,” he said, surveying a pile of rubble.

Israeli warplanes have pounded the area nearly every night since its war with Hizbollah began on July 12.

It was last hit early on Sunday, said the few residents not to have fled the usually packed area.

Egeland said between half a million and a million people were in need of international assistance in Lebanon, but delivering aid required safe access. “So far Israel is not giving us access,” he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060723/ts_nm/mideast_egeland_dc_1

abb1– I agree with everything in your #185 but it is off the topic

“I forbade the sacrifice of more human lives than was absolutely necessary. That is to say, I deliberately released the [XXX] from adherence to a principle still observed [XXX] demanding that for the sake of prestige certain objectives must under all circumstances be reached within a certain time limit.

Everything which it is imperative to do will be done regardless of sacrifice, but what can be avoided will not be done.

[…]

The attempt to convince the responsible [XXX] command – in so far as it existed – that it was futile and in fact insane to attempt resistance, especially in a city of more than a million inhabitants, proved entirely fruitless….

Since it was realized that [XXX]’s fortifications alone were not likely to withstand the [our] attack, the entire city was converted into a fortress and barricaded in every direction. Batteries were mounted in every square and great courtyard, thousands of machine-gun posts manned and the whole population called up to take part in the fighting.

Sheer sympathy for women and children caused me to make an offer to those in command of [XXX] at least to let civilian inhabitants leave the city. I declared a temporary armistice and safeguards necessary for evacuation, with the result that we all waited for emissaries just as fruitlessly as we had waited at the end of August for a [XX] negotiator. The proud [XX] commander of the city did not even condescend to reply.

To make sure, I extended the time limit and ordered bombers and heavy artillery to attack only military objectives, repeating my proposal in vain. I thereupon made an offer that the whole suburb of [XX] would not be bombarded at all, but should be reserved for the civilian population in order to make it possible for them to take refuge there.”

It amazes me, genuinely stuns me that apparently sane people actually believe a military commander when he states that his troops are ‘only’ attacking military targets, and that he ‘regrets’ any civilian deaths but ‘he has done everything in his power to prevent them.’ As the humanitarian quoted above shows: this is just something that army personnel (who are paid to lie) say. The fact is that there are military objectives, and if civilians have to die to facilitate the accomplishment of these objectives: tough. That’s war. If you don’t like it, don’t fight.

Or maybe it’s close to the expiration date on a bunch of those smart bombs? It would’ve been a pity for the smart ones to go to waste…

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.