Moral bankruptcy
Melanie Phillips:
"Another ripe example of twisted thinking, this time from Anatole Kaletsky in the Times. He has decided that, far from being in opposition to each other, democracy and terrorism are going hand in hand. He cites two examples to support this thesis. The first is the election of an appeasement government in Spain. The second is the killing of Sheikh Yassin. Kaletsky opines:
" 'Israel claims the right to engage in extra-judicial assassinations, to kill civilians at random and to blow up or bulldoze Palestinian houses because it is defending the only genuine democracy in the Middle East. In a sense this is true. Ariel Sharon does have a democratic mandate for his state terrorism, since Israeli voters have repeatedly rejected the alternative policy of negotiation. In the same way US politicians of all stripes ? including fundamentalist Christians and others in no way beholden to the Jewish lobby ? use democracy to justifying backing Israel and refraining from criticism in the most egregious cases, such as this week?s killing of Yassin. This killing will surely unleash another cycle of terror, just as Sharon?s provocative campaign in the Israeli elections four years ago did.'
"What a vicious and ignorant paragraph. Israel does not 'engage in extra-judicial assassinations'. It kills terrorist leaders as a means of self defence against armed hostilities being mounted against it, as states are expressly permitted to do by Article 51 of the UN Charter. It does not 'kill civilians at random', but uses precision attacks against terrorists (which do unfortunately kill others, but this toll is kept to the minimum) and house-to-house operations with an attrition rate to its own soldiers which no other country would sustain, precisely to minimise civilian loss of life. It is its terrorist enemy which, by contrast, deliberately targets civilians, a fact which Kaletsky omits. It bulldozes Palestinian houses to eradicate the factories of terror, and to deter further death production. It does not claim to do all these things 'because it is defending the only genuine democracy in the Middle East' but because it wishes to protect its citizens from explicitly genocidal mass murder. Israeli voters have not 'repeatedly rejected the alternative policy of negotiation'. That policy has repeatedly failed because the Palestinians respond to negotiation with mass murder. Ariel Sharon was brought to power by the shattering blow to Israeli voters of the rejection of the offer of a nascent Palestinian state made by Ehud Barak at Camp David and Taba.
"As for the 'egregious' killing of Yassin ( and note the swipe en passant at the Jewish lobby) presumably Kaletsky would rather Israel had responded to the attempt to blow up the chemical works at Ashdod and kill hundreds, maybe thousands of Israelis by standing by passively until Hamas achieved its purpose. For in Kaletsky's grotesquely disordered moral universe, Israel's attempts at self-defence are to be equated with the Spanish appeasers because both are likely to produce more terror. The logic of that is that Israel must never defend itself by attacking its enemies to prevent even more bloodshed. But then, given how he misrepresents all Israel's attempts at self-defence, it would appear that for Kaletsky, Israel must never defend itself at all."
Why war is difficult
As Clausewitz points out one of the reasons war is so hard is because it takes place in a dynamic environment. Unlike scientific endeavors dealing with materials that have no ability to fight back, in war both sides are dealing with enemies who will constantly be responding and attempting to achieve their goal. This does not change when one side refrains. The other side will continue trying to achieve its objective. That is why the "cycle of violence" argument is so ignorant. But it is a persistant argument of pacifist who know nothing of the history fo warfare.
Melanie Phillips:
"Another ripe example of twisted thinking, this time from Anatole Kaletsky in the Times. He has decided that, far from being in opposition to each other, democracy and terrorism are going hand in hand. He cites two examples to support this thesis. The first is the election of an appeasement government in Spain. The second is the killing of Sheikh Yassin. Kaletsky opines:
" 'Israel claims the right to engage in extra-judicial assassinations, to kill civilians at random and to blow up or bulldoze Palestinian houses because it is defending the only genuine democracy in the Middle East. In a sense this is true. Ariel Sharon does have a democratic mandate for his state terrorism, since Israeli voters have repeatedly rejected the alternative policy of negotiation. In the same way US politicians of all stripes ? including fundamentalist Christians and others in no way beholden to the Jewish lobby ? use democracy to justifying backing Israel and refraining from criticism in the most egregious cases, such as this week?s killing of Yassin. This killing will surely unleash another cycle of terror, just as Sharon?s provocative campaign in the Israeli elections four years ago did.'
"What a vicious and ignorant paragraph. Israel does not 'engage in extra-judicial assassinations'. It kills terrorist leaders as a means of self defence against armed hostilities being mounted against it, as states are expressly permitted to do by Article 51 of the UN Charter. It does not 'kill civilians at random', but uses precision attacks against terrorists (which do unfortunately kill others, but this toll is kept to the minimum) and house-to-house operations with an attrition rate to its own soldiers which no other country would sustain, precisely to minimise civilian loss of life. It is its terrorist enemy which, by contrast, deliberately targets civilians, a fact which Kaletsky omits. It bulldozes Palestinian houses to eradicate the factories of terror, and to deter further death production. It does not claim to do all these things 'because it is defending the only genuine democracy in the Middle East' but because it wishes to protect its citizens from explicitly genocidal mass murder. Israeli voters have not 'repeatedly rejected the alternative policy of negotiation'. That policy has repeatedly failed because the Palestinians respond to negotiation with mass murder. Ariel Sharon was brought to power by the shattering blow to Israeli voters of the rejection of the offer of a nascent Palestinian state made by Ehud Barak at Camp David and Taba.
"As for the 'egregious' killing of Yassin ( and note the swipe en passant at the Jewish lobby) presumably Kaletsky would rather Israel had responded to the attempt to blow up the chemical works at Ashdod and kill hundreds, maybe thousands of Israelis by standing by passively until Hamas achieved its purpose. For in Kaletsky's grotesquely disordered moral universe, Israel's attempts at self-defence are to be equated with the Spanish appeasers because both are likely to produce more terror. The logic of that is that Israel must never defend itself by attacking its enemies to prevent even more bloodshed. But then, given how he misrepresents all Israel's attempts at self-defence, it would appear that for Kaletsky, Israel must never defend itself at all."
Why war is difficult
As Clausewitz points out one of the reasons war is so hard is because it takes place in a dynamic environment. Unlike scientific endeavors dealing with materials that have no ability to fight back, in war both sides are dealing with enemies who will constantly be responding and attempting to achieve their goal. This does not change when one side refrains. The other side will continue trying to achieve its objective. That is why the "cycle of violence" argument is so ignorant. But it is a persistant argument of pacifist who know nothing of the history fo warfare.
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