Redstate

(1) There were two theads on the topic I raised, one of more recent vintage;

(2) You make a valid point, and made a good counter at the time. I was trying to come up with a retort that would sufficiently keep me neck and neck on the Confederacy thread (which makes a third thread, total), noticed that you (appeared to have) lost interest in the rest, and dropped the whole thing.

Just to show I'm a nicer guy than I play here, I'll pick it back up: I concede the large differences between Confederate and Arab societies. My essential point is that conservatives believe that human nature is, at its core, universal, even if modified by local, religious, and cultural peculiarities. Thus, I would advance the idea that pounding the unholy snot out of someone will, with sufficient pounding, render them disinclined to fight, especially if the right incentives follow. Does this mean that the Israelis could treat the Lebanese the way we did the Confederates, Germans, and Japanese? Of course not; but the pounding-the-snot-out-of-them part would be applicable. It would be the carrots that followed that would be so important.

ever to question your niceness.  It will sound like apple-polishing, but you're my favorite moderator.  

You're correct that the "pounding the snot out of them" approach has worked in the past.  It hasn't always worked, of course, but it is often effective.  Sometimes, as in Afghanistan between 1979-1989, it has failed (none, I would hope, would accuse the Soviets of painstaking delicacy).  Regardless, "pound the snot out of them" is rather a vague prescription.  

So, in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and under the military and political limitations applying to the belligerents, I must ask:  how would this work?  Israel, and the Lebanese not affiliated with Hezbollah, face in Hezbollah a capable guerrilla force.  Such forces can be destroyed, but to do so requires long periods of harsh tactics designed to separate the population from its guerrilla masters.  It is a process involving torture, indefinite detentions, forced relocations, death squads, and massacres.  While Arab governments can and do get away with these things, Israel, for reasons of domestic and international politics, can not.  Besides, after the first occupation of Lebanon, it is likely that Israel simply lacks the stomach for such a long-term involvement.  Finally, they would in essence be proposing to conduct it on what is, historically and legally, a separate, sovereign state, which would place still further restrictions on their ability to act.  Both morality and international law indicate a different response to internal threats than to external threats.  With all due respect to the Israeli victims of Hezbollah's rocket fire, this is not an existential threat to the state or people of Israel, and extremity can not be claimed.

Someone's army and secret police will have to be there, in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa valley, conducting the day-to-day atrocities and cooption on which counterinsurgency depends.  The Syrians could have done it, but chose not to, and can not be permitted, as a point of international law and the relations between states, simply to annex Lebanon.  An international force will withdraw at the first large-scale casualties.  Israel won't do what is necessary, and probably can't.  Who else is left?  Only the other Lebanese.  That is the only long-term way out of this mess:  A Lebanese state that can monitor and repress the radicals.

1.

Were it not for the 1982 Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation, Hezbollah would not exist in the first place. This should be a lesson to those that council a second military occupation in 2006, not to mention those that wish the Lebanese to thank Israel for its present military actions.

2.

Any long term solution to the problem of Hezbollah depends on the strength of the Lebanese government and its armed forces.  If these forces are not strengthened, either Israel or an international force would have to occupy Lebanon.

An Israeli occupation would only give rationale to the existence of Hezbollah and would increase its support and ultimately its strength. It's been tried and has failed.

An international force might be violently resisted and won't be sustained effectively in the long run.

All that's left is the Lebanese government. Because of this, Israel must be very careful that its attempts to weaken Hezbollah don't come at the price of a weakened Lebanese government.  Heretofore, the bombing campaign appears only to have weakened the government and not Hezbollah. Hezbollah has lost only 10s of its 3000 regular fighters while the physical infrastructure of Lebanon has heavily damaged.  Moreover, Hezbollah's supply of rockets remains high in number and can easily be restocked.

Knowing this, Israel has opted for a ground invasion to do what the bombing hasn't.  Still, it's only a dream that Israel will destroy the movement. The last occupation didn't do it. Why will this one? Hezbollah fighters will just runaway or fade into the civilian population.  They won't stand up and allow themselves to be wiped out.

What the ground invasion can do is to push Hezbollah away from the border so that it's more difficult to fire rockets into Israel.  Once this is accomplished, a long term occupation force will have to be established to keep Hezbollah back. Only the Lebanese military can do this in the long run.

So, Israel needs the Lebanese government.  It should makes military plans under the assumption that strengthening the Lebanese government is just as important as attacking Hezbollah.

Based on this and other posts, you seem to believe that Islamic terrorism exists because it organically grew from a rotten culture. Islamism---in the form of Hezbollah---in Lebanon provides a good case study in which to discuss the origins of radical Islamic terrorism.    The creation of Hezbollah did not occur endogenously. It occured only after the 1982 Israeli invasion, a political factor.  Would Hezbollah exist in its present form today were it not for this politcal cause?

The idea that Islamism was not caused by political factors encourages one to forget to analyze the unintended consequenes of political actions.  In this post, you act as if Israeli military actions are only an exogenous force when in fact they are endogenous.  The unitended consequence of military action in 1982 was the causal effects it had on the birth of Hezbollah.  If it is correct that political causes in the form of military action are more responsible for Islamism than culture is responsible for Islamism, military force must be used with caution in the present conflict.      

