I was just curious what everyone felt about Lebanon, and what isgoing to happen. It seems clear (to me, at least), that the American position is to appear to want hostilities to stop, but to give behind the scenes support for Israel to solidify her position and eradicate Hezbollah, while not doing anything to actually stop the hostilities (hence Condi’s refusal to pressure israel).
My question- what is the endgame scenario here?
neil
The endgame scenario is always the same: Wallowing in political capital.
Doctor Gonzo
How can Israel actually eradicate Hezbollah? The same way we have eradicated al Qaeda, right?
Seriously, I don’t know what the endgame is here, because it doesn’t seem like Israel has a real strategy. Blowing up most of Lebanon isn’t going to destroy Hezbollah, it is going to win them sympathy.
The neocons running U.S. foreign policy are just getting off at the sight of more brown people dying for no good reason. They certainly don’t want it to stop; maybe if you kill enough brown people terrorists will give up! That’s the ticket!
Rex
Endgame is to provoke an attack from Iran or, failing that, to amass enough evidence of Iran’s complicity so as to offer a basis for attacking them.
capelza
Provoking Syrua and Iran? Thinking that if the war explodes, the international community (heh) will come in and then they will be rid of Syria and Iran?
Just a guess.
LITBMueller
Well, judging by the “it’s all Syria and Iran’s fault” rhetoric, the endgame scenario may be a bigger war!
Or, this may be “A Clean Break” put into action by Israel. Remember the stories from the UK that the US had given Israel a one week green light to take out Hezbollah? Well, Israel will be in Lebanon and bombing shit for a lot longer.
Personally, I think there are competing endgames – i.e., not everyone is on the same page. The NeoCons want WWIII, and see this as a potential Archduke Ferdinand moment that could lead to a wider war – one which can be cast as Sunnis vs. Shiites to really confuse the issue. There are also probably those within the administration who are content with allowing Israel to act as our proxy and do damage to Hezbollah. Condi herself may want to eventually negotiate a ceasefire, but she is clearly being held back her bosses.
Israel may have the same problem: competing interests. There are probably those who just want to roll back Hezbollah. But, there are also those who want to draw Syria into a conflict which the US will begin to more overtly support, and eventually the war will widen into a regional war with Iran – all in the name of security.
In any case, the endgame is not one that actually implicates American interests (accept the fact that our soldiers in Iraq would be caught right in the middle of a wider war). Meanwhile, continued, or increasing, conflict will only increase oil prices, doing very serious harm to our economy.
Short version: We’re kinda fucked.
SomeCallMeTim
My question- what is the endgame scenario here?
World War III.
Rusty Shackleford
This is my worry.
I predict the War in Iran will take place shortly after the kids return to school and the “either you’re with us, or the terrorists” rhetoric will be ramped up mid to late September. I’m waiting for the first terror alerts on Hezbollah sleeper cells in the U.S. to be issued in October.
I used to be an optimistic guy. Now? Not so much.
Gerard
I don’t know if Israel can eradicate Hezbollah, they have become the de facto provider of traditional government services in southern Lebanon and seem to enjoy the support of the population there. From all accounts the group is dug in pretty good in the area. I can only assume that the Israelis want to degrade the strength of Hezbollah to keep the north safe from attacks. I don’t think there’s any chance of a long-term an occupation of southern Lebanon.
If wiping out the group doesn’t work then Lebanon may be in for years of whack-a-mole: Hezbollah launches a rocket or attacks an Israeli patrol in northern Israel and Israel responds by destroying the infrastructure in southern Lebanon. My guess is that the Israelis want the Lebanese to dread seeing Hezbollah rockets flying south and therefore hope to lessen the affection of the population towards the group.
jg
The Party prefers to be at war.
jg
Remember being a kid and there’s a fight in the schoolyard? Two kids are fighting and they both have their backup keeping it a one on one fight? And the whole time the backup is eyeing each other just waiting for the other to make the first move so they can go at it.
That’s how I view the shit going on right now.
Krista
Will people actually buy that, though? Or have they reached the saturation point in regards to attacking countries that are allegedly harbouring terrorists? Everybody must be pretty damned war-weary by now, and to drag the country into another one — well, I just can’t see it getting any kind of support beyond the neocons and their lickarses.
Mike in SLO
The end game is “The Rapture”. Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition…
Steve
You’re just lucky the War on Terror has not morphed into the War Against Extraneous Vowels, or you’d be the first oop against the wall.
Ryan S.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this confict will have the intended consequences for Isreal. It is almost completely impossible to wipe out a guerilla force of any size, in any population, without completely genaciding the populace and even then its only probably a temporary solution.
Krista
Duly noted, Stev.
Pb
John Cole,
It’s worse than that. The American position is for hostilities to continue, by spouting mealy-mouthed pro-Israeli rhetoric, not stepping in to negotiate earlier, standing idly by while civilians are told by Israel to flee and then bombed by Israel in their cars when they do, and then quietly sending yet more munitions to Israel. That’s right, we’ve identified the problem: obviously, Israel doesn’t have enough bombs.
RSA
I’m afraid it could turn into “smoking craters and people being treated for radiation burns in the areas formerly known as Lebanon, Syria, Israel, etc.”
Punchy
Give ’em a break, Steve. They had to learn speechifying from a bunch that can’t drive on the correct side of the road, a group that doesn’t brush teeth with any descernible regularity, and a nation that thought RED would be the best color to wear when in battle in a forest.
We should be lucky The Ehs have indoor plumbing and only eat crayons on occasion…cut them some slack when it comes to their hilariously comicial spelling shenanigans…
srv
Safety thru destabilization. In their twisted world they ignore the real problems, pursue a short-term goal, and make a worse enemy in the future. Ah, what they would give to have the good ‘ol 80’s PLO back now.
Deal with Shaba Farms, the Golon and the prisoners, and you take away their justifications. That doesn’t stop Iran, but it gives Syria an option to not be a conduit and a way to rope the rest of the world (UN) into putting peacekeepers in. Give Syria the economic bonuses of Lebanon they cherish.
Hint: they’re going to have to make Assad alot more of a hero than Sadat was if you want your northern border safe. Suck it up and grow up.
Tim F.
Israel cannot be stupid enough to want to eradicate Hezbollah. That would be like eradicating the Republican party – theoretically possible given enough time and guns, but it would only last as long as it takes someone to change registration. And it would be politically counterproductive for whoever tried it.
Israel wants to remove Hezbollah’s ability to launch rockets into northern Israel. That is pretty much it. It appears that they believed that a ground offensive would accomplish that, but had second thoughts and decided that a multinational force might be a better idea after all. Most likely that is because they got a better look at the task ahead of them and realized that it was a long shot at best.
That said, the indiscriminate nature of the bombing completely baffles me. Hezbollah’s bombing serves a strategic purpose by effectively keeping Israel in the fight and preempting any near-term cease-fire. What strategic purpose does it serve to knock out milk factories, hospitals and families in minivans? If the end goal is complete Lebanese control over its own territory, which would effectively nullify Hezbollah as a fighting force, this campaign strikes me as a giant step backwards. I have serious doubts about Olmert and his cabinet’s wisdom here.
Mr Furious
I’ll agree with much of what has been said upthread. Nobody in the Administration is losing any sleep over this. They are just trying to figure out how to turn it to their advantage for the Elections.
Which, I’m sorry to report, will probably work.
Mr Furious
They are feeling pressure to look/act tough. It’s all about appearences, saving face and politics over long-term strategy.
Krista
Last time, I checked, you learned it from the same bunch, but just found all of those extraneous vowels too goshdarned difficult to remember. It’s okay. I’m sure the Brits don’t mind you dumbing down their language.
Steve
Kevin Drum:
Pb
Tsulagi
Short-term endgame for the administration is to link Israel’s course of action to gloss over their FUBAR level of incompetence in Iraq for the upcoming midterms. They would like Israel to keep it up for a while. Gets Iraq off the news cycles and they can say “See, the Israelis also recognize the need to strike terrorist-harboring nations before they’re struck at home. You may be correct we’re dumb shits, but they’re doing it too.”
Of course no need to point out that Israel was attacked and that Hezbollah actually is a security threat to them unlike Iraq was to the U.S. Or that Israel apparently had prepared good intelligence on Hezbollah’s actual weapons and deployments. Or many other differences. You’re supposed to think it’s the same thing.
I’ve noticed how some Israeli officials in interviews have often been using paraphrases of the admin’s cliches. “We have to strike them over there so they can’t strike us here.” “If Lebanon’s army stands up to Hezbollah, we’ll stand down.” I’ve been waiting to hear smoking gun mushroom clouds and aluminum tubes or secret Hezbollah meetings with Iranian agents in downtown Prague. But then the Israelis haven’t quite reached that level of truthiness yet.
Possible endgame beyond the short-term? Both the brilliant military geniuses like our Kristol-type neocons (we’ll be welcomed as liberators-no sweat) and Israeli hardliners wouldn’t mind seeing Iran whacked. Right now the two may be jockeying to see who would offer to pick up the check. The Rapture nuts must be creaming in their soon-to-be-left-behind pants.
tBone
Damn. Mike beat me to it. Rapture, bitches!
