Posted on 08/15/2006 3:33:26 AM PDT by John Carey
Has Israel used unnecessary force to cripple or destroy Hezbollah? About 1,000 Lebanese have been killed. Many have been civilians placed in harm's way by Hezbollah guerrillas. More than 3,000 have been injured, and tens of thousands have been displaced. Hezbollah has fired approximately 3,650 rockets at Israeli civilians, killing 51 and injuring 430. At present, it remains a viable fighting force, and civilian casualties on both sides are not diminishing. Israel's critics insist it is employing more military might than necessary to achieve legitimate war objectives. They point to the obligation under international law of a nation at war to kill, injure or displace the fewest number of civilians consistent with the military goal sought. Killing or otherwise harming civilians for its own sake is morally reprehensible. But as with Israel in Lebanon, nations at war commonly injure civilians either in attacking military targets, seeking to accelerate surrender by destroying enemy morale or aiming to deter future aggression. Whether the civilian casualties inflicted were incommensurate with a legitimate military goal is generally unanswerable.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Israel employed NOT ENOUGH force.
Absolutely NOT.
Am I the only one who see one too few os in the above...
Not by a longshot. And in the Arab worlds mentality the Hezbolla are the victors.
The only way it will end is to send the strongest message available. I am willing to bet it will flare up again suddenly and yes Israel may do something drastic and spectacular.
Anyone obsessed with this stupid idea probably looks back on D-Day and thinks it was okay for us to prevail there because we took such heavy casualties--they were able to relax because "we" paid such a heavy toll.
What utter nonsense. These same peopel are the ones who lecture us abotu war not being a game, yet that's precisely how they are treating this one. They're like those parents who don't want to have their kids soccer teams count scores, since they don't want anyone to know what it's like to lose a game. The point of playing a game is that it's a safe way of prepping your kid to face more serious competition, challenges and defeats and victories in real life.
Similarly, these people seem to think that a war is just about fighting for awhile until everyone gets tired, and then the REAL adults (ha!) the UN can come in and work it all out nice and peaceful like. These people are stupid. They know nothing of the history of war, or the UN, or how wars are won.
Alexander is famous because he won, not because he was fair. Those who bitch about proportional response have no grasp on reality. How do you win a war of the kind Israel is fighting? By making everything even-Steven? No--you win by making the enemy not want to fight anymore, not want to send rockets and suicide bombers into your land anymore. You don't do that by playing to tie.
[Did Israel Go to Far in Lebanon?]
I don't know where Far, Lebanon is, so I can't say whether they went too far or not.
Unless, of course, there is some town or region of Lebanon called "Far..."
well said.
Israel used THE WRONG FORCE. This campaign shaped up as the Israeli Vietnam. The ignorant (This is why virtually al top Israeli leaders have had combat experience) Olmert Gvmt bought the usual Zoomie line that "We can win this from the air without casualties."
NO war is won except with the deployment of overwhelming ground force and grunts with bayonets at the enemies throats.
When the IDF FINALLY started really deploying they made rapid progress, stopped by Hezbollah's victory at the UN.
I followed the link and the "too far" bit must have been from the poster of the thread. The title on the link I followed just reads "Excessive Casualties."
Israeli political and military leaders are facing mounting criticism over the conduct of the offensive, which was intended to smash the Iranian-backed Shia militia.
Outside one of the town's two mosques a van was found filled with green casings about 6ft long. The serial numbers identified them as AT-5 Spandrel anti-tank missiles. The wire-guided weapon was developed in Russia but Iran began making a copy in 2000.
Beyond no-man's land, in the east of the village, was evidence of Syrian-supplied hardware. In a garden next to a junction used as an outpost by Hizbollah lay eight Kornet anti-tank rockets, described by Brig Mickey Edelstein, the commander of the Nahal troops who took Ghandouriyeh, as "some of the best in the world".
Written underneath a contract number on each casing were the words: "Customer: Ministry of Defence of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia."
Brig Edelstein said: "If they tell you that Syria knew nothing about this, just look. This is the evidence. Proof, not just talk."