The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was to oust the PLO.

Why did Israel invade Lebanon in 1982?

In June 1978, Prime Minister Begin, under intense American pressure, withdrew Israel's Litani River Operation forces from southern Lebanon. They were replaced by UNIFIL, a UN force to restore peace and help the Lebanonese government re-establish its authority, as authorized by UN Resolution 425. The withdrawal of Israeli troops without having removed the PLO from its bases in southern Lebanon became a major embarrassment to the Begin government, maintaining pressure for Israel to return.

UNIFIL was unable to prevent terrorists from reinfiltrating the region and introducing new, more dangerous arms. Cross-border conflict between Israel and the various forces in Southern Lebanon continued at differing levels of intensity after 1978. Civilians on both sides, and UNIFIL peacekeepers, were killed as the fighting ebbed and flowed. Israel increased its support of the Lebanese Christian Militia in the south, under Major Saad Haddad, who regularly fought armed PLO fighters but also caused casualties among non-combatants. The US government during the Carter administration (1976-1980) had several times joined in UN condemnations of Israeli raids and reprisals in South Lebanon, always condemning simultaneously PLO terrorist cross-border activities (generally not condemned by the UN).

In July of 1981 Lebanese-American Philip Habib was sent by the Reagan Administration to negotiate a more lasting cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel. On July 24 Habib announced agreement that all hostile military action between Lebanese and Israeli territory in either direction would cease. For the next eleven months the cease-fire was in effect as a formality, but the PLO repeatedly violated the agreement. Israel charged that the PLO staged 270 terrorist actions in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and along the Lebanese and Jordanian borders. Twentynine Israelis died and more than 300 were injured in the attacks. In April 1982, after a landmine killed an Israeli officer, the rocket attacks and air strikes recommenced.

Israeli strikes and commando raids were unable to stem the growth of the PLO army which built camps, trained thousands of fighters, and stockpiled arms in south Lebanon. The situation in the Galilee became intolerable as the frequency of attacks forced thousands of Israeli residents to flee their homes or to spend large amounts of time in bomb shelters. Israel was not prepared to wait for more deadly attacks to be launched against its civilian population before acting against the PLO terrorists.

The final provocation occurred in June 3, 1982 when a Palestinian terrorist group led by Abu Nidal attempted to assassinate Israel's Ambassador to Great Britain, Shlomo Argov. The IDF subsequently bombed PLO bases and ammunition dumps in Beirut and attacked other targets in Lebanon on June 4-5, 1982. The PLO responded with a massive artillery and mortar attack on the Israeli population of the Galilee. It was the PLO shelling, and not directly the Argov shooting as is sometimes assumed, that triggered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

On June 6, 1982, under the direction of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel invaded Lebanon with a massive force, called Operation Peace for the Galilee, driving all the way to Beirut and putting the PLO and residents, as well as the Lebanese civilian population of that city, under siege. Israel justified its breech of the Habib cease-fire by citing the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London and a build-up of PLO armaments in South Lebanon. Israel was also concerned by increasing Syrian involvement in the Lebanese civil war and wanted to forestall a hostile, Syrian-backed government developing in Lebanon.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said of the operation:

No sovereign state can tolerate indefinitely the buildup along its borders of a military force dedicated to its destruction and implementing its objectives by periodic shellings and raids

These terrorists groups no matter what there name is have all spawned from a distorted reading or understanding of their religion by extremists.

Hezbollah and Hamas didn't provoke Israel (yet again) to gain more land in the short term. They wanted to kill Jews period. March all Jews into the Mediterranean Sea and then set their sights on America and the rest of the world. This is because their warped dogma commands it!

We can learn a lot of lessons from history:

True friends of Israel cannot let the Dems take power is the name of Dick Morris and Eileen McGann's latest article and tells a great deal about another loose end left by the Clinton administration with regard to Israel and its enemy's.

Ten years ago, on April 18, 1996, Israel attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon for 16 days in an operation called Grapes of Wrath. The global condemnation of Israel was fierce, especially when it bombed a U.N. refugee camp, killing 107 people, an attack that Tel Aviv said was a mistake.

At the time, the United States did nothing to stop the tide from turning against Israel and President Clinton said, "I think it is important that we do everything we can to bring an end to the violence."

--Snip--

Clinton's willingness to use American power to force a cease-fire on Israel before it had fully eradicated Hezbollah stands in stark and sharp contrast to George Bush's insistence on letting Israel proceed with its attacks until the terrorist group is neutralized.

In a nutshell, this illustrates the difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to Israeli security.

--Snip--

But American Jews have voted Democrat in the past and will continue to do so in the future. It is really the Christian evangelical right that stands up for Israel.

--Snip--

Nothing so illustrates the generic anti-Semitism of the global community than its current obsession with proportionality in judging Israel's response to the kidnapping of its soldiers and the rocket bombing of its cities.

