Once the dead mounted up, it mattered little what were the catalysts of the outbreak of fighting.
That’s not as silly a concept as he would like to believe. I suspect that there are any numbers of wars where foreknowledge of the body count might have discouraged participation.
The Gaza Rules are the way they are because to the modern eye the stronger party looks like the bully, and there’s enough history on both sides so that any attempt to work out causes just leads to “You started it! No! You started it first!” and people toss their hands up at the mess.
FDR cried after hearing what happened to the Marines in Iwo Jima Hyman.
It is a sad tragedy. Think of how long WW2 would go on if towards the end we used “proportional” force instead of overwhelming force.
As they were less and less effective with their attacks are we supposed to be less and less effective.
As the rapist slaps, should the force back be only a slap?
Hyman the liberal wrote, “because to the modern eye the stronger party looks like the bully,”
… only to liberals Hyman. We know full well as conservatives (because we have clarity) who the victim is.
Wish you’d have clarity also. It’d be nice….
A cease-fire only allows Hamas to regroup. They have no intention of stopping this fight….ever. Or until Israel is annihilated. And who’s next?
These “rules” are too much like how people sometimes treat children to get them to behave. The last one who threw a punch is scolded more strongly, even though it was in self-defense. The history is ignored. The strong one is supposed to take infinite abuse from the weak.
But these are not fights between children. They are wars, the acts of one society, guided by the decisions of supposedly adult individuals, chosing death for members of another society. There is a certain moral seriousness needed. For those who haven’t read it, I recommend George Weigel’s essay Moral Clarity in a time of War in the January 2003 issue of First Things.
Wasn’t it Golda Meir who said, “This will not stop until they learn to love their children as much as they hate ours.” ?
The ability of Hamas, et.al., to wage any type of war, needs to be forcibly removed. Then a fair and equitable truce made, and kept. The alternative is a slow and agonizing destruction of one side or the other, 80 missiles at a time. Israel is fighting for their very existence – their right to exist.
If, say, Canada were lobbing 80 missiles a day across the border, how long would we take it? How long would we lob only 80 missiles back? And if they hid among women and children in between attacks, how long would it be before we sent in the Marines?
It’s clear as a bell.
Hanson is playing one of the oldest, most tiresome rhetorical games known to ideologues. He answers moral objections with practical imperatives and practical concerns with moral assertions.
It’s a bit of a complicated rhetorical ruse, but, sadly, all too familiar.
Is Israel’s escalation counterproductive? No matter, says Hanson, it’s morally justified because Hamas started it. Is such lopsided killing moral? No matter, argues Hanson, it’s a practical necessity to stop Hamas from lobbing missiles. Heads he wins, tails you lose.
“The Israelis just struck back hard at Hamas in Gaza.”
It is preposterous to assert that Israel is retaliating when it has been in a state of war against Hamas for years. It’s blockade of food, medicine and virtually all commerce between Gaza and Egypt, etc. is an act of war, by anyone’s standards. This isn’t to suggest that Israel has no right to try to prevent Hamas from obtaining weapons. Israel certainly has that right, just as Palestine’s elected government has a right to try to defeat the blockade.
Israel chose not to renew the ceasefire and was unwilling to negotiate the point with Hamas. These are simple facts. That Hanson feels free to deny them is a measure of the contempt he has for readers, not of the state of current affairs in Palestine and Israel.
Hanson writes:
“Legitimate military action is strangely defined by the relative strength of the combatants.”
Nope. No one is suggesting that the moral legitimacy of Israel’s actions are defined exclusively by its relative strength. Here again, Hanson conveniently, if sloppily, interprets moral points in a practical context and vice versa. Relative strength means that Israel’s existence isn’t threatened by Hamas. As a practical matter, Israel has a range of options for dealing with Hamas without risking its survival as a nation. The Palestinians have very, very few options, and Hamas as a political entity has even fewer.
This is the nature of the practical objections to Israel’s disproportionate attacks. As a practical matter, they are counterproductive for Israel, because they will only unite their opposition and disempower moderate elements both in Palestine and throughout the Arab world. It is sheer fantasy to believe that simply by killing enough Palestinians, Israel can erase their grievances, or that Arabs and/or Muslims at large will simply fear Israel attack enough to up and surrender their support for Palestine.
Again, this has nothing to do with the relative moral positions of the parties, but with the reality of what is likely to come of the latest escalations.