The discovery of the origin of the weapons proved to the Israelis that their enemy was not a ragged and lightly armed militia but a semi-professional army equipped by Syria and Iran to take on Israel. The weapons require serious training to operate and could be beyond the capabilities of some supposedly regular armies in the Middle East. The Kornet was unveiled by Russia in 1994. It is laser-guided, has a range of three miles and carries a double warhead capable of penetrating the reactive armour on Israeli Merkava tanks. Russia started supplying them to Syria in 1998.
Israeli forces were taken by surprise by the sophistication of the anti-tank weapons they faced. They are believed to have accounted for many of the 116 deaths the army suffered. Dozens of tanks were hit and an unknown number destroyed.
The missiles were also used against infantry, in one case bringing down a house and killing nine soldiers. They played an important part in Hizbollah's tactics of using a network of concealed positions to set up ambushes for the Israelis as they inched in. Last night, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, said his men had achieved "a strategic, historic victory" over "a confused, cowardly and defea-ted" enemy. He said the militia would not disarm, as Israel and the UN Security Council were demanding. It would be "immoral, incorrect and inappropriate," he said. "It is the wrong timing on a pyschological and moral level."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/15/wmid15.xml
Did you read the article?
Israel F***d up in not doing them all with carpet bombing and such , Irans proxy force is Hez , the people of Lebanon invited the hezzy's into their mainstream , they are one and the same as far as MY war planning would go ... I would have put tanks in 100 meters apart and just blasted and bulldozed my way across the country with massive air support... The Muslims are now claiming victory... they are re-arming NOW ... If I was the king of Israel I'd be preparing to destroy Syria and do so as soon as my generals said our forces were ready, the only trigger I'd need would be proof or arms movement to Lebanon...
Why can't we rename the DoD back to the "Department of War" ? it may give them an idea of what their job is ... they shouldn't be toadies for the state department wussies....
"Israel employed NOT ENOUGH force."
Correct.
Yes. I'm refering to the line of thought the article is also commenting on.
IMO Israel attacked the wrong people. They should have attacked Syria first and then attacked Hizballah.
" Re: "Did Israel Go to Far in Lebanon?"
Am I the only one who see one too few os in the above... "
Middle Eastern and Pakistani young men have been noted buying up "o's" in large quantities at Wal-Marts across the country.. Terrorism is not suspected....
/sarc
Ok, but I think the author was more specific about the civilian casualty count and why with Hez using civilians, it can never be proportional. He also had your point that overwhelming force is needed to win in any case.
I know that. I'm AGREEING with him.
The article argues that Israel DID NOT use too much force.
Allowing a gang to live to fight another day is a threat to everyone. Killing or disarming and incarcerating a thug, especially one with WMD capabilities, is the only solution.
The greatest responsibility of a sovereign nation is?
The greatest responsibility of The United Nations is? (/sarcasm)
Hopefully soon the trap will be sprung, and Israel will get to show these lefties at this rag what REAL CASUALTIES in hezzbutthollastan look like!
Did I mention that islam SUCKS!?
LLS
I completely agree, and frankly, I hope that this "cessation of hostilities" ends VERY soon, so Israel can get on with the job that has been not only left unfinished, but which both the UN force and the Lebanese military has said plainly that they will not undertake.
That is the total disarming of Hizbollah.
Nothing short of that can possibly work long term - or medium term. Unless Hizbollah is disarmed without fail, both the Lebanese Army and the UN force are going to be "knee deep in the big muddy" within weeks or months. It will be UGGGGLY. They ought to stay right out of the way until the job is complete.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Our Declaration of Independence separates us from terrorists.
We Americans believe that man, in fact all mankind, has an expectation, a right, to life. We believe this is an “unalienable right,” in fact a sacred right not granted by man but by a higher power, our Creator and incapable of repudiation. The right to life cannot be taken by another man.
The terrorists don’t believe we, or any man, apparently, has an expectation to life. The terrorist have shown that they can commit, intend to commit and are committed to intentional, indiscriminate killing of innocent strangers.