The Lebanese shouldn’t bitch. After they’re Left Behind, at least they’ll have 20,000 blankets to hide under.
Pb
Incidentally, because of Bush’s visit with Maliki, I saw CNN compare Iraq to Lebanon today–they actually mentioned since the start of the Lebanon conflict, more civilians and US soldiers have died in Iraq than have civilians and Israeli soldiers in Israel and Lebanon.
Their numbers were pretty close, though–I have a feeling that probably more civilians have died in Iraq than they mentioned–a lot more. Probably somewhat more in Lebanon too, really–that’s what happens when you report confirmed deaths, the rest tend to fall through the cracks.
Andrew Reeves
This looks like it’s going to be a replay of the mid-80’s. Which is terrible for the people involved, but not really apocalyptic.
Pooh
Damn, beat to it twice…
In seriousness, I think the Franz Ferdinand analogy is the most likely reason for the real movers and shakers – some of the dupes may be along for the ride on the Rapture Express (bitches), but pay attention to Kritol. He’s not hiding the ball, he wants more war, yesterday (which ignores the obvious question “you and what army?” since ours is…occupied by occupying at present.)
Paul Wartenberg
Why have an endgame at all? As long as their’s a foreign policy crisis going on you can loudly promote on FOXNews how Republicans are always so much better at foreign policy than the weak-willed wobbly-kneed Democrats. So just keep it going, kiddos, ’cause Foreign Policy is what we’re good at (Peru suddenly converts whole nation to radical Islam). Whoops, did that happen on our watch too…???
tBone
You’d think Kristol could at least freshen up his line of bullshit for Iraq Part Deux: Nuclear Boogaloo! Most of his recent comments sound like he just ran a find-and-replace on his old notes to swap all of the “q”s for “n”s.
stickler
I think things have spun out of control for both Israel and the USA. Bush is out of touch; Olmert wildly overreacted. And if the nutcase neocons think a jolly little war in Syria and Iran is just the ticket for the fall elections, they’re deluding themselves. For one thing, as Pat Lang pointed out a few days ago, our troops are hostages to Iranian good will. I somehow doubt that Bush explaining how he’s negotiating to get our 150,000 troops out of Shiite captivity will help the GOP at the polls.
And even if they don’t lift a finger against our forces in Iraq, there’s still the fact that practically all the oil from Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States comes through the Straits of Hormuz, which the Iranians could shut down in a heartbeat. Hell, they could use a few dozen WWI-era antiship mines. How does $10/gallon gasoline sound on election day?
One other thing: Israel is in the process of losing a public relations battle against Hezbollah. While Hezbollah is killing Israeli citizens. How badly do you have to screw up your response to manage that? Israel is finding out right now.
Punchy
Not so much. We freed ourselves almost 100 years before you guys, which gave our gansta rappers, Generation C’ers, and beaver trappers a huge head start in morphing the Queen’s English into ‘Merican…Word, G.
OK, thread-jack over. Israel Isreali overdone it. The Lebs…just looking for shelter in a hospit…nevermind… ambulances…wait, bombed…miniva…nope…their hom…negative…
Punchy
Never going to happen. Yes, the Iranians could extend/enhance guerilla (sp?) war, but they’ll never overrun us. Our airpower is far too great. They could, however, make it one huge bloody mess….
Sherard
Wow. The level of self-assured smugness is at an all time high in here. Is there a prize for who can be the most cynical anti-Bush in the crowd ?
I’d sure be interested to hear what the all-knowing Balloon Juice Commenter enlightened suggest as the answer to this conflict. Or is what Hezbollah has offered – a temporary ceasefire while they “negotiate” every other aspect of their need to adhere to UN 1559 – basically nothing more than a return to the status quo (oh except for the massing of hezbollah troops in Lebonon – also known as “Israel setting THEIR war plan in advance” – is THAT what you think is the better alternative ?
It’s good to know that you all think people dying in Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq is a good excuse to make jokes about the Bush, Kristol, and the Rapture. Ha-Ha. I get it.
Or maybe we should just hold out hope for a magic John Kerry mind control fix. Although nobody in this rat hole likely sees the irony in Kerry’s “if I were president this would have never happened” bullshit.
Try and remember, hatred of Israel trumps everything.
DougJ
Good question, John, good question.
Steve
Try and remember to go fuck yourself.
DougJ
I’m glad Sherard has the guts to lay the blame where it belongs: at the doorstep of the commenters here.
Shame on all of you — this conflict is all your fault.
Richard 23
This would strike me as funny if the situation weren’t so tragic.
What planet are you on? Condi wants to do no such thing. She just wants to impress her husband. And W loves war.
I thought it was World War IV – A New Hope.
Maybe the endgame is switchgrass. Makes as much sense as anything else.
capelza
Sherard…shrillness and Kerry in the same post.
Guess what…Kerry isn’t president, Bush is.
And I just always have to snicker when wingnuts start waving UN resolutions around…how many has Israel completely blown off again?
That isn’t even taking sides…though I will say Bill Kristol is fucknut crazy.
Kirk Spencer
Israel has a problem, and it’s going to influence the play of this for a while.
See, for the past half-century there’s been this consistent rule: Israel’s neighbors can rattle and poke as much as they want, but if they go too far Israel unleashes the hounds (calls the reserves and goes to war), and all the neighbors end up starting off worse than they were. Israel’s military effectiveness in relation to the neighbors was its trump card.
Right now, the trump card isn’t working. That’s bad, because it means everybody quits worrying about the junkyard dog. Since Israel’s spent a lot more time recently trying to cow its neighbors than it has cooperating with them, it’s not a good time for this to happen. Which means that the nation’s best served (for now) in pushing till the everyone realizes the teeth are still sharp. Now it’s also worth noting that the trump card had rough spots in the past, but always ended up finishing high. So with history and realpolitik each pushing for continuation, well, I just can’t see them agreeing to a ceasefire at this time.
Nutcutter
Endgame strategy? How can we be talking about an endgame when we have a world and government that is apparently run by a bunch of crazy liars?
“Bolster .. security?” Where the fuck was the “bolstering” for the last six months as we reached a 3000-deaths-per-month rate in the streets over there? US forces are not trying to keep the peace in that tornado of violence and death. They are trying to stay the hell out of the way and not get killed.
“The terrorists are afraid of democracy.” That’s the kind of insane shit spoken by your president just a few hours ago at a news conference at the White House. Insane bullshit, disconnected from reality and utterly worthless as a device for understand what is going on over there.
Endgame strategy? GET THESE CRAZY FUCKS OUT OF OUR GOVERNMENT and then talk to me about an endgame.
The Other Steve
Ok, let’s think through this reasonably… rather than hyperbole about the rapture and great jewish conspiracy, etc.
Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel were an Act of War on the part of Lebanon. Sure, not all Lebanese supported the attacks, but since Hezbollah is effectively the government there it would be like the Republican Party attacking Mexico.
To the point of what game is Condi playing. I think Dr. Rice is correct in that you cannot have a cease fire without certain conditions being met. Otherwise the issue is left unresolved. That is, one side or both sides needs to be beaten down to the point where they give up either by loss or frustration. It’s clear right now that is not the case. Hezbollah has rejected conditions of a cease fire(return of hostages, cessation of rocket attacks), so there is not going to be a cease fire. If third parties want to see a cease fire, they should broker with Hezbollah.
The disproportionate argument is Hezbollah propaganda playing against western sympathies. If you kick someone bigger than you, you don’t expect to get kicked back in a disproportionate way, and you don’t go whine to the teachers about it either.
That being said, there is still a question of long-term goals.
The Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the past was a disaster, largely because they implemented the US-Vietnam tactic of free-fire zones. So they aren’t going to want to do that again.
Ok, so now they’re talking about a NATO occupation force intended to remove Hezbollah so that a legitimate Lebanese government can take control. But frankly, I think that will be a disaster as well. The NATO forces will come under attack, and NATO will get into an argument with it’s member states as to how to respond.
There won’t be any sort of UN occupation, because the UN has shown a history of anti-Israel behavior, and they’ll just step out of the way and let Hezbollah attack and then get in the way of an Israeli response.
Obviously a US peace occupation would be as big of a disaster as it was in 1983.
Obviously Hezbollah needs to go away, but that inolves them, Syria and Iran, and they don’t see any compelling reason for Hezbollah to go away. So stalemate.
This leaves us with… Israel pulls back, if there are further attacks they attack again. Rinse. Repeat. Until someone disarms Hezbollah.
The Other Steve
I think you’re correct, but that’s because Israel’s neighbors gave up on their goals. That is, in the past, they had a goal of conquering land. Thus they brought in tanks, armies, etc.
But that’s clearly not the goal today. In fact, all of Israel’s arab neighbors have given up on their quest. They want peace.
Yet we have groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, who think otherwise. They don’t want peace. Yet on the other hand they also don’t want land. Their goal is merely to aggravate.
Thus it’s a lot like a fly attacking a horse. It’s not going to change the horse, but the horse has to expend energy biting and lashing it’s tail.
So yes, the circumstances have changed… b ut they’ve also changed for Israel’s enemies as well.
Nutcutter
Uh, you mean until we magically “win” the GWOT, don’t you, Steve?
