Teleologic Blog: August 2006 Archives

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August 31, 2006

If this is what a successful mission looks like I'd hate to see failure...

Powerline Blog linked to this very interesting 27 minute video documentary made about an Israeli regiment which sent several companies into the border area of Lebannon for what was supposed to be a three day operation.

You can see their post here.

In the operation shown on this video, they moved into an urban area (small town) quite near the border. They sent about 5 men into a house. All five were then wounded (one seriously) and they killed two enemy fighters (dressed, so they reported, in full Israeli combat uniform dress... nasty behavior that). The ammo in the house (Hezbullah) started burning as a result of the fighting.

Now, to my mind this is not a successful military operation. In World War II, by the time we got into Germany (late 1944), when we attacked urban areas, any building that was a center of resistance came under heavy artillery and tank fire. The normal pattern was to demolish enemy strong points using high explosives.

If I had been taking heavy fire (TOWs, RPGs) from a building in my sector, I would have blown that building to rubble and moved on to the next building. I would not have sent my men in to investigate. So they can get shot up by enemies who know the layout of the building and can conceal themselves.

Yes, its true they had no men dead but they lost a company (?) commander to a serious wound and five others with him will be out of action for days if not weeks. All to kill two enemy Hezbullah? Pretty poor exchange ratio I'd say.

Israel has overwhelming fire power and logistical superiority over Hezbullah. Why not use this? Destroy, and I mean level, buildings where resistance is coming from. If you have to level 1/3 of the town, then so be it. War isn't a joke. Fight wars like you mean it. The U.S. way of warfare in urban areas was (in part) "better to destroy buildings than lose soldiers".

Posted by rakhier at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2006

The Fall of Liberal States into Fascism...

Shanon Love from Chicago Boyz has this insightful essay on how liberal socieities fall apart

History, however, suggest they are looking in the wrong direction.

The history of the 20th Century paints a very clear picture of how liberal orders collapse into authoritarian ones. Contrary to popular belief, liberal orders do not gradually evolve into authoritarian ones by the accumulation of state power. Instead, liberal orders fail suddenly when they cease to provide basic physical and economic security. The functional power of the state decays until conditions reach a degree of disorder that triggers a sudden collapse into an authoritarian order. Ineffectiveness kills the liberal state, not excessive powers.

The major cases of Russia, Italy, Germany and Japan all follow this pattern. In each case, the liberal order lost the ability to provide the basic order and stability required for the economy to function, and simultaneously lost the ability to suppress the violent action of political extremists. A feedback loop arose in which the erosion of state effectiveness created disorder which empowered extremists who further sabotaged the state's ability to function. The feedback loop rather rapidly increased the power of extremists and destroyed the liberal order.

Terrorism as we know it today did not exist prior to the 1960s. Virtually everyone considered the targeting of random civilians by shadowy unaccountable organizations utterly taboo. No one had any trouble recognizing such tactics as war crimes. Any group who adopted such tactics faced political suicide if not outright extermination. Even in the '60s and '70s most major terrorist actions sought to create maximum media exposure with a minimum of civilian casualties. As the liberal West seemed unable to respond effectively to terrorism, more and more groups adopted it as a tactic and their attacks grew more violent and less precisely targeted. Now we face the very real possibility of attacks using nuclear and biological weapons which could kill millions at a stroke.

If we cannot successfully curtail the escalation of terrorism we face the collapse of our liberal order. Today we face Islamist terrorists, but if others view terrorism as successful we will face attacks from other groups as well. Terrorist attacks will undermine social and economic functions and people will increasingly view the liberal order as a failed one. 9/11 illustrates this risk in miniature. During the '90s the West proved unable to restrain Al-Qaeda and its attacks grew increasingly destructive. People worried more about increasing state power than they did about the external threat. Finally, 9/11 caused a counter-reaction and we saw a sudden expansion of state power. Had we treated terrorism more seriously and had we authorized relatively minor expansions of state power in the '90s we would not have the Patriot Act and NSA surveillance today.

Political correctness threatens to cripple the effectiveness of the liberal order. For example, we refuse to use proven techniques such as profiling airline passengers and instead use invasive and ineffective searches for any object that might contain a bomb or weapon. We consider profiling, even accurate profiling, unjust. Neither will we use data mining, keyword searching or other modern tools, preferring instead to rely on invasive techniques such as planting informants. In the end we create the illusion of programs that are both powerful and ineffective. If a future attacks succeeds on a grand scale, many may conclude, just as they did after 9/11, that the state (or worse, a successor state) needs vastly more power.

