Reply #3: The Lebanese casualties are horrible, but the day

[Spearman87]

America gets attacked and our President agrees to instructions from the UN that we respond by only allowing a “proportionate” number of deaths in response, that’s the day I support his impeachment. Maybe a better way of looking at proportionality is to count the number of rockets Hezbo has shot onto Israeli soil and compare it to the number Israeli sorties into Lebanon. But I won't try to. “proportionality” in response to an attack on your nation is a pure myth. The concept has never been the general method of response in all of history. In WWII the Japanese empire would never have been toppled (and the axis might have even won) had the West followed the philosophy of proportionate response. And millions more might have eventually died even above the number that did die. This may or may not be the case in the Mideast, but sometimes you’re faced with an evil you simply have to defeat, not keep in perfect balance with, or keep a nice proportionate casualty count with.

Hezbo, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc, would love to have a proportionate casualty count with Israel. They could wipe them off the map and still have plenty of people to spare. But they’re willing to incur much higher losses. Terry Gross (host of NPR’s “Fresh Air”) interviewed a ME analyst last week who said the following (paraphrased):

"Hezbo’s philosophy has long been that they have to be willing to take big losses. They feel that if they are willing to take 10-to-1 casualies compared to Israel, in the end they will win. They do not see civilians as noncombatants nor as separate from the 10 to 1 calculation. They see civilians as participants in the struggle, and in fact believe it is crucial for civilians to be part of the actual fight. Hezballoh has always seen civilian casualities in the country where it operates as a positive thing. It’s modus operandi has been to infiltrate the country and do positive things to help the people. It then uses small incursions and attacks from different points in the country to force Israel into a larger disproportionate response. The people then get angry with Israel, and Hezbo gains new recruits." -----.>> I.E., civilian deaths are simultaneously a Hezbo goal and a recruiting tool. (End)

The Lebanese are a good people. They worked so hard to build their nation back up. It’s so sad they have gotten themselves entrenched with these animals of Hezbo. It’s not even mostly their own doing. Iran and Syria both worked to undermine and marginalize the counterbalancing elements in Lebanese politics—especially the Christians—and instead to bring Shiites into dominance within the government. And they simultaneously worked at grass roots levels to infiltrate Hezbo into the scciety. I don’t know the answer to all this. There just are no good ones. This situation is likely to just be repeated all over again in a few years, and just as in 2006, the world will be caught off guard by the number and increased sophistication of Hezbo’s weapons. It’ll keep on repeating until WMD’s are used against Israel, then Israel and Iran will engage in an all-out nuclear exchange.