Sixty years of the Arab-Israeli war just in my lifetime. Recent TWENTY-YEAR occupation of Lebanon by Israel … Hezbollah has apparently never been stronger.
Just a question … not for you, but for anybody: Using Israel’s Sixty Year War on mideast terror as a model, who can explain to me why the whole concept of a “war on terror” is anything but a large load of piss being dumped on our legs by people want us to think it’s raining?
Explain it, please. Are we following the Israeli model of War on Terror now? How does that model work again?
I have heard exactly one succinct and intelligent summation of this problem set, in my entire lifetime. You can probably find the person who said it, on Google, but I am not into attribution here, just content. This Wise Person said:
Israel’s entire model is based on an assumption that is not true, namely, that Israel can have security on its borders, without the people on its borders being themselves secure.
If Israel is the “grown up” in this endless clusterfuck, then why wouldn’t she see the truth in that statement, and at some point work to achieve last peace instead of the “rinse, repeat” scenarios that we are so fucking tired of? For example, how does Israel make itself secure by weakening the first promise of real Arab democracy in history, namely, Lebanon?
Sure, I know. Just fill in the tiresome list of excuses here __________________________________________. Write small, I’ve seen the list before.
stickler
Hey, Punchy:
Did you even bother to read the link? Our line of supply (you may have heard of this) runs for many, many, vulnerable miles by sea and land. If either (or, God forbid, both) Iran or the Iraqi Shia decide to attack that line of supply, air power won’t be enough. And there’s only so much fuel, ammunition, and food you can fly to the boys on the ground — especially if the locals are firing SAMs at the planes and mortaring the runways. Soldiers have to be fed and resupplied. Our line of supply is very, very fragile.
It doesn’t matter much if some blog poster named Punchy doesn’t know or care about logistics. But if the nimrods in control of our government are just as pig-ignorant, it matters a lot.
The Other Steve
Right, but I doubt campaigning on a “We Want World War III” platform is going to win Republicans votes. So they’re going to ignore Kristol until after the election.
Kirk Spencer
Punchy, if tactics and superior equipment were supreme, we’d all be speaking German. Instead, I’ll try to introduce to logistics and politics – the tools of war instead of those of battle.
Politics first as it’s the groundwork for everything else.
If Iran declares war on the US, Iraq has to choose between three bad options. Declare itself a US ally; Declare itself an Iranian ally; Declare itself a neutral party. In both the latter cases US forces have two options: leave (vs internment), or conquer Iraq all over again. In both the former cases Iran gets LEGAL right to openly send forces into Iraq.
If Iran declares war on the US, the Straits of Hormuz becomes a warzone. Oil spikes to double its current price and stays there for at least a week. Even if the US is immediately effective at establishing total control of the straits the price stays elevated. If – as is more likely – the control is merely dominant with the Iranians still able to hit ships now and then, the prices will stay very high. There will be at least a perception of an oil shortage, and if the straits are choked enough it’ll be an actual shortage. A doubling of oil prices will send gasoline prices at the pump soaring. We face an election in three months, and doubt you will find a politician able to win on a record of supporting an action that caused gas to rise to $5 per gallon on their watch.
That’s politics. Let’s talk logistics.
Airpower is great. Airpower uses aviation fuel, a petroleum product. See the preceding about shortages. Oh, the carriers and such will get their fuel, but it’s going to be painful and not as complete as they intend.
And as the article referenced noted, all those ground forces need fuel as well. Fuel which, ironically, comes mostly from out of the middle east. Yes, the ME nations have some refineries. Not, however, a lot of refineries. A major operational/tactical target in the event of hostilities isn’t the pipelines and terminals, it’s the refineries. No gas, and the M1 becomes a pillbox. A GOOD bunker, but still a bunker.
Oh, about that airpower. Hint: Airpower isn’t as good as its press. If it were, Israel would be done with Hezbollah now. Once more, shock and awe (or whatever airpower buzzword you wish to apply) is shown to be an overstatement of capabilities.
Bottom line is that Iran won’t fight the US as the US would fight the US. It’ll apply its strengths against US weaknesses — and both exist.
Nutcutter
Rather a convoluted put-down of a poster, but is it really necessary to put an “if” in front of our government being pig-ignorant? It’s an insult to pigs, anyway.
Nutcutter
Oh I doubt that. The perpetrators are always adept at the “We are concerned about the unfortunate collateral damage” as the kids are being incinerated. The charred kids just underline how seriously the perpetrators regret the “collateral damage” and therefore how seriously they must be taken.
By burning up kids, you can be for peace. That’s our modern world at work. Don Rumsfeld himself couldn’t do this act better.
Pooh
I don’t think that is right at all – as a factual matter Hezbollah is running things in part of Lebanon (what Totten described as ‘Hezbollahland’) – the problem from the outside has largely been Israel widening the ‘battlespace’ into greater Lebanon rather than sticking to Hezbollahland. I think we all realise that Hezbollah’s own tactics expose the neigboring civilians to a great deal of danger and so are willing to countenance a bit more collateral damage (I hate that euphemism) in those areas.
Steve
I would take it as a given that Iraq would not openly take sides in such a hypothetical conflict, although their sympathies would surely be with Iran.
Nutcutter
Who the hell are you talking to? I certainly don’t agree with that. At all. I don’t “countenance” any “collateral damage” — that is, burned kids and their screaming mothers — AT ALL. Period.
Or were you being sarcastic? If so, it’s not clear.
Andrew
If you don’t countenance collateral damage in Hezbollahland (sounds a bit like a really dangerous theme park), then you sort of implicitly support intentional civilian deaths in Israel, if Israel is not able to attack Hezbollah launching points.
Andrew
Whoops, hit submit too soon.
That is to say, we’ve accepted that civilians will die, and now we’re just arguing over where and how many.
Punchy
Don’t know a damn thing about logistics. Probably should have read the link before I posted. Took your “Shite captivity” literally, as in “they’d be holding them POW”, which we both know could not happen.
But what you describe would certainly kill our efforts in Iraq.
Pooh
Right. I don’t think Israel should be required to sit there and Do Nothing because Hezbollah is basing its attacks from civilian areas. Additionally, I said ‘some,’ not necessarily the extent that we are seeing (and again the confusion between what is and isn’t occuring in Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon makes it hard to say).
Saying that no civilian casualties are ever acceptable, while morally pure, has the deleterious side-effect of rendering ‘human-shield’ tactics to be the ace of spades. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this an application of the “double-effect” portion of Just War Theory?
LITBMueller
TOS, to make an argument, you need a better opening set of “facts.”
Except for all the other times rockets were launched at Israel, and soldiers were captured and later exchanged for prisoners. Not to mention, the whole “Hezbollah went into and kidnapped the soldiers in Israel” theme is a bit….murky.
Complete bullshit – Hezbollah does not have anything CLOSE to a majority in the Lebanese Parliament, and is anything BUT “effectively the government.”
Again: bullshit. A cease fire is just that: an agreement to stop firing at each other. Just like with the Iranian Ultimatum, “stop your nuclear program before we discuss with you stopping your nuclear program,” Condi wants the same thing: “disarm and give up the hostages before we discuss disarming you and getting the hostages back.”
A cease fire is nothing but a prelude to negotiations. Israel and the US are not interested in negotiations – hence their requirement of “conditions” before ay negotiations even take place! The US strategy is intended to fail: “Do what we want…NOW!”
tzs
Billmon (http://www.billmon.org) has some very good analysis of what’s going on. One is about how we are probably closer to a total screw-up in Iraq for our forces than anyone wants to let out in public, just based on the logistics.
I don’t see Iran doing anything as “brilliant” as Hitler declaring war on the US right after Pearl Harbor (which from a geopolitical tactics point of view probably lines up as one of the top five Bad Moves in military strategy). They’re more likely to quietly continue funding Hezbollah but not do any outright rattling of the bars.
Problem is, right now we have a whole set of just-barely-contained messes in the Mideast, each of which feeds into the other. It would be VERY easy for the conflagration to blow up totally beyond all control, especially with the idiocy of our beloved politicians.
Which is why so many of us are dragging out our well-thumbed histories of WWI and hoping desperately somebody sane will remain in charge.
A wild card in the game is the Saudis. They’ve made dissapproving noises about Hezbollah, but today they came out with some pretty strong statements about how Israel should really look for a way out of the bombing.
I don’t know enough about the Saudis (since historically they’ve acted like toothless pussycats when it comes to foreign affairs), but what are the possibilities that they threaten to turn off the oil spigot as a way of leaning on Bush? I don’t see them doing this unless their own people really start putting pressure on them to Do Something.
Pb
Woo, we’re back to the war of the stupids, blog edition.
Nutcutter,
Agreed.
Andrew,
I don’t support civilian deaths at all, period, so get that bullshit out of your skull. Now read what Nutcutter wrote above again, slowly, a few more times, until it sinks in. What part of not killing civilians don’t you understand. Or are you from the Keanu Reeves “shoot the hostage” school of conflict resolution.
Nutcutter
Not at all. There is no imperative I can think of after sixty years (modern times, another thousand or two total) of this shit, that would force me to accept these civilian casualties on either side.
