Teleologic Blog: July 2006 Archives

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July 28, 2006

Krauthammer explains why Israel does not have moral problems...

Charles Krauthammer explains in this column why criticism of Israel's so-called disproportionate response is wrong.

What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?

What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities -- every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians -- and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?To hear the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world -- governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats -- has completely lost its moral bearings.

The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate," as in the universally decried "disproportionate Israeli response."

When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin.

Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right -- legal and moral -- to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.

Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did it respond to the Blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate" aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest air campaign and land invasion in history, which flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.

The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.

In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London Blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.

But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty.

On Wednesday CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas?

Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead it attacked dual-use infrastructure -- bridges, roads, airport runways -- and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more.

Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed.

Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?

And this essay from Claudia Rosett (no fan of the U.N.) explains what the U.N. has been doing in southern Lebenon for the last six years. Absolutely nothing...

You bet. But not from Israel. It’s coming from the U.N. Hezbollah deliberately provoked this war on July 12 by kidnapping Israeli soldiers inside Israel’s borders, and has been launching rockets into Israel from a massive arsenal that under U.N. writ Hezbollah is not even supposed to possess. That was not the deal under which Israel, in keeping with U.N. wishes, withdrew entirely from southern Lebanon in 2000. The U.N. promise was that Hezbollah would be defanged and that U.N. peacekeepers would help the Lebanese government reestablish control over Hezbollah-infested terrain inside Lebanon.

Over the past six years, Israel honored its commitment to peace. The U.N. — disproportionately — required in practice no such compliance on the Lebanese side of the border. The “peacekeepers” of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, called UNIFIL, sat passively looking on, costing about $100 million a year and doing nothing to stop Hezbollah from trucking in weapons, digging tunnels, and running the armed protection rackets with which it has kept a grip on swathes of Lebanon, including the southern border with Israel, parts of the Bekaa, and southern Beirut. Before the current fighting, UNIFIL had most recently distinguished itself for a run-of-the-U.N.-mill financial swindle involving a contingent of Ukrainian peacekeeping troops. On that subject, whatever laws might have been violated, the U.N. has — as usual with U.N. scams — refused to release details. Now, UNIFIL peacekeepers have been reduced to casualties of the crossfire, while Secretary-General Kofi Annan urges that we take what the U.N. has done wrong already, and do more of it.

With its false promises, and disproportionate deals for “peace,” the U.N. left Israel exposed to the attack that has now come, and a war that Israel did not seek. Like America when attacked by al Qaeda, Israel has been fighting back. In response, U.N. officials have come close to trampling each other in their stampede to the media microphones — not to admit the U.N.’s own failure to stop Hezbollah, not to apologize for administering a phony peace that incubated this miserable war, but to denounce Israel.

These latest exercises in disproportion begin, of course, with U.N. officials ritually condemning all parties. With that sleight of hand, they conjure the baseline U.N. fallacy known as moral equivalence. In that U.N. scheme of the universe, a democratic society that is attacked while honoring U.N. agreements is treated as no different from its death-cult rule-violating terrorist attackers. But — and here we get to the U.N.’s real dark arts — having set up that bizarre equation, U.N. officials then proceed with their “proportionate” calculus, lavishing their further innuendos, sly criticisms, or, in some cases, outright denunciations on Israel. These comments — biased or even inane though some of them are — echo especially loud in the so-called international community because they come from officials flashing a U.N. badge.

So, Israel, attacked by a non-state terrorist organization is supposed to engage in a proportionet response? I think not. Israel should destroy the so-called Party of God and those people/countries that get in the way should learn from the fate of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Giving aid and shelter to terrorist organizations is a dangerous business. Lebanon is reaping the consequences of its failure to control or disarm Hezbollah.