Hanson writes:
“World opinion more vehemently condemns Israel’s countermeasures, apparently because its rockets are far more accurate and deadly than previous Hamas barrages that are poorly targeted and thus not so lethal.”
Simply not so. I have yet to hear or read a single commentary right, left or center suggesting more vehement condemnation because of Israel’s more accurate weapons. The only condemnations I have heard have been prefaced by the comment that Israel has a right to self-defense, but needn’t do so in a way that is counterproductive and disproportionate, as a practical matter.
Hanson:
“If America had accepted such rules in, say, World War II, then by late 1944 we, not the Axis, would have been the culpable party, since by then once-aggressive German, Italian and Japanese forces were increasingly on the defensive and far less lethal than the Allies.”
This guy call’s himself a historian and he draws a comparison between WWII and the Palestine-Israel conflict? Could the two conflicts possibly be any different? The only thing the two have in common is that we call them wars. By every other measure, they are utterly different. Then there’s Godwin’s law. It’s really unbelievable how sloppy Hanson is.
Hanson:
“Second, intent in this war no longer matters. Every Hamas unguided rocket is launched in hopes of hitting an Israeli home and killing men, women and children.”
How preposterous can it get? Hanson now asks us to believe that Hamas INTENDS to have unguided missiles, as if the guided versions Israel uses were available to it but it prefers the cruder, less effective technology.
Hanson blames the elected Hamas government for “working close to civilians” when it is a plain, unassailable fact that most Hamas members ARE CIVILIANS and part of a government elected in internationally supervised elections.
More important, Hanson suggest that it is acceptable for Israel to kill many times more Palestinians because the victims are “collateral” damage, made necessary because Hamas militants hide among civilians.
Yet just as clearly, Hamas aims its rockets at cities because the Israeli military hides far more effectively behind radar shields, rocket-proof tanks and all the best technology money can buy.
To buy Hanson’s argument, you have to believe that it’s somehow immoral of Hamas to cower in the basements of public buildings in Gaza, while Israel’s military forces hide behind a totally impregnable steel wall.
Israel is at war against Hamas, has outlawed the party and declared its members as legitimate targets for assassination. Hamas, as a practical mattter, will defend itself using the only possible option open to it.
Hanson:
“Killing Palestinian civilians is incidental to Israeli military operations and proves counterproductive to its objectives.”
Well, there you have it. Hanson at long last, though unwittingly, concedes the key point of Israel’s critics on this war.
It is counterproductive.
Got that? Victor Davis Hanson says killing civilians is counterproductive. Israel’s has killed more than 10 times as many civilians as have the Palestinians. That’s some rather extreme counter-productivity, wouldn’t you say?
Case closed.
Bogey Man, your post sets a new indoor record for tiresomeness.
You attempt to fisk Hanson, but I can’t see any evidence that you even understand his argument. In virtually every point, you either misrepresent what he is saying for your own rhetorical purposes , or you treat interpretation as foundational fact, or you over-state your objection (“Nope. No one is suggesting…” “Simply not so”).
For example, you say, “Israel chose not to renew the ceasefire and was unwilling to negotiate the point with Hamas.” Whatever this means, it is a statement of fact that could be verified, and you should provide a link. If that is true, whether Israel was justified in choosing not to renew the ceasefire is still open for discussion, and we need more definition of what you call the “point.” This is all in support of an attempt to gloss “strike back hard” as meaning ONLY “retaliation” for, your unstated point, unprovoked attacks.
I keep wondering what your game is. You write these long screeds that are a sort of goulash of half-truths, fractured logic, and rehashed rhetorical base-stealing. You don’t take responsibility for your positions. You don’t show much ability to understand the arguments of your opponents. I can’t decide whether you actually believe what you write, or whether it is all for effect.
I remember a saying from my youth: “Your arms are too short to box with God.” Bogey, your arms are too short to box with VDH.
Next you should try boxing with Richard Fernandez on how the war is working against Palestinian unity:
I’ve got things to do, so I’ll leave off the fisking of your fisking. However, I don’t see any suggestion for Israel on how to deal with an organization that seeks their destruction.
Israel already withdrew. They gave Hamas land, and they used it as an artillery firebase. If you think Israel is just supposed to accept rocket fire, you are hopeless.