To do otherwise IMV is an Ends Justify Means argument, and if I am going to do Ends Justify Means, then we can’t quibble. We have to accept the Iraq war as is. We have to accept torture in our detention of “combatants.” At that point everything is on the table.
At that point, I’m George Bush. No, I won’t be George Bush. If I can’t do better than that little prick, I should kill myself.
Andrew
Of course you support civilians deaths. You may hem and haw about it, but at the end of the day, there are situations where you will support civilians deaths.
No one wants civilians deaths or likes civilians deaths.
There are always situations in war where you simply have to choose between the lesser of two evils, and in war, that means civilians will probably get the shaft. Indeed, you must support civilian casualties if there is no other choice in preventing the death of many more innocents.
Simple logic.
Andrew
Let me phrase it this way:
If you were opposed to the invasion of Iraq, you implicitly support the fact that Saddam would have continued to kill innocent civilians.
I am honest enough to say that yes, I would prefer for that to have continued, versus the much worse outcome of our invasion where many more civilians and American soldiers have died.
Thus, I accept some civilians deaths to prevent worse debacles.
Pb
Andrew,
Fuck you. Work on your reading comprehension, asshole. No means no.
That’d be a ‘no’ yet again, and actually–given your incredibly shoddy reasoning here–for several reasons. But suffice it to say, it’s quite easy to be opposed to both parties in any given conflict. It’s even possible to be *for* one side in a conflict, and still be *against* civilian casualties in the *same* fucking conflict–fancy that!
Now fuck off. If I wanted someone to spin, lie about, and misrepresent my positions, I’d go looking for Darrell.
BlogReeder
Did you really write that Tim F.? You can’t really believe that Israel would bomb a milk factory just for fun? How about if a rocket were launched from said factory. Would that be strategic enough for you?
Nutcutter
Somewhere on this thread I think somebody mentions the craziness of diplomatic language. And yes, it is crazy.
But it’s crazy for a reason. Craziness is a detachment from reality, and deiplomacy requires lying. When your wife says “how do you like my new hairdo” you don’t say “Christ, it looks like crap!” even if that is what you think. Because you know that the diplomacy of relationships and marriage require a different approach.
Okay fine. So we have the macabre language of diplomacy and its “unfortunate collateral” which really means “burned babies and their screaming mothers.” Let the diplomats talk to each other that way.
But here’s the punchline: We do not have to accept that. We are the people. We’re the ones with the kids. We are the screaming mothers who hate God because they would rather themselves be hurt than their kids be hurt. WE don’t have to settle for the diplomatic lies and doubletalk.
We can speak plainly. And I suggest to you, unless we do that and do it with complete forthrightness, then the mealy-mouthed liars and the lawyers and the politicians have won, and are just panws on their chessboard.
We do not have to settle for that shit. Period.
Steve
It seems a little wrong to me that someone can launch an attack from behind a human shield, and since no civilian casualties are acceptable, all we can do is say “oh well, that person was wrong.”
Pb
BlogReeder,
Er, yeah, that’s the ticket. And I’m sure Hezbollah was secretly firing rockets from those hospitals and atop those families in minivans as well. Get a grip, man, pay some attention to what’s actually going on. Some of the places Israel has struck, some of the civilians Israel has bombed, haven’t been anywhere *near* the south of Lebanon, so if Hezbollah had been firing rockets there (atop houses, minivans, banks, hospitals, factories, ambulances, etc., etc., you name it…), then they’d be firing rockets at *themselves*, which they aren’t.
Pb
Steve,
So you go after them. But you don’t shoot the hostage. See above.
Speaking of hostages, I wonder if those two Israeli soldiers are even alive anymore, or if they’re now part of the “unfortunate collateral” too.
Anderson
My question- what is the endgame scenario here?
Status quo ante bellum, except for the dead on both sides.
DecidedFenceSitter
The step Andrew missed in his logic, was whether to gain your agreement, or refusal, on whether armed conflict can be carried out without civilian casualities.
If you believe armed conflict can be carried out without civilian casualities, I’d ask for historical examples to prove this point, I on the other hand, will point to the numerous historical examples of civilians being hurt by armed conflict, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
If you accept the latter proposition that armed conflict cannot avoid civilian casualities, and categorically state that your armed forces cannot inflict civilian casualities period, you thus have come to the conclusion that your armed forced cannot engage armed conflict as civilian casualties will be inflicted.
Now while this is acceptable in an intellectual exercise, I have to question the real world validity. In the current situation, Israel agrees to inflict no more civilian casualties, and withdraws its troops and ceases its air strikes.
I do not see any good faith that the opposing force, Hezbollah, would do the same, and while inefficient, the rockets would continue to cause civilian casualities.
Thus the categorical imperative, followed by one side, merely means, that in this real world case, it is a few Israeli civilians who would be hurt in the conflict, rather than a few Israeli civilians, and a great host of Lebanon civilians; mostly due to the lack of ability, not desire, of Hezbollah.
Pb
Anderson,
Right now, I might consider that, but only as a best-case scenario. :(
Andrew
Great, you can fly off to chocolate land on your unicorn and pretend that no civilians would die if Saddam was still in power.
Of course, we’re opposed to civilians deaths in the don’t-like-them sense, but we’re perfectly accepting of them in the don’t-like-them-but-the-alternatives-are-worse sense.
This is a good example of the Democrats’ problem with defensiveness.
If Darrell says, “You were against the war in Iraq? Well, then you implicitly support Saddam being in power.”
You answer, “No, I’m against the war and against Saddam! It’s quite easy to be opposed to both parties in any given conflict. OMG! Ponies! And I like windsurfing.” Your basic American sees this is a ridiculous, unrealistic waffling.
The answer should be, “You implicitly support the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and American soldiers. You choose thousands of dead Americans. Fucktard.”
The Pirate
As far as I can tell our policy in Lebanon is to make every effort to avoid having a policy.
BlogReeder
You got it. Oh.. Were you being sarcastic?.. Hizallah would never do that? What targets are their rockets hitting?
Nutcutter
That’s why the police don’t fire into a crowd of hostages or civilians to get the bad guy. The crowd demands a different approach.
That’s why laws are being passed now to prevent police from chasing stolen cars at high speed through civilian traffic. People don’t want to become sitting ducks for speeding car thieves. Or bank robbers for that matter.
Perry Como
Ask Buckley or George Will. Crazed leftists.
Steve
Right, but there is no 100% safe way, or even 90% way, to safely retaliate against someone who hides behind a human shield.
If your position is that “risking the loss of innocent life is wrong, period,” then I don’t know what you’d have people do in this situation, other than sitting around “condemning” the bad guy.
smijer
Our end game? No idea, but I bet that it is to assist with Israel’s end game.
Israel’s end game? No idea, but it is positive that they have declared that they have no intention to attack other nations in the region, or to re-occupy Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s end game? Not sure, but I read this interesting opinion piece this morning, and it seems sensible.
The ideal situation in Lebanon, to me, is to remove the military/terrorist arm of Hezbollah and allow Lebanon’s government security forces to provide security for Lebanon, and do so without massive civilian casualties and irreversible damage to the Lebanese economy. A difficult job, and if the Israelis and Lebanese show no more competence in their efforts to reign in Hezbollah as the U.S. has shown in its effort to reign in Iraq, then Lebanon is screwed.
Punchy
Can we rename…OK, just respell, this blog “Balloon Jews“??
About this:
Yeah, Hezbollah is firing rockets off moving minivans fleeing to the north. Uh huh. And every member inside the minivan all had bazookas and AK-47s…riiight.
Pb
DecidedFenceSitter,
Well of course it can be in theory, but nowadays, in practice, the way we’ve fought our wars for the past 50 years or more, it probably can’t be. However, I do believe that–given that you have wars in the first place–they should be fought so as to minimize the chance of civilian casualties, and any that result should be unintentional–and all of those should be deplored. At the very least, we should be able to (and make an effort to) count them all, and have some empathy and respect for the fallen, and some understanding as to the resultant impact.
Well, we could have found out whether or not they would have by taking them at their word–because they did propose doing precisely that, and Israel rejected it.
At which point, the agreement would be broken, and war would doubtless resume.
And even that outcome–while not fair–still would have been better. I’d imagine that Israel would have gotten a great deal more support in the world with that approach as well, perhaps sufficient to get enough reinforcements for Lebanon’s military to “control their territory”. Instead, there just won’t be that much territory left that’s worth controlling, but there will be millions of pissed-off Lebanese citizens.
srv
You haven’t been reading Haaretz or paying attention. They’ve already admitted to the 10 bombs for every missile statement. Everything in Hezbollahland is a target now.
BlogReeder
That’s good to hear.
Pb
Andrew,
Right, because–given that there were only your (Darrell’s?) two options, then that’s just what Clinton must have been doing for 8 years as well, he must have been a cowardly windsurfing Saddam lover. Please tell me you’re spoofing today. I don’t know what happened to you lately, Andrew, but you’re being a fucking moron. If you’re just going to keep it up, then I request that you not address me anymore, and I’ll do my part and let you get back to the jackalope preserve.
Nutcutter
I’m not defending either side in this crapfest over there … but Hezbollah appears to be firing missiles and having basically no idea where the hell they are going.
