Decius wrote:
US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".
U:I've decided to revise this post. I reacted too strongly to this comment.
I'm sitting on a train trying to write this out with my sidekick. We'll see how well this goes. Its been a busy day.
The violence going on in the Middle East right now is senseless. Isreal is defending itself from action that seems to have no strategic purpose at all. Hezbollah certainly intends to kill civilians, and their strikes are unprovoked, unwarranted, and ultimately, self destructive. Isreal has both a right and a need to defend themselves.
Having said that, Stratfor warned that Isreal would attempt to punish the Lebanese people, in hopes of making them resent Hezbollah. Its a long term strategy. Isreal will likely demolish Hezbollah's operational capacity in the coming weeks. However, they can't destroy it culturally... So they want, in theory, to teach the people of Lebanon a lesson so that they won't support Hezbollah in the future.
That's not ok, legally, or morally. The use of violence to apply political pressure to an innocent civilian population is definition of terrorism. Its particularly concerning when the population has, at best, a tangental relationship to your enemy.
It appears that this may have occurred. Some commentators have painted civilian deaths as an unfortunate side effect of war. However, some have observed that a portion of the strikes appear to be beyond the scope of what would be needed to suport a ground invasion targetted at Hezbollah. Its unclear. If its true, its wrong. Period.
No international leader is going to call Isreal out on it if it is true, due to the geopolitical implications if it were concluded that it was true. Bolton picked poor wording here. The mere fact that Isreal is defending itself does not mean they they are absolved of responsibility for civilian deaths, particularly when those deaths are intentional.
What international leaders have done is call for restraint. They have done this because they are concerned that civilians are needlessly being killed, and because the scope of the infrastructural damage is so severe that it threatens to undermine the sustainability of Lebanon as a state.
I think unwarranted strikes on Lebanese civilians help, not hurt, Hezbollah culturally. The Shia in particular see Hezbollah as their protectors from these kinds of attacks. Furthermore, the International Community baddly wants to see Lebanon come back into the fold. If the present, weak, government is unable to sustain control over the country as a result of the damage that Isreal does, this will open up the door for Syria, and Shia extremeists, to come back into power there. Everyone, but especially Isreal, looses if this happens.
No doubt these are some of the reasons that we haven't seen a ground invasion yet and the west is engaged in serious diplomatic efforts. However, Stratfor thinks a ground invasion is inevitable. We should hope that the civilian impact, and the impact on the Lebanese government, are minimal, and that Isreal is able to secure their homeland. However, we should not serve as apologists if things get out of hand. There are moral rules here even if we know that Hezbollah will disregard them.
I think this was too soon, and does not match with the facts. The ground operations have now started. The more interesting idea seems to be the timeline of events. What appears to be the sequence of events is, Hezbollah picks off an Israeli patrol on the border, Israel responds by bombing Beruit, Hezbollah starts launching rockets, everything goes to hell. (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5171616.stm it's not terribly clear there who escalated but it seems to have been the Israelis)
If that's the case, the reaction of attacking civilian targets in Lebanon (and the airport and docks are clearly civilian targets) was clearly not "Israel defending itself." If that timeline is incorrect and Hezbollah started launching rockets prior to Israel sending the planes, it is still NOT "Israel defending itself." The rockets are NOT being launched from Beirut, they are being launched from right across the border.