What greater disparity could there be in the beliefs between the terrorists and ourselves?
Americans see themselves as men with rights “endowed by their Creator.”
Terrorists see America as “the Great Satan.”
There is a gap, in fact an abyss, in values and moral mindset between America and the terrorists.
What makes this so devious, so desperately troubling, is this. A part of the terrorist movement has, will have or wants to have nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The actions of the terrorists to date tell us that they are released from our inhibitions to kill indiscrimately by using nuclear weapons and other WMD.
And the terrorists are being encouraged, fueled and even driven toward the use of WMD by the likes of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, various imams, mosques, madras’s, political activists and others. In fact, throughout Pakistan and other Moslem nations, terror has superseded a religion.
This means, for the terrorists, all treaties, all normal forms of the so called “laws of war,” and all the normal underpinnings of negotiation are off the table.
We need to think very carefully about what this means for the United States and the Western World and where we go from here.
The terrorists are:
--Using liquid explosives carried aboard in hand luggage in their planning to destroy hundreds of passengers in airliners. This since 1995, and it continues.
--Using aircraft as weapons (9-11) and bombing trains and buses (Britain’s 7-7 and Madrid).
--Using Katyusha rockets to bombard Haifa and other targets in Israel. These unguided rockets are intentionally and indiscriminately killing innocent civilians. Close to 4,000 of these used to date; with 250 fired into Israel on Sunday within 24 hours of a UN “cease fire.”
To put this in a nutshell, Israel, has been using a conventional military force bound by restrictions on the indiscriminate killing of civilians, to find and kill people lobbing unguided rockets into their civilian population with no restrictions on their use of indiscriminate killing; a kind of asymmetric warfare of the most heinous sort.
The UN and the media view the opposing forces through one single prism of values: both are brother nations of the world. In fact, there seems to be a media bias toward Hezbollah (not a nation at all). And Kofi Annan wasted no time in saying Israel “intentionally” killed UN observers during the conflict.
The terrorists, media and the UN tend to handcuff the west within its own values even more, while the other side feels empowered. Reuters news service participated in the chicanery last week by publishing doctored photos detrimental to Israel.
And the screaming rhetoric of Aljazeera reminds us that the other side doesn’t play by the same rules as the west – freedom of the press without checks and balances.
In a story in the Los Angeles Times by Ashraf Khalil on August 1, Khalil detailed how the Israelis are also phoning innocent civilians on the civilians’ cell phones to warn them of impending danger due to military action. Even as they drop leaflets to warn civilians, Israel has moved humanitarian care to a new level. But gotten little credit.
--On August 10, former Israeli Prime Minister Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad is working on nuclear weapons and “eventually after crying wolf, you face the wolf, and this wolf has nuclear teeth, and it will bite, of that I’m sure.”
This is the same President Ahmadinejad that appeared on “60 Minutes” August 13, claiming that the UN was only serving US needs; said last autumn that the Jewish state had to be wiped off the face of the earth; is defying the United Nations while he does nuclear research that most experts believe is intended to make a nuclear bomb. This is the same President Ahmadinejad that is arming Hezbollah and developing his own long range ballistic missiles.
A few days ago, Mr. Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “During the Cold War, both sides possessed weapons of mass destruction, but neither side used them, deterred by what was known as MAD, mutual assured destruction. Similar constraints have no doubt prevented their use in the confrontation between India and Pakistan.”
The question now is this: are terrorists deterred by their own potential destruction, when they already act as suicide bombers? Stated clearer, once one is released from the belief in life, as stated in our Declaration of Independence, how may he be effectively confronted and countered?
What binds the terrorists we face today together is the religion of the intentional, indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians. No true religion can underwrite this thinking.
What binds us, the Western democracies, together, first and foremost, is the belief that all men have a right to life. As so eloquently stated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, all mankind are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
From the terrorist perspective, terror-war is the waging of war against democracies and life. It is meant to cause death, suffering and anguish among masses of civilian populations in pursuit of political gain.