Booger man here isn’t able to manufacture enough lies for his Islamo Facist masters so he relies instead on misrepresenting and abusing logic. Especially hilarious is how he claims Hamas isn’t deliberately bombing civilians with unguided rockets and missiles. I suppose, like so many retard 911 conspiracists, he believes the Jews are behind that too. It’s killing him that the Wall is preventing his Hamas ‘heroes’ from using females and children as homicide bombers. Now they can only sacrifice them as human shields where you just cannot produce the proper ‘martyrdom’ videos in time. Ouch lol.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not making light here of any ‘innocent’ deaths but it’s rather pathetic and risible those among the dead the Islamofacists claim are ‘innocent’. Claiming that the guns in that apartment complex were ‘medical supplies’ works about as well as OJ saying the glove was planted. Nice try…
“Israel chose not to renew the cease fire…”.
So, tell me bogey, what is your definition of “a cease fire”? When Hamas fired rockets daily during the “cease fire”, what exactly, was Israel supposed to renew? Is it that you prefer one side to unilaterally “cease firing”, while the other side considers itself only obliged to “reduce” their firing? Sorry, boy, don’t work that way. It’s not Israel that “failed to renew”, it’s Hamas who “ignored” any agreement, contract, compact, or understanding in the first place. Hamas is now reaping what it has sown.
Hanson is playing one of the oldest, most tiresome rhetorical games known to ideologues.
Why is Bogey talking about himself but using the name “Hanson”?
Case closed.
Not even Ph.D thesis authors would write that at the end of their dissertation. Bogey’s got a little bit too much ego going on here. Neurotic, really.
I’m not well versed in Middle East history, but I read up a little on the breakup of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WW 1.
If Islam did not have the Jews and “the West” to rally against, the Sunnite and Shiite tribes would be wiping each other off the map. By looking at everyone else and deciding they are all infidels, they don’t have to look at themselves, or at least have something different to pay attention to. The Palestinians have been pawns in a game for quite some time. The plight of the Jews is thousands of years old. Their restraint is monumental. I admire them, greatly.
Pretty great post. I just came upon your blog and wanted to point out that I have genuinely liked browsing your blog articles. I’ll be opting-in for your rss and I hope you write again soon!
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This is scary
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5430133.ece
That’s not as silly a concept as he would like to believe. I suspect that there are any numbers of wars where foreknowledge of the body count might have discouraged participation.
The Gaza Rules are the way they are because to the modern eye the stronger party looks like the bully, and there’s enough history on both sides so that any attempt to work out causes just leads to “You started it! No! You started it first!” and people toss their hands up at the mess.
FDR cried after hearing what happened to the Marines in Iwo Jima Hyman.
It is a sad tragedy. Think of how long WW2 would go on if towards the end we used “proportional” force instead of overwhelming force.
As they were less and less effective with their attacks are we supposed to be less and less effective.
As the rapist slaps, should the force back be only a slap?
Hyman the liberal wrote, “because to the modern eye the stronger party looks like the bully,”
… only to liberals Hyman. We know full well as conservatives (because we have clarity) who the victim is.
Wish you’d have clarity also. It’d be nice….
A cease-fire only allows Hamas to regroup. They have no intention of stopping this fight….ever. Or until Israel is annihilated. And who’s next?
These “rules” are too much like how people sometimes treat children to get them to behave. The last one who threw a punch is scolded more strongly, even though it was in self-defense. The history is ignored. The strong one is supposed to take infinite abuse from the weak.
But these are not fights between children. They are wars, the acts of one society, guided by the decisions of supposedly adult individuals, chosing death for members of another society. There is a certain moral seriousness needed. For those who haven’t read it, I recommend George Weigel’s essay Moral Clarity in a time of War in the January 2003 issue of First Things.
Oops! That link in my last article was botched; my apologies. Here’s the real one Moral Clarity in a Time of War
Wasn’t it Golda Meir who said, “This will not stop until they learn to love their children as much as they hate ours.” ?
The ability of Hamas, et.al., to wage any type of war, needs to be forcibly removed. Then a fair and equitable truce made, and kept. The alternative is a slow and agonizing destruction of one side or the other, 80 missiles at a time. Israel is fighting for their very existence – their right to exist.
If, say, Canada were lobbing 80 missiles a day across the border, how long would we take it? How long would we lob only 80 missiles back? And if they hid among women and children in between attacks, how long would it be before we sent in the Marines?
It’s clear as a bell.
Hanson is playing one of the oldest, most tiresome rhetorical games known to ideologues. He answers moral objections with practical imperatives and practical concerns with moral assertions.
