John Hinderaker:
When a country is attacked, the only appropriate course is to respond with massively disproportionate force, as we did against the Japanese in World War II. Israel should treat Gaza as the Allies treated Dresden and other German and Japanese cities to end that war. Israel made a mistake in withdrawing from Gaza, and Gaza has been a thorn in its side ever since. This should be the last time.
In fighting this war, the Israelis should not distinguish between Hamas and non-Hamas, any more than we distinguished between members of the Nazi Party and non-members when we crushed Germany. And I don’t want to hear one goddam word about civilian casualties. Civilian casualties are what happen when you start a war.
The Palestinians started it, Israel should end it. Quickly, with overwhelming force that ensures nothing similar will happen again.
Also:
Hamas’s invasion was no mere act of terrorism. It was, rather, an act of war carried out by what is effectively a state. Prime Minister Netanyahu got it right when he said, immediately after the invasion was launched, that Israel was at war.
The difference is important. If the invasion was just another in a long series of terrorist outrages, then selective reprisals, as in the past, are the presumptive response. In other words, doing again what hasn’t worked before—destroying a few military installations and taking out a handful of political or military leaders. War is different. A war ends only when one side internalizes the fact that it is beaten and loses the will to continue.
When I say “one side,” I don’t mean military or political leaders, who face their own imperatives and may or may not ever choose to give up. I mean the civilian population (acknowledging that in Gaza it is not easy to tell who is a civilian, but that doesn’t matter for this purpose). Why did the Allies fire-bomb Dresden? Not to achieve some discrete military objective, but to horrify the German people and convince them that continuing the war would lead only to further catastrophe. Likewise with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In total war, the situation in which Israel finds itself, destroying the will of the civilian population to resist is the ultimate military objective.
# posted by Ranger @ 7:53 PM