Which is just about as reprehensible as firing missiles and knowing exactly where they are going, and hitting a van with a bunch of kids in it, AFAIC.
Who’s the “good guy” in that pathetic scenario?
Punchy
Look at Condi’s “Peace” Plan–TWO MORE WEEKS of fighting!
So….she was there…why? I’m guessing we’re 13 days away from another kidnapping or artillery shelling, and then everything starts anew.
I thought last week, we gave them 7 more days. Now, 14 more….
srv
They just bombed a UN station, 4 dead.
The Other Steve
Pb,
Andrew is right.
Zifnab
To recall a John Stewart rant from last Wednesday,
Not so much this time around.
Nutcutter
I don’t agree with that at all. Your “basic American” is one who has ill informed half the time in these situations, and is bombarded with false choices.
The choice is not between accepting “unfortunate collateral damage” which is a liar’s way of saying “burned children and their screaming parents,” on the one hand, and “the terrorists win” on the other hand. Any more than that was the choice in Iraq. Or any more than that the choice is between “aggressive interrogation techniques” which is actually “torture,” and “the terrorists win.”
Ends DO NOT justify means, no matter how assiduously you browbeat the opponent, or spin the facts, or put lipstick on the pig of immoral behavior.
Citizens DO NOT constantly have to choose between being barbarians, and letting barbarians win. If that were true, civilization would have failed a long time ago.
And our Meddle East policy DOES NOT have to be a constant round of false choices. The bad guys DON’T win because we didn’t become like them. That’s a fucking lie.
It IS NOT okay to burn kids because your enemy burned some kids. That’s a fucking lie.
No matter how you slice and dice it, it’s a lie.
Andrew
I think Clinton handled Iraq pretty well actually, but it would be foolish to say that thousands of civilians didn’t die under Saddam’s reign during the Clinton years. Blame Saddam or sanctions or whatever, but we accepted civilians deaths.
Yes, there are always OTHER options, but unfortunately, almost all of them screw some poor bastard, somewhere. I don’t think Israel should bomb so many targets in Lebanon, but I do think that they are morally obligated to try to stop Hezbollah rockets, which means civilians die.
And what does it mean to find civilian deaths unacceptable? Is vociferous blogging a proportionate response?
The Other Steve
I’m sorry. For some reason Hezbollah didn’t take a plane to a known location, transmit their position and make their demands.
Oh yeah, I know why.
Because if they know where you are, they can launch a raid.
Zifnab
I think we need to keep in mind, as always, that Hezbollah is a group of terrorists. To date, on this site, I can’t remember reading anyone defending Hezbollah in any more fervent a fashion than to point out (paraphrase) “At least they’re just killing Isreali soldiers this time”.
No one – on this forum at least – likes Hezbollah. They are catagorically the bad guys. The fundamental problem in Lebanon right now is Isreal’s complete refusal to play the good guys. At this point, it’s just two groups of assholes bombing the holy hell out of their respective civilian populations.
Frankly, this is the sort of behavior we’ve come to expect from Hezbollah. It’s like watching a Nazi try to gas a Jew. No one stands up and says, “How dare that Nazi be so rampantly anti-Semetic!” because we just assume every sane witness knows this is wrong.
What is truly sad and pathetic is that we find ourselves having to proclaim, “How dare that Isreali soldier slaughter that bus load of Lebonese refugees!” For one, we don’t normally equate Isreali soldiers with Nazi stormtroopers. They are held to a slightly higher standard of moral character. For another, we don’t normally assume the Isreali military is in the business of slaughtering anyone, much less busloads of refugees.
What’s even worse in it all, is that there are people staunchly supporting Isreal’s right to slaughter busloads of refugees on the grounds that that bus might have a terrorist aboard.
What a sick joke.
Zifnab
Operation Entebbe
There we are.
Nutcutter
Sure there is. The liars just don’t want to admit it. There is no requirement to “retaliate.” A constant round of retaliations just prolongs the constant round of retaliations.
You have choices as to where to fight, what to fight, and when to fight. You are reponsible for the moral implications of those choices. You cannot walk away from moral responsibility by resorting to taunts, chest thumping and tough talk as a cover for the immorality of killing kids when it wasn’t the last of the last of the last resorts.
The alternative is to be George Bush. George Bush is what you get when you let Ends Justify Means whittle away at your moral choices.
Pooh
That’s just mindblowingly idealistic. The whole point of the ‘human shield’ is that YOU CAN’T GET THE BAD GUYS without endangering the civilians. Are you really suggesting that once they have hostages or civilians in the way, Israel should just say “damn, that’s cunning. I guess they win this round. Rocket away, chaps.”
Obviously, no one (or at least no sane one) wants civilians to get killed, but the ‘no dead non-coms’ option is not on the table here.
Andrew
I think your reading of history is quite incorrect.
The survivial of civilizations were often dependent upon quite barbaric or extremely violent actions.
I respect the moral code of a true pacifist, who would not raise a hand in their own defense. Indeed, it is perhaps the only belief system without serious inherent hypocrises. However, such believers are not likely to last long on their own or without the protection of a society willing to do violence on their behalf.
Nutcutter
Who “accepted” them? I didn’t.
Zifnab
I don’t think the Palestinians ran out and broadcast their location. This was most likely information gathered by the legendary Isreali Intelligence core.
And the point is that when Isreal was interested in doing a daring hit-and-run with little loss of life and minimal collaterial damage, it was fully within their power.
Could this same procedure have been used in Lebanon? I don’t know. But it doesn’t look like Isreal really even gave the option thought before carpet bombing their northern neighbor.
Punchy
Let’s clarify the pronoun–Israel just bombed a UN station…
Hmmmmmmm…the UN was offered as a peace-keeping force in a cease-fire…so…Israel, who wants to keep fighting….hits the UN…I’m guessing the UN will now “rethink” it’s involvement. And the IDF leaders may be grinning ear to ear.
Pooh
So you are advocating doing nothing, the rockets continue, etc.
Not that you are necessarily wrong in taking this position, but I think your reasoning is flawed. If, out of the universe of possible Israeli reactions doing nothing turned out to be the ‘best’ as measured by whatever tactical, strategic and moral metrics you want to use, sure, do nothing.
And if you really think that Israel knows how to get just the bad guys and hasn’t done so for whatever reason…that’s just silly.
Note that I think Israel has overreacted on balance here – some reprisal was clearly warranted, and given Hezbollah’s tactics, some civilians were going to get killed (note that this is Hezbollah’s fault insofar as the attacks were well targeted on Hezbollah targets.
Nutcutter
Just another in the tiring litany of false choices here.
The choice is not between some kind of “pacifism” and “defense.” Military force is not the only purpose for having a defense structure. I don’t keep a gun in the house so that I can go out at night and stalk the bad guys and shoot them while they are riding on the bus next to innocent people. I keep a gun in the house to defend my house in case a bad guy comes into the house. That’s defense. Shooting at the bad guy 500 yards away while he is in a grocery store is not defense, that’s assassination, and doing so would land me in prison if for no other reason that I endangered the people in the store who aren’t bad guys.
Where did you get the idea that “retaliation” and “defense” are the same thing?
Nutcutter
Do you people even hear yourselves?
Retaliation and doing nothing are not your choices. They are just the choices you want to present.
What is going on in Lebanon is not defense. On either side. It’s all retaliation. On both sides.
Where do you want to start this timeline? A thousand years ago? 1948? When do you stop buying the bullshit?
Nutcutter
Burned kids and screaming mothers are not warranted.
I reject your argument out of hand.
Pooh
ppG, methinks you want to have your cake and eat it too. All actions have costs, and some of those costs are ugly. That’s the world we live in. You seem to be espousing a position not much different then the one that says “the irony of it is that Syria needs to tell the, to knock that shit off” or whatever it was.
Zifnab
There is a difference between a civilization dedicated to its own defense and a civilization willing to commit acts of barbarism.
If the Mongols are raiding your town, it is often enough to build high walls to keep them out. You don’t need to send out the troops to slaughter Mongol women and children.
What happened during WWI and WWII? Did mustard gas make the French surrender? Did firebombs break the Japanese will to fight? How about the Holocaust? Did this make the world a better place for Germans? Sherman’s march to the sea may have won the Civil War, but ten years later carpetbaggers from the north walked through Atlanta at their own peril.
Barbarism begets more barbarism. This is no more painfully true than watching Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist acts beget widescale slaughter of their civilian constituencies. But to say mass murder in the form of retailitory bombings and missle attacks makes a situation better? You must be joking.
A man signs up for the army and gets shot, he comes home a fallen soldier. People morn him, but they aren’t shocked at his fate. A man spends ten years in medical school, takes a job as a surgeon at a local hospital, and is killed by a bunker buster for showing up to work? That makes people mad. Mad enough to join the army, pick up a gun, and start shooting doctors.
Pb
The Other Steve,
I didn’t even bother address your earlier post due to how utterly batshit insane it was, but fortunately others did, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t trust your judgement on this matter, or necessarily consider you or Andrew to be “honest participants”, as it were, on this topic.
Pooh
If you want to argue like Darrell then I’ll treat you like Darrell.