It’s a bit of a complicated rhetorical ruse, but, sadly, all too familiar.
Is Israel’s escalation counterproductive? No matter, says Hanson, it’s morally justified because Hamas started it. Is such lopsided killing moral? No matter, argues Hanson, it’s a practical necessity to stop Hamas from lobbing missiles. Heads he wins, tails you lose.
“The Israelis just struck back hard at Hamas in Gaza.”
It is preposterous to assert that Israel is retaliating when it has been in a state of war against Hamas for years. It’s blockade of food, medicine and virtually all commerce between Gaza and Egypt, etc. is an act of war, by anyone’s standards. This isn’t to suggest that Israel has no right to try to prevent Hamas from obtaining weapons. Israel certainly has that right, just as Palestine’s elected government has a right to try to defeat the blockade.
Israel chose not to renew the ceasefire and was unwilling to negotiate the point with Hamas. These are simple facts. That Hanson feels free to deny them is a measure of the contempt he has for readers, not of the state of current affairs in Palestine and Israel.
Hanson writes:
“Legitimate military action is strangely defined by the relative strength of the combatants.”
Nope. No one is suggesting that the moral legitimacy of Israel’s actions are defined exclusively by its relative strength. Here again, Hanson conveniently, if sloppily, interprets moral points in a practical context and vice versa. Relative strength means that Israel’s existence isn’t threatened by Hamas. As a practical matter, Israel has a range of options for dealing with Hamas without risking its survival as a nation. The Palestinians have very, very few options, and Hamas as a political entity has even fewer.
This is the nature of the practical objections to Israel’s disproportionate attacks. As a practical matter, they are counterproductive for Israel, because they will only unite their opposition and disempower moderate elements both in Palestine and throughout the Arab world. It is sheer fantasy to believe that simply by killing enough Palestinians, Israel can erase their grievances, or that Arabs and/or Muslims at large will simply fear Israel attack enough to up and surrender their support for Palestine.
Again, this has nothing to do with the relative moral positions of the parties, but with the reality of what is likely to come of the latest escalations.
Hanson writes:
“World opinion more vehemently condemns Israel’s countermeasures, apparently because its rockets are far more accurate and deadly than previous Hamas barrages that are poorly targeted and thus not so lethal.”
Simply not so. I have yet to hear or read a single commentary right, left or center suggesting more vehement condemnation because of Israel’s more accurate weapons. The only condemnations I have heard have been prefaced by the comment that Israel has a right to self-defense, but needn’t do so in a way that is counterproductive and disproportionate, as a practical matter.
Hanson:
“If America had accepted such rules in, say, World War II, then by late 1944 we, not the Axis, would have been the culpable party, since by then once-aggressive German, Italian and Japanese forces were increasingly on the defensive and far less lethal than the Allies.”
This guy call’s himself a historian and he draws a comparison between WWII and the Palestine-Israel conflict? Could the two conflicts possibly be any different? The only thing the two have in common is that we call them wars. By every other measure, they are utterly different. Then there’s Godwin’s law. It’s really unbelievable how sloppy Hanson is.
Hanson:
“Second, intent in this war no longer matters. Every Hamas unguided rocket is launched in hopes of hitting an Israeli home and killing men, women and children.”
How preposterous can it get? Hanson now asks us to believe that Hamas INTENDS to have unguided missiles, as if the guided versions Israel uses were available to it but it prefers the cruder, less effective technology.
Hanson blames the elected Hamas government for “working close to civilians” when it is a plain, unassailable fact that most Hamas members ARE CIVILIANS and part of a government elected in internationally supervised elections.
More important, Hanson suggest that it is acceptable for Israel to kill many times more Palestinians because the victims are “collateral” damage, made necessary because Hamas militants hide among civilians.
Yet just as clearly, Hamas aims its rockets at cities because the Israeli military hides far more effectively behind radar shields, rocket-proof tanks and all the best technology money can buy.
To buy Hanson’s argument, you have to believe that it’s somehow immoral of Hamas to cower in the basements of public buildings in Gaza, while Israel’s military forces hide behind a totally impregnable steel wall.
Israel is at war against Hamas, has outlawed the party and declared its members as legitimate targets for assassination. Hamas, as a practical mattter, will defend itself using the only possible option open to it.
Hanson:
“Killing Palestinian civilians is incidental to Israeli military operations and proves counterproductive to its objectives.”
