The Aim is Victory

Foreign Dispatches:

Israel is no more obliged to restrain itself to exchanging the odd missile with Hezbollah than the United States was to dealing with September 11 by crashing a few jets into downtown Kabul.

Correct. Nothing would have been accomplished had the American hit the "Twin Caves" in downtown Kabul.

Similarly, the Israelis need to use enough force to crush Hezballah, "proportionality" be damned.

Update
This banal talk of proportionality reminds me of a different era--1940. Right after one of the most humiliating defeats in British history, Prime Minister Churchill refused to give in. At that time, Britain didn't even have enough pistols and rifles to fully supply its small army, yet, the leader of this tiny nation stood tall against the German beast.

Goering promised to bring the Brits to their knees with the Luftwaffe. The air campaign gained intensity as the summer ended, London was bombarded on many nights.

One day, Prime Minister Churchill went out to see the damage. He genuinely loved his countrymen and it pained him to see the shattered homes and lives of so many innocents. When the public realized that the Prime Minister was with them, they started to cheer for him. They forgot their sorrow and shouted and waved.

Quite a few came up to him, shook his hand and said, "Pay those Germans back 10-fold, a 100-fold!"

Such is war.

Comments

[David Boxenhorn]

The bizarre thing about "proportionality" is that its advocates seem to think it has something to do with ethics. It has nothing to do with ethics! The ethical thing to do is exactly what Israel is doing already, i.e. everything possible to get the bad guys with minimal loss of innocent life. Would it be more ethical for Israel to have "proportionally" killed some innocent Lebanese and taken a couple hostage, thus perpetuating the infamous "cycle of violence"?