Nutcutter
That’s just bullshit. I am telling you that you cannot justify burned kids and screaming mothers, by calling them something else.
I am telling you that reprisal, whatever the hell you think that even means, does not justify burned kids and screaming mothers.
I am telling you that the grotesque language of diplomacy is not a cover for burned kids and screaming mothers.
I am telling you that you are telling lies when you try to use pale language to describe the burning of kids, thinking that a deflection to the jackalope of “he started it” or “he’s worse than me” is all the cover you need.
This isn’t about cake. It’s about standing for something in a country that right now doesn’t stand for anything but war and death and wants to call burned kids “unfortunate collateral.” You call them that if you want, I am calling them what they are.
Nutcutter
Are you even reading what you are writing? Taking a stand against burned kids is ARGUING LIKE DARRELL?
What the FUCK is the matter with you?
Pooh
Not correct, I don’t think anyone is saying that Israel’s response wasn’t over the top. At least I’m not. It doesn’t follow that there is no military response that wouldn’t be over the top. Your Mongol analogy is inapt because the Mongols in this case are sitting at home shooting rockets, not riding down from the steppes. What kind of ‘wall’ are you envisioning here?
Pooh
You aren’t even attempting to comprehend the arguments, instead are just dropping inflammatory statements.
You don’t get to reject arguments out of hand and then expect that I treat yours with respect. A little less emotion and a little more thoughfullness would serve us well here I think.
Steve
So you retaliate with military force. In one case your aim is true and you successfully take out the military target. In another case there is human error, resulting in burned kids and screaming mothers.
How can you not be equally culpable in both cases? Doesn’t this argument simply equate to looking at the results, and saying “burned kids and screaming mothers are never acceptable, period, regardless of what your intent was”?
And if that’s the position, then it seems there’s really not much you can do about bad guys without running the risk of being labeled a moral monster. We’re not talking about trying to catch a speeder here.
Pb
Pooh,
No, you just can’t *indiscriminately blow them up* without endangering the civilians. How do you think that we ever deal with hostage situations without killing hostages? Because it is possible, you know. “Don’t shoot the hostage” is not some clever paradox, some logical impossibility, but rather a good, rational, just and humane approach to take.
No.
Then they should start acting like it.
It isn’t just “not on the table”, it’s not even in the same fucking country. It isn’t considered as a worthy goal anymore, it isn’t even a goddamned passing thought. I argue that it should be the starting point, and not some whacky idea involving windsurfing unicorns or whatever the fuck some morons around here might have you believe. The “World War III is inevitable so which side do you want to win, huh?!” crowd lives right next door, by the way.
Perry Como
At least she has a plan for increasing the violence in the Middle East. Where’s the Democrats’ plan for destablizing the region?
Pooh
And ppG, let me go slowly here. That is, if you’ve made it this far without rejecting it out of hand:
1. Dead babies in Lebanon are a Bad Thing
2. Hezbollah launching rockets into Israel (incidentally, probably creating dead babies) is a Bad Thing
People are trying to figure out a way to minimize the overall Bad. Unfortunately, a decrease in one Bad probably leads to an increase in the other. You may disagree with the set of assumptions that leads to this framework, but that’s where we are coming from.
It may well be that ANY Israeli reaction creates more net Badness – I’m not convinced of that, but I’m not questioning that there chosen strategy absolutely increases the Badness.
I hope this makes my POV more clear.
Punchy
Now THAT’S some funny shit in an otherwise acerbic thread…
Pooh
First of all PB, fuck you too.
Now that we have that out of the way ;)
The situations aren’t really analogous, a hostage taker generally doesn’t have anywhere to go, and is going to screw up and you can take them without endangering the hostage – this is not that, in no small part because the baddies aren’t wearing black ski masks all the time.
srv
If you support either side in this war, you are implicitly pro-baby killing. All ppGaz is asking is for you to be honest about it. Why is it so hard?
Andrew
Well, it strikes me as disporportionately dishonest to suggest that a hostage situation is in any way analagous to Israel attacking Hezbullah.
The reason you don’t kill a hostage is because the hostage taker probably wants to live, and probably doesn’t plan on killing other innocent people. On the other hand, if a terrorist with a bomb vest has a human shield and is heading towards a bunch of kids, you do whatever you have to in order to stop him, including killing him and the human shield. Yeah, it would be nice if we could get a clean head shot on the bad guy, but what if you can’t? Or what if you do, and he’s got a pressure trigger and it blows up anyway?
Well, you have a dead innocent civilian in both cases. Perfectly justifiable.
Pb
Steve,
Only in hypothetical situations can we hope to be so clear, but apart from the deaths in the second scenario, assuming the situations were otherwise effectively the same…
I’d argue that in both cases, civilians had the potential to be endangered equally, and to the extent that you endangered them, you are culpable, you are responsible for doing that. But intent does matter.
Like anything else, people (and countries) are often judged by their actions (soldiers often do it to themselves too, which is another issue to consider). If one civilian, or ten civilians, are killed in a military action or a war, *by accident*, then that’s certainly regrettable, and you may very well be considered a moral monster by their friends or families. But once we start talking about hundreds, thousands (or thousands of thousands!) of civilian casualties, then you’re likely to end up with a very large number of people scrutinizing and second-guessing you–because even if you actually had nothing but the purest intentions, and you’re *still* that much of a disaster, people are going to be understandably wary of you at best.
But if you’re bombing houses, cars, hospitals, ambulances, etc., etc., repeatedly killing civilians in the process, and apparently not finding that many of ‘the enemy’, then it’s going to be hard to argue that each incident was an ‘accident’, or that they were all military targets. Then we really start getting into the ‘moral monster’ territory. So although ideally there should be zero civilian deaths, there is often some sort of fuzzy tolerance for error, some benefit of the doubt, that people and nations will generally provide if they’re acting in good faith.
However, if that first principle isn’t adopted–that ideally there *should* be zero civilian deaths, that such outcomes are deplorable–then that will generally show in the character of the conflict.
Pooh
By that logic, if you drive a car you are pro-global warming
Andrew
I guess I’m the only one who has come out as pro-dead civilian, but I’ll go all the way to be pro-baby killing as well.
But I don’t think ppGaz is saying that. I think he’s pretending that there is a golden path of no baby killing.
Pb
Andrew,
What did I tell you? Fuck off. Go bother someone who might actually believe your bullshit.
Pooh
PB,
given your last comment, I don’t think we’re actually that far apart – perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in that I think Israel’s response has been so indiscriminate as to be barbaric while reserving the opinion that a more measured approach, while not objectively ‘good’ (because once the rockets started flying, there really wasn’t a ‘good’ solution to be had) would have been ok.
Steve
At the end of the day, I think I like Pb’s take on this.
Pb
Pooh,
So here’s the situation: Hezbollah took two hostages–Israeli military officers. It’s Israel’s job to recover them. Also, Hezbollah is firing rockets at Israel, and because they’re in southern Lebanon, some would argue that, in a sense, Hezbollah is “holding the population hostage” (in that civilians would die in an indiscriminate bombing or firefight of southern Lebanon). If you ascribe to that view, then you have a potentially huge hostage situation on your hands, and you have a lot of options at your disposal. But each individual Hezbollah member and the nearby civilians could be treated as an individual hostage situation, carefully targeted to take out their personnel and their rockets, and cut off their retreat.
But that’s only if you actually do want to minimize civilian casualties.
Andrew
Can I catch a ride your “no civilian deaths” unicorn?
There are a lot of Singer-esque quandries in this discussion.
I’d say we’re all fairly pro-civilian death in general. We just pretend that we’re not. How many of us have donated all of our income to anti-poverty programs and live in abject poverty ourselves? If you’ve ever bought something nice, say, a DVD player, then you’ve decided that watching spinning plastic discs is more important than the lives of 20 children in the Congo.
Pooh
Pb,
Fair enough, I think you are assuming a level of targetability and intelligence that just isn’t there for the ‘zero deaths’ to really be on the table.
Again, I should have made it more clear that yes, I think zero civilian deaths is a good starting place, and I probably skipped the step where I observe the situation and opine that that really isn’t in the realm of possibility. So then to the goal of at least minimizing these deaths. Which I think we are in agreement that Israel has done a piss poor job in this regard. (Made all the more galling because it represents not just a moral failure, but a strategic one as well.)
Pb
Pooh,
I agree, and I don’t think that was getting said enough, although I did just hear *Tucker Carlson* talking to some Israeli spokesman or another about this issue, asking why Israel had told people to flee, and then bombed them when they did. I was surprised that Tucker actually followed up and didn’t let him spin out of it, to the point where Tucker actually brought up the fact that we have credible reports of *ambulances* being hit in airstrikes. The Israeli spokesman basically chalked those up to regrettable mistakes and said they were being very careful. But, as I said before, that gets old after a while–how careful can you be, and still shoot a rocket at an ambulance (or a minivan, or a house, or the Lebanese military barracks…)?
Pb
Andrew,
Actually I bought *my* DVD player because I’m objectively pro-Chinese sweatshops.
srv
Actions are what counts, not thoughts and words. There are degrees of culpability and crime. Go to any An Inconvenient Truth screening and count the SUVs.