We may be sliding down a slippery slope towards authoritarianism, but I fear we do so facing up-slope and unawares. We fix our eyes uphill on the minor threat while we slide insensibly down into the maw of the beast.

As I've said before, the ultimate purpose of the state, the Prime Directive of any society is the preservation of the lives (and, by a simple extention, the property) of its citizens. All else falls before this, in the final analysis. Governments that can not (or will not) protect the lives of its citizens are in deep trouble. As Solzhenitsyn said in 1978 "No weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die..."

As the previous post suggested, a refusal to face war seriously leads to more horror, not less. If your enemy is ruthless and knows you hesitate to harm the innocent, your enemy will use the innocent when fighting you.

Posted by rakhier at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2006

On morality in war...

Hard to argue with this logic. Very disturbing. From BlackFive

The gentle soul -- how I respect her! -- will begin by pointing out how many innocents have died in the recent wars, and especially the children, who are the most obviously innocent. She will point out figures for Iraq, for Afghanistan, for Lebanon, and ask: "How can you justify this? These poor children, who might have been good men, good women, lain in the cold earth?"

We have all had the conversation that far, have we not? We are accustomed to reply: "But the enemy is the one that targets children. We try our best to avoid hurting children. That makes us better. Furthermore, the enemy hides himself among children. As a result, in spite of our best efforts, sometimes children die on the other side also. But again, it is not our fault -- it is his fault. He endangers them."

She replies: "But how can you justify their deaths? Regardless of how hard you try, will you not kill them? Some of them? Should we not choose peace instead?"

Let us consider that.

What if we asked her, "Let us speculate that our enemy -- say in Iran -- seeks to kill our children. If we attack them to stop it, we may or may not kill any of their children -- and we will do everything in our power to avoid it. If we do not, they certainly will kill ours. Should we attack them or not?"

She will answer: "That is a false example. Nothing is certain, and it is said that hard cases make bad law."

"Fair enough," we reply, "but where will you find the parent who will sacrifice her children for the possibility of keeping another parent's child alive?"

"It would be impossible," she will agree, but add, "However, nothing is that certain."

"Then let us make it conditional," I continue. "Let us say that there is the possibility we shall kill a child -- but we shall do our best not to do so -- and only the possibility that they will kill our child, but it is their aim. Now, should we try to stop them -- though risking their child? Or should we refuse, and take the increased risk that they will succeed in their murder, since no one dares disrupt them?"

"It is always wrong to take the risk of killing a child, whether we do it or they do," she will say.

"Why so?" I ask.

"Because it endangers the innocent," she replies.

"If that is the reason," I answer, "then you are wrong. It is best that we bomb without fear."

Her eyes grow wide. "You are mad," she says.

"Not so," I answer. "Consider: when the enemy seeks to kill our child to motivate us to surrender to his will, is it not because he believes that the danger to the children will move our hearts?"

"It is," she must agree.

"And when he hides among children," I add, "why? Children do little to deflect artillery. Must it not be because he knows that we -- we ourselves -- fear for the children, even his children?"

She nods, silently.

"Then it is proven," I say. "It is our love of these innocents that endangers them. If we did not care if children died, they would be in little danger."

"That cannot be," she replies in anger.

"But it is so," I contest. "If we did not care if our children died, they would not be targets. There would be no reason to target them, because we would not be moved by their deaths.

"If we did not care if their children died," I add, "there would be no reason to clutter military emplacements with their presence. If it were not that we are horrified by the deaths of children, the enemy's children would be clear of all places of battle -- because they are, except for the fact that we love them, a hindrance."

She bites her lip.

"Of course, we cannot cut out our hearts," I tell her. "Nor should we -- as we wish to remain men, and good men, rather than monsters. Yet it is our love that is the chief danger to the innocent now -- to our own innocents, and theirs also."

"What do you suggest?" she demands of me. "If you will not hate children, if you assert that it is right to love them -- but you say we cannot love them, without wrongfully endangering them -- what can we do? Where is the right?"

"It must be," I tell her sadly, "Here: That we pursue war without thought of the children. That we do not turn aside from the death of the innocent, but push on to the conclusion, through all fearful fire. If we do that, the children will lose their value as hostages, and as targets: if we love them, we must harden our hearts against their loss. Ours and theirs."