Yes Lebanon was weak, chaotic, and disorganized. And yes, Hezbollah was popular in the country amoung the Shiite population. Which means that Lebanon and its population has to share some of the problems now coming their way. When you live in a country, you are responsible, to some degree, for what that country does, or does not do. In the specific case of Lebanon, what the government did not do was disarm Hezbollah and prevent it from controlling large chunks of territory and building up its supply of rockets and missiles (which it is now using to engage in terror attacks on Israeli cities).

I'm quite confidant that the United States would not have gone to war with Hezbollah if they abducted three of our soldiers from the streets of Baghdad. However, if some sort of similar organization were allowed to form and take over an equivolent amount of territory in northern Mexico on the U.S. border and if it then built up its supply of rockets like Hezbollah did, we might well do the same thing as Israel did. It is a threat, it is clearly uncontroled by the state which nominally owns its territory, and it has very aggressive long term plans. It needs to be destroyed for the security of the state.

Posted by rakhier at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2006

The War against the self-named Party of God

I fully support Israel's attempt to destroy the self-named Party of God AKA Hezbollah. Hezbollah has a stated objective to destroy the state of Israel. Hezbollah is a part of Lebanon's government and has ruled much of southern Lebanon for a decade. They have also hidden their war materials quite carefully amoung civilian infrastructurs as much as possible. To the Western idea of rules of war and keeping military supplies and soldiers seperate from civilian, Hezbollah says "We do this for good reason. We want civilian casualties."

The good news (rather, the news that could be worse) is that Hezbollah hasn't used chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against Israel. Almost certainly becuase they don't have them.

The bad news is that it is not clear how Israel's creation of a new 15-mile buffer in Lebanon will improve the situation. The limited war aims of the Israeli government seem unlikely to do much long term damage to Hezbollah. It is true a 15 mile buffer will spare Israel from bombardment by simple rockets, but what about large missiles which Hezbollah will continue to get from Iran (or Syria)?

Certainly the attacks on Israel by Hezbollah give the lie to the idea that Israel can exchange some land for peace with the Arabs. So far Gaza has been the stage for many rocket attacks and so (recently) as southern Lebanon.

This is how Melanie Phillips sees the current British media attitude towards the conflict:

So the fact that Israel is at war solely to prevent the deaths of innocents is dismissed. All that matters is that the consequences of its actions are that Lebanese civilians are dying. The fact that the Israelis do not intend them to die is irrelevant. Those deaths are deemed to be the equivalent of the deaths caused by Hezbollah. The fact that Hezbollah deliberately sets out to murder innocent Israelis is irrelevant. Thus the only thing that matters is which side has more dead people. The fact that there are more dead Lebanese than dead Israelis settles the matter. The Israelis are in the wrong, are behaving disproportionately, are committing war crimes, are the villains of the piece. The fact that they are actually the victims of unprovoked genocidal aggression is deemed irrelevant. Thus the moral bankruptcy of Britain’s post-modern cultural desert.

I see the reason to view the current war in this moral-free-way is because there seem to be no good solutions. The Hezbollah hate Israel and are not willing to compromise. Hamas (in power in the south) also hate Israel and seem unwilling to compromise. The logical response to people who have an unwaving hatred and no willingness to negotiate is clearly violence until one side or the other is defeated and surrenders. As this level of violence will produce many civilian casualities, the average person throws up their hands and says "why can't they just live together in peace?"

Well quite clearly Israel can live peacefully with its neighbors, but Hezbollah is not interested in peace, nor is Hamas. It is possible to have no peace but no war but only if both sides refrain from using violence and that hasn't happened on the Arab side.

Posted by rakhier at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2006

A Letter which the New York Times should publish...

I wrote an impassioned “letter of apology” which I wish Arthur Sulzberger Jr. would deliver. As of now (July 22) it seems very unlikely that the New York Times is going to apologize. Sigh.

The following is my considered statement regarding the SWIFT news story which the New York Times published on June 25, 2006.

I am sorry.

A careful review by me of the story and the many thoughtful critiques of our decision to publish the story has convinced me that we, the New York Times, should not have published the story. Period.