But your tax dollars paid for that bomb and the plane that dropped it. The sin is yours.
Punchy
Yeah, but what if he’s holding, like, a cryo chamber full of 1000s of embryos? Imagine the slaughter….thousands of children murdered with one missle…is it worth it THEN?
Nutcutter
Golden path? It’s a simple choice, easily made. Nothing golden about it. Or magical. It’s a choice made all the time by responsible people.
I have had essentially one point of view, and it hasn’t changed.
It is:
1. Reprisal and retaliation are not justifications for burning kids.
2. Calling burning kids “unfortunate collateral” is an evil and deliberate abuse of language. It’s a lie. Burned kids are burned kids. Calling them what they are is just basic honesty.
3. Any party who is knowingly burning kids and trying to justify it by any pretense is morally wrong to do so.
4. There is no “good guy” or “grownup” in the Arab-Israeli never-ending conflict. After sixty years of this crap in modern times, and hundreds of years in total time, the right of either side to consider itself a good guy has long ago been forfeited.
5. Attacking civilians because your enemy might be nearby is not morally defensible. Basically, it’s terrorism.
6. I am not interested in lawyerly or intellectually interesting theories of war which dismiss or claim to trump these moral imperatives. Those theories are morally bankrupt.
7. I believe that the security of a country’s borders is directly proportional to the security perceived by the people on the other side of that border.
8. Ends do not justify means. Arguments and theories to the contrary are not consistent with either liberty or democracy in the long run. Nor are they consistent with any moral construct that has any value. Once ends can be said to justify means, then all actions are defensible. Terrorism is defensible. Terrorism is the ultimate extension of the ends justify means approach.
9. This position is not pacifism. It’s a moral assertion. There’s nothing pacifist about it. I have no qualms about killing enemy combatants. Kids in a car full of fleeing civilians are not enemy combatants. There is no justification for attacking them.
If you have a house where bad guys and their children are living, you do not firebomb the house and incinerate the family. You go in and arrest the bad guys and turn the kids over to a foster home.
That’s a simple and obvious standard of behavior. There is no reason why the standard should change because a political border lies between you and the house with the bad guy in it.
Sirkowski
Endgame, everything is as fucked as it was.
Pb
Nutcutter,
Amen. I’ve tried to demonstrate the choice made with “the ends [do / do not] justify the means” before, but ultimately I think my audience (Kuro5hin at the time) was too morally bankrupt and/or disinterested to bother pondering it.
Andrew
Well, besides confusing the laws of civil society with the laws of war, misusing the term terrorism so as to render it meaningless, and pretending that “reprisal and retaliation” are tactical or strategic goals for the Israelis, I think ppGaz is right on the mark.
Zifnab
Nutcutter
Ends never justify means. Once they do, then all means are defensible, because the ends are always defensible.
My favorite example of a classic, morally bankrupt EJM argument? “The world is better off without Saddam.”
Actually, no it isn’t. Not when the means have cost so much.
Was Iraq fucked under Hussein? Sure. But it’s fucked now, and a lot of people are dead, and are yet to die. What difference does it make to a dead kid whether it was Saddam Hussein or Donald Rumsfeld that killed him?
Ask the kid, or his mother, don’t take my word for it.
Nutcutter
Sorry but I’m not ceding the authority to make that judgement, to you.
The laws of war? Are you fucking kidding? After 60, or 600 years, these people get to invoke the “laws of war?”
No. This isn’t war. It’s sociopathy.
Slide.
Endgame? too depressing to post. I really have a bad feeling about this one. There is no way I see this having a nice tidy solution. And what is even more depressing is that, at this very dangerous time, we have the most monumentally incompetent administraton at the helm. God help us all.
Andrew
The criminal laws of civil society are aimed at preventing civilian deaths and injury, through state monopoly on violence.
The laws of war are civilized society’s attempt at minimizing noncombatant deaths, during conflict between states.
There are obvious and practical reasons for the differentiation.
Steve
I feel fairly confident that some ends justify some means.
Nutcutter
Lawyerly blather AFAIC. There is nothing that justifies burning kids.
Examples of things that fail the test:
1. The enemy is really bad, and in order for me to attack him, I have to burn some kids.
2. I am trying really hard not to burn any kids. So the fact that am burning them is “unfortunate.”
3. I abhor the burning of kids, so if I burn some kids, I must be held blameless. My enemy has no such scruples.
4. The world is better off without . Some kids had to be burned. I deeply regret this unfortunate collateral damage.
5. Some of our kids were burned.
etc.
I take all of these to be examples of sociopathy. I don’t need lawyers and diplomats to explain to me what evil is. I know it when I see it. When I see kids with burned flesh falling off them and their mothers screaming in horror at having to watch them suffer, I don’t need bloggers to tell me what is going on.
Andrew
So, nut, what you’re basically saying is that terrorists merely need to take children hostage, and they’re off limit from retaliation?
Krista
Yep. It’s kind of depressing to be working for a peace organization, knowing that you’ll likely die with your goal unattained.
Nutcutter
That is beyond absurd and grotesque, and insulting to the the intelligence of everyone who reads here.
We are not talking about children who are taken hostage. Hostage situations present their own challenges, and we have not addressed them in any of the Lebanon threads to my knowledge. Nor do I think the Lebanon situation lends itself to any apt comparison to a hostage situation. Hostage taking is an overt and specific act. I see no hostage taking going on there.
In any case, innocent people including children deserve the greatest possible protection under all circumstances. If that’s not true, then tell me what is being fought for? Whether it’s Hezbollah or Israel or the USA dismissing that concern for its own purposes, that dismissal is evil. I don’t specify any degrees of evil in that assertion.
Andrew
Are you watching the same Lebanon-Israel war that I am? You know, the one that started over hostage taking? The one that has drawn a half-dozen hostage anaologies in this thread? The one where Hezbollah hides amongst civilians so as to use them as human shields, nee hostages?
Yeah, nothing to do with hostages.
Sal
John, John.
There is no endgame scenario. Things just magically work out. Or it’s a problem for the next administration, same thing.
The Other Steve
Zifnab,
Kind of hard to hide a plane load of passengers. You’ve got the whole air traffic control thing for one.
Then you got the whole fact that the Palestinians tried to negotiate, and released all the non-Jewish passengers.
Nope, the Israelis knew where the plane was, and from talking to the released passengers knew where the hostages were being held in the airport.
The point being, your comparison is a pile of bunk.
Steve
Well, my intelligence wasn’t insulted. You’ve been going on and on about all these moral absolutes, and now you’re like “oh, but we’re not talking about HOSTAGE situations, that would be different!”
It seems to me, at least, that human shield situations are quite similar to hostage situations. Not identical, but similar. You can question the extent to which Hezbollah really uses human shields, but to the extent that they do, it seems like an important issue.
The Other Steve
Andrew’s point is correct. You cannot eliminate all casualties. Life is a series of choices.
We didn’t go after Stalin either. On the one hand we didn’t lose 1 million soldiers and kill 10 million Russians trying to get him. On the other hand Stalin killed 5 million Russians because they disagreed with him.
You’re arguing in fantasy world. It’s the same shit Darrell gives us. We have to go after Hussein because he’s a bad guy. Yep, he is. But how many have now died as a result? Sure maybe they desire freedom, but shouldn’t we let those who want freedom decide they want freedom instead of forcing anarchy on them?
You’re letting your bleeding heart get in the way of thought. This belief that Israel could wage a war on Hezbollah without any damage is just so patently stupid I don’t know what to think.
The Other Steve
This may very well be the most intelligently written post in this thread. :-)
The Other Steve
Actually yes.
The appeal to emotion is a classic Darrell tactic.
Pb
The Other Steve,
Actually, offering two bad choices and insisting that one and only one of the two must be picked is ‘the same shit Darrell gives us’–but refusing to do so is not ‘arguing in fantasy world’.
Case in point–we never had to.
That’s rich. You wouldn’t know a ‘thought’ if it bombed your house from 10,000 feet.
I agree, that is stupid. It’s also another one of your litany of false choices.
So come back when you figure it out.
Pb
Actually, no, taking a stand against burned kids (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT etc.) can be quite eloquent and moving, actually. And there’s even a valuable moral lesson in there. Totally not like Darrell.
Andrew
I’m glad someone had the moral clarity to finally take a stand against burning the skin off of children. What a courageous and singularly unique position.
Meanwhile, TOS and I are busy developing new objectively pro-child-skin-burning technology that we will supply to the Israelis in their foreverwar against the skin of Arab children.
Andrew
Also, I hear that if you mix A1 Steak Sauce in with the napalm, it gives the meat a really good flavor.
Pb
Andrew,
Points for using ‘objectively’ there.
Incidentally, I just peeked in at one of the latest Israel/Lebanon/Clusterfuck flamewars over on Daily Kos, and boy am I thankful for the relative peace and quiet of the Israel/Lebanon/Clusterfuck flamewars over on Balloon Juice!
Nutcutter
Disgusting lie. The attempt to conceal the truth by calling it something else is the reprehensible tactic.
Burned kids are what they are. They are a moral outrage, perpetrated by evil people who lie and call them “unfortunate collateral.” That includes the people right here on this blog who have done just that. You should be ashamed.