"How can that be right?" she wonders.

"It cannot be," I must say. "Love should always rise, above war and fear and death. Love should always be first, and not last, in our hearts. It should never be that love brings wrong, and disdain brings right.

"And yet," I say, "It is. I have shown you that it is. That means we have moved into a time beyond human wisdom. We can no longer know the right. It is beyond us.

"We can only do," I must warn her, and you. "We can only do, and pray, that when we are done we may be forgiven."

This is from a comment to the essay

Our fathers met this same kind of challenge in WWII, if not so blatantly, chose and won. The firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuclear obliterations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrate this quite clearly. They knew the cost to their souls, and yet paid, for the sake of those to come - us. Now we face the same choice - to give in to evil and so doom our own offspring, or kill when we must, accepting the taint and imperilling our souls for the sake of our children. Even as I would go hungry so that my children be fed, I will kill other children to keep mine free from such savagery.

I keep thinking the terrorists are insane if they think they can actually win this war, and force the rest of the world to submit to Islam. It isn't going to happen. They can force us to kill millions but they can not force us to submit to their religion. We were willing to kill in vast numbers to defeat the Soviet Union. Not much has changed. Not enough to save the Islamo-Fascists.

-- Rakhiir

Posted by rakhier at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

Solzhenitsyn, 30 years ago, pointed out some problems in the West

This essay from Wretchard is well worth the read. Here is a part

The matchless power of inherited Cold War weapons was more than overcome by withering of the very mental attitudes which made them effective. Mark Steyn argued that as a result the West's power shrank in direct proportion to the effectiveness of weaponry because the laws of political correctness always diminished the will to use them faster than their increase in destructiveness. "We live in an age of inversely proportional deterrence: The more militarily powerful a civilized nation is, the less its enemies have to fear the full force of that power ever being unleashed. They know America and other Western powers fight under the most stringent self-imposed etiquette. Overwhelming force is one thing; overwhelming force behaving underwhelmingly as a matter of policy is quite another. ... The U.S. military is the best-equipped and best-trained in the world. But it's not enough, it never has been, and it never will be."

The near panic which gripped Teheran and Damascus in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom was not the result of the fear that America had found new weapons -- the lethality of those weapons were already known -- but that it had found unexpected the will to use them. Today even better weapons are there yet the American force in Iraq is regarded as having become totally impotent, not because it has become militarily weaker; through fixed airbases, experience, new weapons it has become immeasurably stronger than it was in 2003. But it's impotence is due entirely to the perception that it's will has drained away -- that it cannot use its power. That leaves American power weaker than had it never been used...

Indeed. One has to wonder why the Islamo-fascists aren't more afraid to do the things they do. One plausible answer is that they think we lack the conviction to kill to keep our society the way it is. I think they are wrong, as World War II proved (to my mind). Hitler thought that France and Great Britian lacked the conviction to stop him and he was right, up until September, 1939.

Posted by rakhier at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2006

Islamic Fascists - the new Nazis

Netanyahu knows his history...

By now, Netanyahu was shouting angrily, shaking his fist as he explained the similarities he sees between the 1930s and today. ‘Yes, there are differences, it is not a perfect analogy. Yes, Germany didn’t have a billion Germans to infect. Yes, Germany had race and not creed as its prime goal. Nazism started its attacks on the Jews and spread to the rest of the world in their mad militancy, and that is exactly what is happening now.’

For Netanyahu, Israel is a latter-day Czechoslovakia, which deluded and desperately anti-war European powers, led by Neville Chamberlain, sacrificed to the Nazis in 1938 because of the German-speaking minority in Sudetenland, whom he compares with today’s Palestinians. ‘And, yes, there was apologetics and, yes, there was appeasement and, yes, there was pressure on a small resistant democracy in the face of this German onslaught. It was called Czechoslovakia at the time. And, yes, there were articles in the British press condemning Czechoslovakia for inciting a German response because of the denial of the rights of the Sudeten Germans. Do you want to go on with this?’

Netanyahu rejects the comparison between radical Islamic terrorists and communists. The main difference, he argues, is that the communists were rational when it came to foreign policy, putting their survival first and always backing down at the last moment, as shown in the Cuban missile crisis. This was not true of the Iranian regime, he said, arguing that they were trying to prompt the return of the Hidden Imam, an event which Shiites believe would be accompanied by an apocalypse. ‘Is it possible in the 21st century to have a resurrection of the religious wars that we thought had ended in the 17th century? Yes, it’s possible. This is what is going on.’

