How Should We Fight?

The recent realization that Qana "atrocity" was a lie by Hezbollah will not reduce its importance to the “Arab Street.” In keeping with the so-called Jenin massacre and the death of “little Mo,” lies are an accepted way of life in the Arab world. Fantasy-play is a common phenomenon, often used as a substitute for reality. Rafael Patai explains this aspect of Arab culture in detail.

One of the side-effects of exposing lies like Qana, is that our side concedes main principles while arguing minor details.

Hezbollah’s desire to wipe the Jews off the map, led them to attack Israel. By their nature and actions, they are responsible for the death and destruction in Lebanon including the civilians they put in harms way. Israel, to reduce civilian casualties, drops leaflets warning of impending bombings--enabling Hezbollah to escape and regroup. Implicit in this mistaken generosity is that it is Israel’s responsibility to avoid Hezbollah-supporting “civilians.” It is not. Israel has no obligation to avoid civilian deaths in the course of fighting the enemy if it cost Israeli lives or compromises the mission.

This point is now lost as defenders of Israel focus on proving that Israel is not negligent in the deaths at Qana. This should not be a question. But in a polemical argument, it is tempting to show that even by our critic's standards, they are wrong. One should resist showing respect for the absurd standards of our critics, even for a moment. To do so concedes fundamental principles.

Israel, and her allies, should take the opposite tactic and unequivocally blame Hezbollah for bringing vast death and destruction to the people of Lebanon. At all times one should say: “look at what Hezbollah caused.” Israel should tell the “Arab Street” if you attack us like Hezbollah, you’ll see your families crushed and your tribe destroyed. We should back her in this stance. It should be clear in every sentence that Hezbollah is to blame for the war and its deadly destruction.

Ben Stein understands this issue and goes even further (hat tip: Epaminondas)

"It is very much as if, after Pearl Harbor, after the bombing of London, we said, "We will fight the Japanese and the Nazis, but we will only use humane means, and we will show total restraint and will never kill civilians. And we will search our souls and agonize about every move." It is this attitude that kept the United States from winning in Korea, in Vietnam, and now in Iraq. If we had followed that code of suicide, we would have lost World War II and the world would have been plunged into eternal darkness."

Actually, we wavered when we fought Japan. In March 10^th and 11^th 1945, we fire-bombed Tokyo and killed an equal number of civilians as we later killed in Hiroshima. Our intelligence failed to pick-up any concern by Japanese leaders; we discontinued the practice. Subsequently, we dropped leaflets warning of impending attacks on military and industrial targets despite the protests of our pilots that it would put them at risk. To our enemy, who had no qualms about killing Chinese and Korean civilians, we appeared weak. It was only when we returned to targeting civilians in August, using two atomic bombs, did the Japanese surrender. Did we endure five months of casualties needlessly? It's a question I'd like answered. It does, however raise the important question about how to fight a savage enemy. Mr. Stein answers as follows:

"You cannot fight inhumane people with humane means. You cannot fight savages with one hand -- no, two hands -- tied behind your back. No wars were ever won using restraint and only civilized means. That's a formula for complete defeat and for the end of civilized life. If we allow our media and French intellectuals to prevent us and the Israelis from using the means necessary to win, we'll lose...in Lebanon, in Iraq, and everywhere and this civilization is very well worth preserving. Yes, as sad as it would be to use terror tactics to win a war, it would be incomparably worse to lose. At the end of the war we win, there is light. At the end of the war we lose, there is the end."

Will we have to fight today's enemy using means appropriate to the nature of our Islamic enemy? Or can we still maintain military standards developed in the context of fighting conscripted armies of European nation-states? This issue is being discussed among the writers at National Review. John Podhoretz writing in the New York Post asks the following question:

“Are we becoming unwitting participants in their victory and our defeat? Can it be that the moral greatness of our civilization - its astonishing focus on the value of the individual above all - is endangering the future of our civilization as well?”

Continuing on the NR blog, Podhoretz explains that we could clearly beat the enemy into submission by resorting to their methods:

“… in 1982, in Hama, Hafez al-Assad wiped out an uprising against his regime by slaughtering 25,000 over a weekend. And in 1991, Saddam Hussein took down the Shiite uprising with similar viciousness. The idea that such monstrous tactics don't work is ludicrous. They do work. But I think it's fair to say that we would rather our civilization die than that we commit such acts.”

John Derbyshire quotes that last sentence and answers, “Speak for yourself, Sir.” He explains that a culture-changing victory, as in WWII, may require methods similar to that war:

"That is not a conclusion that sits very easily on the civilized conscience. Outside the context of “crisis war,” it is certainly not one we are currently willing to act on. Our will to act on it within that context, though, is surprisingly robust. I spent my childhood surrounded by men—Christian men, good family men—who had helped to level Germany’s great cities and slaughter German civilians in the hundreds of thousands by area bombing. I never once heard any of those men express the slightest word of guilt or shame about their deeds. When they talked about the war, it was to tell personal anecdotes, or to complain about their military and political superiors.

Even just a few months ago, in fact, I found myself sitting at dinner next to an elderly man who had flown in the great fire-bombing raids of WWII. Did he or his comrades feel any shame or guilt? I asked. No, he said, the subject never came up. It never came up. As he explained: “There was a war to win.”"

What are we willing to do to insure victory? Does it depend on the foe, the stage of the war, the degree of our suffering, etc.? Or are there limits no matter what the consequences to our survival, as Podhoretz holds? The question is worth discussing in general but it is clear that Israel, and the rest of the world, shows a bizarre over-concern for an enemy that would finish Hitler's work in a heartbeat if it had the power.

Update: Ralph Peters has some thoughts on how Israel should fight.