Flap your arms and stamp your feet all you want. Waging a war like this against civilians is morally unsupportable, and you know it. And I say again, on both sides. Those kids are not being burned in self defense. No 14-month old child has ever been burned in front of its mother in self defense. No person, army or nation who participates in such a thing is doing so in self defense. There is no excuse for it. There is no mealy mouthed language that can make it something it isn’t.
It is what it is.
BlogReeder
I don’t understand. That seems to be what you’re saying, Pb. That Israel can attack but never ever burn kids. We all know Israel is not burning children on purpose. We know that would be a known tactic of Hezbollah. And who really knows whether what is really true about all this anyway. First reports are always wrong.
Pb
BlogReeder,
Ok. So say that “we all know” these things. So riddle me this: why is it that there are all of these Lebanese children burning, but Israel is the one bombing Lebanon?
Oh, *that’s* it! They must have gotten all the participants reversed! See, if I look through all the news accounts over the past two weeks, and just cross out ‘Israel’ here and pencil in ‘Hezbollah’ there…
ah yes, I see, Hezbollah should be ashamed of themselves, bombing hospitals and factories and ambulances and UN outposts and fleeing civilians and Lebanese military barracks and financial institutions and… but what do you expect, really, they’re terrorists. And Israel was totally right in seizing those Hezbollah militants in their cross-border raid–how can it be ‘kidnapping’ if they’re militants?
Anyhow, I want to thank you for illuminating this, I must have had everything backwards. It just goes to show, you can’t trust the media!
BlogReeder
This has really got your goat. How many are we talking about?
And you really think this is a new tactic for the IDF?
Pb
BlogReeder,
Hey, you brought it up.
We’re talking about over a hundred dead Lebanese children, minimum–those are the media reported (confirmed) deaths, so after the rubble is picked through, etc., I imagine the numbers will get higher.
You know, I honestly couldn’t care less if this is a ‘new tactic’ or not. Let’s argue that it’s an old tactic–is that somehow any better?
BlogReeder
I don’t think it’s a tactic of the IDF. I can imagine this is a tactic of Hezbollah. Hiding amoungst children is a terrorist tactic we’ve seen time and time again. I still don’t know where you got your count. Do you have a link?
p.lukasiak
wow..this thread went to almost 100 comments before the signal to noise ratio made it unreadable….congrats to all for not immediately descending into self parody (with a few notable exceptions, like the idiot who early on stated that Hezbollah ran the Lebanese government…)
p.lukasiak
wow..this thread went to almost 100 comments before the signal to noise ratio made it unreadable….congrats to all for not immediately descending into self parody (with a few notable exceptions, like the idiot who early on stated that Hezbollah ran the Lebanese government…)
Pb
BlogReeder,
Here, I’ll find one. Do you have a favorite site for major international news? Anyhow, here’s USA TODAY:
And here’s The BBC:
The rest is simple math… and as I said before, I’m sure that number is actually higher–I saw estimates elsewhere that the percentage of children might be closer to 45%, and of course as this goes on they will eventually uncover more bodies. :(
BlogReeder
From the first story concerning an IDF airstrike at a UN post:
Later on:
So who to believe. Was it targeting or not? I would go with Israel myself. It makes me question the UN quote you have about the numbers too.
pb
BlogReeder,
Well, Kofi did say “apparently”. Hey, maybe all those guided missiles just struck them by accident, who knows? I suppose you’ll have to wait for the investigation.
Or not.
The one does not follow from the other, and as I said I’ve seen other sources imply a potentially *higher* percentage of children, but… what do you think would be a likely percentage, considering the targets and the civilian deaths? Or do you just have no idea?
Nutcutter
Beautiful minds have no time for pondering things “like that.”
As of today, we have reports of around 400 Lebanese deaths in this useless war, most of them civilians, one third of them children according to one report.
Numbers are useless here. Exactly how many dead children are the results of an otherwise minor border skirmish actually worth?
I’m pretty easy to convince. After sixty years of this crap, I’m easily convinced that the people in charge over there in the middle east want a perpetual state of war. After living in a country where our own government apparently is perfectly happy to be in the same straits, it’s not that hard to imagine abroad.
Somebody please argue that point for me. Tell me how sixty years of war is the behavior of people who want peace. I don’t care which side you are talking about, after this length of time, the “sides” have stopped meaning anything to me.
srv
Ben Franklin said it best. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Both of these ethno-geo-centric subcultures are not much more rational than the neanderthal. Look at what these ‘races’ have accomplished in the US when they live w/o fear and the lie of ethnoreligious-exceptionalism.
We can at least rest assured that this cycle can’t continue for another sixty years. Either they grow up or they will be dead – the arts of mass destruction will make their fate increasingly easy to afford to their most ‘moral’ actors.
Think of it as evolution in action. Enjoy your seat.
Beej
The burning of children is to be avoided. We all agree, I think, about that. I do have some questions, however: Where did we ever get the idea that it is possible to have a war and hit ONLY military targets? Even the U.S. military is not capable of that, and we have a larger arsenal of “smart” bombs than any other military in the world. And what, exactly, are the military targets when your opponent is not a state with a designated and identifiable military structure, but a loose and diffused network of cells and supply caches that run from the suppliers-Syria and Iran-through nearly the whole of Lebanon?
Incidentally, I’m not quite ready to jump all over the person who said that Hezbollah was “the government of Lebanon” or something similar. They certainly are the de facto government of at least part of Lebanon, and the Lebanese government has admitted as much by refusing to even try to halt their bombing of Israeli cities from southern Lebanon.
DecidedFenceSitter
Wars don’t end until the loser admits defeat. When you are fighting a rational nation-state, it is easier to admit defeat, you lose your ability to wage war, you’ve lost, and you can usually bargain in good faith.
When fighting an ideology that is firmly in place, you don’t get the option of bargaining in good faith, especially if the ideology does not allow for your existence. If you are fighting the ideology, the only way to eliminate it, is to eliminate the carriers of the ideology, and that would require too high a cost, in burnt babies, to use the parlance of BJ, than the world is willing to accept.
BlogReeder
That’s the definitive problem. Hezbollah, Hamas, and Fatah want Israel to cease to exist and that’s it. Any talk about peace is just talk until those groups renounce that desire.
Nutcutter
According the NBC “Today” this morning, Secretary Rice said that “there have been many broken cease fires.”
See, that’s what causes SIXTY YEARS OF WAR …. people are too eager to have a cease fire. That’s why we don’t want to rush into one now.
Madness.
Pb
Beej,
Great. So let’s all make that a goal and work towards it.
Do you agree that that would be a good goal to strive for as well?
I know it can be confusing, but bear with me. The terrorists are–not the civilians. The rockets are–not the hospitals.
Well I am–because it’s false, and stupid as hell.
Let’s say that you’re right, let’s argue that Hezbollah controlls Hezbollahland, and there’s nothing that the rest of Lebanon can reasonably do about it. Wouldn’t that in itself be a strong argument for at least confining the *bombing* to the area that Hezbollah controls? Then the civilians would be free to flee north into other parts of Lebanon that aren’t going to be bombed, instead of having to flee into, say, Syria.
fwiffo
Like forty billion people have already receieved a Nobel Peace Prize for fostering peace in the middle east. Heck, I’ve a crate of ’em in my closet. I give them out to kids on halloween. By now, it’s gotta be the most peaceful fucking place on the planet! And if not, don’t worry, we’ve got our crack staff of blog commenters on the case. They’ll get it figured in no fucking time.
Seriously though, want to hear my solution? Let’s invest a bunch of money in genetic research so we can create an evil cloned hybrid of Machiavelli and King Solomon. Then we can arm him with all the nukes in the world and see how he splits that baby. I’d pay good money to see that. Not so much that it would solve the situation – I’d just like to see a baby chopped in half.
Beej
Pb,
How about the terrorist’s supply lines? Are those military targets? I think any military strategist would say they are. What about arms caches? I’d say they are too. Do you honestly think Hezbollah is stupid enough to keep all of the above in “Hezbollahland”? I sincerely doubt it. I also doubt you’re going to see a large warehouse, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere with a nice sign painted on its roof that reads Hezbollah Rocket Storage-Bomb Here. If your enemy is storing these kinds of things in the midst of a civilian population, you have two choices: 1)you leave them alone and hope they don’t get transported into a position where they can kill your people before you can destroy them; 2)you try to destroy them where they’re stored, targeting as carefully as you can, but being aware that you’re going to miss occasionally and may be killing people who are innocent. It’s a helluva decision to have to make, and either way you go, you are dooming people to death. Ugly, hellish business.
Pb
Beej,
They may want to, for obvious logistical reasons. But say that they don’t. So you cut them off, keep them contained, make sure they don’t go in or out. That’s just one of the many obvious options that you forgot to mention in your “two choices”.
LanceThruster
The endgame is the convergence of Israel’s enemies with the US’s. Our corrupt regime thrives on chaos and fear. The Lebanese Holocaust is testing the waters for worse to come. All who are silent on this bear the responsibilty for this brutality. Israel needs Lebensraum and water. Both are “available for the taking” in southern Lebanon.
MURDER as cover for THEFT is *not* SELF-DEFENSE!