So does Victor Davis Hanson (who has been writing up a storm in the last couple of months):

f course, the trauma of the Great War was all too fresh, and the utopian hopes for the League of Nations were not yet dashed. The Great Depression made the thought of rearmament seem absurd. The connivances of Stalin with Hitler — both satanic, yet sometimes in alliance, sometimes not — could confuse political judgments.

But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq, the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan. European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet — and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians’ past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist — not an Israeli bomb — might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago.

In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find support do not accept culpability for their actions.

Yet the present Western apology to all this is often to deal piecemeal with these perceived Muslim grievances: India, after all, is in Kashmir; Russia is in Chechnya; America is in Iraq, Canada is in Afghanistan; Spain was in Iraq (or rather, still is in Al Andalus); or Israel was in Gaza and Lebanon. Therefore we are to believe that “freedom fighters” commit terror for political purposes of “liberation.” At the most extreme, some think there is absolutely no pattern to global terrorism, and the mere suggestion that there is constitutes “Islamaphobia.”

Here at home, yet another Islamic fanatic conducts an act of al Qaedism in Seattle, and the police worry immediately about the safety of the mosques from which such hatred has in the past often emanated — as if the problem of a Jew being murdered at the Los Angeles airport or a Seattle civic center arises from not protecting mosques, rather than protecting us from what sometimes goes on in mosques.

But then the world is awash with a vicious hatred that we have not seen in our generation: the most lavish film in Turkish history, “Valley of the Wolves,” depicts a Jewish-American harvesting organs at Abu Ghraib in order to sell them; the Palestinian state press regularly denigrates the race and appearance of the American Secretary of State; the U.N. secretary general calls a mistaken Israeli strike on a U.N. post “deliberate,” without a word that his own Blue Helmets have for years watched Hezbollah arm rockets in violation of U.N. resolutions, and Hezbollah’s terrorists routinely hide behind U.N. peacekeepers to ensure impunity while launching missiles.

If you think I exaggerate the bankruptcy of the West or only refer to the serial ravings on the Middle East of Pat Buchanan or Jimmy Carter, consider some of the most recent comments from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah about Israel: “When the people of this temporary country lose their confidence in their legendary army, the end of this entity will begin [emphasis added].” Then compare Nasrallah’s remarks about the U.S: “To President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert and every other tyrannical aggressor. I want to invite you to do what you want, practice your hostilities. By God, you will not succeed in erasing our memory, our presence or eradicating our strong belief. Your masses will soon waste away, and your days are numbered [emphasis added].”

And finally examine here at home reaction to Hezbollah — which has butchered Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia — from a prominent Democratic Congressman, John Dingell: “I don’t take sides for or against Hezbollah.” And isn’t that the point, after all: the amoral Westerner cannot exercise moral judgment because he no longer has any?

An Arab rights group, between denunciations of Israel and America, is suing its alma mater the United States for not evacuating Arab-Americans quickly enough from Lebanon, despite government warnings of the dangers of going there, and the explicit tactics of Hezbollah, in the manner of Saddam Hussein, of using civilians as human shields in the war it started against Israel.

Demonstrators on behalf of Hezbollah inside the United States — does anyone remember our 241 Marines slaughtered by these cowardly terrorists? — routinely carry placards with the Star of David juxtaposed with Swastikas, as voices praise terrorist killers. Few Arab-American groups these past few days have publicly explained that the sort of violence, tyranny, and lawlessness of the Middle East that drove them to the shores of a compassionate and successful America is best epitomized by the primordial creed of Hezbollah.

There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map (“In the region there is of course a country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region”) — and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich. One wonders only whether the prime catalyst for such French debasement is worry over oil, terrorists, nukes, unassimilated Arab minorities at home, or the old Gallic Jew-hatred.

It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.

These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.

Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around.

Frankly, I look around and I worry. Iran is trying to create nuclear bombs. Pakistan already has them. I fear that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel. It feels like 1938 to me also. Back then the speaches of Hitler were dismissed as so much ranting from a dolt who by luck happened to end up as leader of Germany. Now Iran's leader, Ahmadinejad, is acting the same way. He gives public speaches at high profile events where he, quite clearly says that Israel must be destroyed. I worry about this.

Posted by rakhier at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)