The follow facts underlie my position on the SWIFT story.

Fact 1 – The SWIFT program was a secret program duly classified as such by the relevant government agency. We, in the media, do not have special constitutional powers to reveal secret programs.

Fact 2 – The SWIFT program was a legal program, as far as most experts in the field can tell. It violated no U.S. laws nor did it violate the U.S. Constitution.

Fact 3 – The SWIFT program was a successful and on-going intelligence program. We were told this by a number of experts, including the Secretary of the Treasury, and I see no reason to doubt them on this issue.

Conclusion: The New York Times, by publishing the details of an on-going secret, effective, and legal intelligence program helped the enemies of the United States and hurt the United States government. By publishing this story we put ourselves on the side of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and other Islamic terrorist organizations.

Our executive editor, Bill Kellor, has tried on several occasions to justify his decision to publish the story. I simply do not follow his logic and I believe a grave error in judgement was made by him. As a result, Mr. Kellor has been fired from the New York Times and he will never work for us again in any capacity so long as I am the publisher.

The writers of the SWIFT story must share some responsibility for pushing the story and writing it. They are suspended from the paper for a period of at least six months. I am also committing this paper to reveal, if asked, the names and relevant information about the people in the U.S. Government who leaked the information about the SWIFT program to our reporters. What the leakers did was wrong, illegal, and immoral. A basic and necessary condition of working with official government secrets is not to reveal them. If the government wishes to begin a criminal investigation into the leaks, we will cooperate to the fullest extent possible.

Let me be very clear, the New York Times does not stand with Osama bin Laden. The Times rejects the notion of any moral equivalence between Al Qaeda and the United States of America. Al Qaeda is an evil, fascist ideology which we have seen revealed in its full barbarity when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan for three horrific years. The Taliban, when they ruled Afghanistan, murdered women for the supposed crime of trying to teach their daughters to read. The Taliban murdered men purely for the supposed crime of loving someone else who was also a man. The Taliban destroyed priceless historic artworks of other religions because they were the products of so-called infidels and consequently, of no value to the fascist Islamic government.

I reject everything the Taliban stood for, and by extension, everything that Al Qaeda represents. I and my newspaper freely announce that we stand with the United States Government. We know full well what life would be like if Al Qaeda or other fascist Islamic groups actually took power in this country. They would destroy everything which we hold dear and kill millions of people in the process. That can not happen. That must not happen. And we at this newspaper will no longer aid or support Al Qaeda by anything we do or publish.

Those people working for the New York Times that see the United States Government as an evil which is in any way comparable to Al Qaeda are encouraged to leave, now. The United States Government is not the enemy and I completely and utterly reject the notion that the current administration is at all comparable to the terrorist fascist murders who instigated 9/11.

Some people will say that I am knuckling under intense pressure in making this statement. Let me say that I have come under intense pressure which I find to be both deserved and just. We should never have let our emotions towards the Bush administration cloud our judgement so badly. We should not have let the pride in running an important newspaper lead us into an adversarial relationship with the government. We were not elected to run this country and we have not been given the authority to reveal secret intelligence programs just because we learned about them.

To my fellow Americans who, in overwhelming numbers, think that what we did was wrong I say again “I’m sorry”. I will do my best to make sure this does not happen again on my watch. See the associated article which details the organizational changes I am implementing to see that this gross error of judgement against the United States and in favor of the terrorists, does not happen again.

This newspaper is not an unbiased, trans-national, business, capable or interested in treating the United States and Al Qaeda as equally worthy of respect and analysis. The New York Times is an American newspaper, dedicated to the proposition that our country is indeed the shinning city on the hill, a light, an inspiration, and an example to the rest of the world. This newspaper is dedicated to the proposition that the United States, created with laws written by the people and for the people, should not perish from this earth.

God bless America.

July 4, 2006

As I said, I see no indication that the New York Times will wake up. Sad to see the moral erosion of a once great (and worthwhile) American business.

Posted by rakhier at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)