Well, there you have it. Hanson at long last, though unwittingly, concedes the key point of Israel’s critics on this war.
It is counterproductive.
Got that? Victor Davis Hanson says killing civilians is counterproductive. Israel’s has killed more than 10 times as many civilians as have the Palestinians. That’s some rather extreme counter-productivity, wouldn’t you say?
Case closed.
Bogey Man, your post sets a new indoor record for tiresomeness.
You attempt to fisk Hanson, but I can’t see any evidence that you even understand his argument. In virtually every point, you either misrepresent what he is saying for your own rhetorical purposes , or you treat interpretation as foundational fact, or you over-state your objection (“Nope. No one is suggesting…” “Simply not so”).
For example, you say, “Israel chose not to renew the ceasefire and was unwilling to negotiate the point with Hamas.” Whatever this means, it is a statement of fact that could be verified, and you should provide a link. If that is true, whether Israel was justified in choosing not to renew the ceasefire is still open for discussion, and we need more definition of what you call the “point.” This is all in support of an attempt to gloss “strike back hard” as meaning ONLY “retaliation” for, your unstated point, unprovoked attacks.
I keep wondering what your game is. You write these long screeds that are a sort of goulash of half-truths, fractured logic, and rehashed rhetorical base-stealing. You don’t take responsibility for your positions. You don’t show much ability to understand the arguments of your opponents. I can’t decide whether you actually believe what you write, or whether it is all for effect.
I remember a saying from my youth: “Your arms are too short to box with God.” Bogey, your arms are too short to box with VDH.
Next you should try boxing with Richard Fernandez on how the war is working against Palestinian unity:
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/01/03/hanging-separately/
If you are really trying to get a point across, you should start again.
Neo, you might get some joy out of this…all I can say is, wow.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-ayers/obama-and-education-refor_b_154857.html
Bogey Man,
I’ve got things to do, so I’ll leave off the fisking of your fisking. However, I don’t see any suggestion for Israel on how to deal with an organization that seeks their destruction.
Israel already withdrew. They gave Hamas land, and they used it as an artillery firebase. If you think Israel is just supposed to accept rocket fire, you are hopeless.
Booger man here isn’t able to manufacture enough lies for his Islamo Facist masters so he relies instead on misrepresenting and abusing logic. Especially hilarious is how he claims Hamas isn’t deliberately bombing civilians with unguided rockets and missiles. I suppose, like so many retard 911 conspiracists, he believes the Jews are behind that too. It’s killing him that the Wall is preventing his Hamas ‘heroes’ from using females and children as homicide bombers. Now they can only sacrifice them as human shields where you just cannot produce the proper ‘martyrdom’ videos in time. Ouch lol.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not making light here of any ‘innocent’ deaths but it’s rather pathetic and risible those among the dead the Islamofacists claim are ‘innocent’. Claiming that the guns in that apartment complex were ‘medical supplies’ works about as well as OJ saying the glove was planted. Nice try…
“Israel chose not to renew the cease fire…”.
So, tell me bogey, what is your definition of “a cease fire”? When Hamas fired rockets daily during the “cease fire”, what exactly, was Israel supposed to renew? Is it that you prefer one side to unilaterally “cease firing”, while the other side considers itself only obliged to “reduce” their firing? Sorry, boy, don’t work that way. It’s not Israel that “failed to renew”, it’s Hamas who “ignored” any agreement, contract, compact, or understanding in the first place. Hamas is now reaping what it has sown.
Hanson is playing one of the oldest, most tiresome rhetorical games known to ideologues.
Why is Bogey talking about himself but using the name “Hanson”?
Case closed.
Not even Ph.D thesis authors would write that at the end of their dissertation. Bogey’s got a little bit too much ego going on here. Neurotic, really.
I’m not well versed in Middle East history, but I read up a little on the breakup of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WW 1.
If Islam did not have the Jews and “the West” to rally against, the Sunnite and Shiite tribes would be wiping each other off the map. By looking at everyone else and deciding they are all infidels, they don’t have to look at themselves, or at least have something different to pay attention to. The Palestinians have been pawns in a game for quite some time. The plight of the Jews is thousands of years old. Their restraint is monumental. I admire them, greatly.
Pretty great post. I just came upon your blog and wanted to point out that I have genuinely liked browsing your blog articles. I’ll be opting-in for your rss and I hope you write again soon!