Given the chasm in values between mass killers and people firmly adhering to the right to life (and a lot of other rights), it seems the Patriot Act, NSA eavesdropping and restrictions on liquids aboard aircraft are minor indeed.
This conundrum of belief between terrorism and America, in fact, the west, must consequently alter the way we view and wage this war on terror in the future.
Before Iran has a nuclear weapon, we might rethink our values and moral restrictions. Or ask ourselves, how many lives would we be ready to lose?
Did Israel Go Too Far in Lebanon?
NO.
Israelis believed they were (are) fighting a just war
Just War
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/jus_ad_bellum/
and despite the fundamental justness of this war (a war of survival), Israel has fought a limited war, seeking to limit its combat to targets of military significance.
Fighting Well in Limited War
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/jus_in_bello/
In these respects, Israel deserves every bit of understanding and support we fellow strugglers in the WOT can give them.
Not enough to dampen the victory celebration, complete with fireworks, in southern Lebanon last night. The Hezbos were obviously pleased with the way Israel "fought."
If the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden did not go too far (it didn't) to put an end to and provide retribution for wars started by the enemy, then the defensive attacks against the Hezbollocks in Lebanon are justified.
They area all not "one in the same", 20% of Lebanon's population is Catholic.
The Lebanese culture is not closed such as Syria, Iran or Saudi Arabia. They were and are a model of developing democracy in the Middle East. It's not a good moment for the world to give the whacko extremist an opportunity to show the younger portion of the general population the Hizzies are also a social program.
Israel lost the war because they were not willing to win it. Losers do not write history ...
Then, all Islamic terrorists are guilty, guilty, guilty.
btw - Israel made it a point to pound the Christian areas of Beirut.
Christians are supporting the murders by Islamic militants?????
Source to back up your comment?
The muslims use our humanity as a weapon against us!!
anybody here think Pres. Truman didn't help US interests @ Hiroshima? Where's our next Truman?
Agreed John!
Diallo ... not intended to (obvisouly) show disbelief in your assertion.
I'll ask again ... if you reference the BBC and accuse Christian groups of supporting the Islamic Terrorists, you're gonna need to post a link as back-up.
3rd Request: LINK PLEASE
I see it.
Did Israel GOO to Far in Lebanon?
Be careful of your goo.
About one casualty for each rocket fired? That seems like far less force than necessary. "Excessive" force would involve at least 50+ casualties per rocket. There's no reason to even discuss the issue.
Israel's critics (read: Islamofascist sympathizers and activists) insist it is employing more military might than necessary to achieve legitimate war objectives. They point to the obligation under international law of a nation at war to kill, injure or displace the fewest number of civilians consistent with the military goal sought.
So now they're complaining about displacement? Israel's fore-warning t oclear the area is now unjust? Screw it. Just bomb them all into oblivion, and worry about the lawyers later.
Killing or otherwise harming civilians for its own sake is morally reprehensible.
And yet not a word about Hezbollah doing so, even though it is mentioned in this very article!!!
But as with Israel in Lebanon, nations at war commonly injure civilians either in attacking military targets, seeking to accelerate surrender by destroying enemy morale or aiming to deter future aggression.
Nothing indicates that Israel is diong this, but the opening phrase tosses it in as if it were true.
Whether the civilian casualties inflicted were incommensurate with a legitimate military goal is generally unanswerable.
So the article now asserts that the rule it relies upon for its story is entirely meaningless? What passes for journalism today???
If this is a poll, put me down for: NOT ENOUGH FORCE.
Good catch.
Absolutely. The same for Ghenghis Khan and Attila the Hun.
This idea of proportionate response is sick.
And I agree with you that these same anti-war...can't we all get along bullsh*t we're seeing here in the USA is indeed a product of T-ball and soccer games where they don't keep score.
If children learned about winning and losing we'd be much better off, IMO.
Link please?
And Hezbo pays a lot of attention to this restriction every time they lob missiles into Israeli neighborhoods.
Does anyone know the number of dead hizbollah ?
exactly right. the result is dreadfull for israel. they should have gone all the way or not gone in at all - halfway ended up a disaster.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.