The Vatican, the European Union and Russia have said nothing about the almost daily bombardment of Israel's northern border by Hezbollah or the constant attacks from Gaza after Israel magnanimously vacated the strip. But now that the Jewish state is defending itself, the global community is outraged at the "disproportionate" Israeli response. Only Jewish lives have to be dealt with proportionately.

--Snip--

Bush and the Republican administration realize that Israel is only acting in self-defense. It is obvious that she would not be attacking Lebanon if the terrorists had not made a habit of using it as a base for attacks on Jewish cities.

The global condemnation of Israel is simply illustrative of the low esteem attached to Jewish blood in this world where anti-Semitism comes disguised as morality and a commitment to peace.

Looking at this conflict and the GWOT without recognizing the enemy's distorted take on their religion seems to be the easy way for the appeasement crowd and anti-war folks to lessen or dismiss the threat. These people what you, I and every other infidel dead. That's the cold hard reality of the situation and I wish more Americans would realize it!

Obviously we can create conditions for a cease-fire for the short term and Israel will most likely take the brunt of concessions (as usual) but for the root cause (the hatred for all things not Muslim) coming from the extremists warped view of their religion I believe the choice is clear!  

What relevance is it whether Israel or the U.S. or Winston Churchill indirectly inspired Hezbollah or any other terror group?  What consolation is that argument to the little Jewish ladies getting freaked out by rockets landing on their head?  When some dope addict puts a gun to your child's head on a dark city street do you fault the Chinese for inventing gunpowder, or the failure of government to legalize drugs?  Heck, those might be rational reasons but the simple fact is that there's a gun to your child's head and the crack addict's got the jitters.  Blaming the Chinese or government, or even bringing them up is silly and pointless in that circumstance.  Save the girl and then get to blogging later.

So what if we created the terrorists?  So what?  They are there.  We are here.  They are coming for us.  Get your head out of the clouds and either suggest a real solution to the danger or be quiet and let leaders of purpose secure our homes and lives.  Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

and directed proxy of Iran.  Without their Iranian puppet-masters and financiers, Hezbollah would wither and die a slow and humiliating death.

I ran across a recent article by David Horowitz at Frontpagemag, and I'd like to share a portion of it as it is relevant to the discussion here:

Lebanon Is Not Innocent

Critics of Israel's defensive war against Islamic terrorists are busily wringing their hands over the destruction that has been wreaked on Lebanon, which is portrayed as innocent. They invoke these tragedies while calling on Israel to cease its fire and leave the Hezbollah aggressors intact. Since Israel had no role in starting this war, this is like blaming the Allies for the damage inflicted on Germany in World War II - and doing so in the midst of the war. Critics who make such charges and demands in the midst of a war are aiding and abetting the aggressors.

But the very idea that Lebanon is an innocent bystander in the war against Israel won't wash. Lebanon is host to the terrorist aggressor which has sworn to eliminate Israel and its Jews from the face of the earth. This is the explicit creed of both Hezbollah and its sponsor Iran. And not just in their charter or in statements made months or years ago. Iran's little dictator reiterated the threat even yesterday in the midst of Islam's aggressive war against the Jews:  "Israel has pushed the button of its own destruction. The Zionists made their worst decision and triggered their extinction by attacking Lebanon." Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, occupying two cabinet positions and seats in its parliament. The Lebanese government agreed to enforce UN Resolution 1559 which calls on it to disarm all militias on its territory, namely Hezbollah. If the Lebanese Government had performed this obligation, there would be no war, and there would be no Lebanese civilian casualties.

(snip...)

Instead the Lebanese government allowed Hezbollah to build its headquarters and underground bunkers in the populated neighborhoods of Beirut. It allowed Hezbollah to import 13,000 missiles to be fired into Israel's cities and towns. The 75,000-man Lebanese army has not sealed off the Syrian border and, according to reports, has allowed Syria to re-supply Hezbollah in the midst of its aggression. The Lebanese government has allowed Hezbollah to build underground fortresses on its southern border in position to attack. It has allowed Hezbollah to launch rockets into the towns of northern Israel to terrorize and kill innocent civilians.

(snip...)

The Lebanese army has not lifted a finger to obstruct Hezbollah's aggression, but  the Lebanese prime minister has been out front in attacking Israel. Who, watching the Lebanese interviewed by reporters during the war - including the Lebanese Americans evacuated to safety - can doubt that their hatred is for Jews and not for the Islamic killers of both the Jews and the Lebanese.

These attitudes do not make the Lebanese deserving of the war that Hezbollah and Iran have inflicted on them; but it does not make them innocent either. Hezbollah's Shi'ite fanatics are Lebanese. Over the last twenty years Hezbollah has become an integral part of Lebanese society and Lebanon's government. All the while Hezbollah has sworn to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth.  If war has come to Lebanon, no one can pretend that they didn't see it coming.

(snip...)

Making excuses for Lebanese appeasement of these agendas while directing moral outrage against the intended victims repeats a familiar pattern among leftist critics of America and Israel. In weighing in on the frontline battles against the terrorists in Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq, critics attribute civilian casualties not to the terrorists but to their opponents; liberation and self-defense are denounced as "occupation." This is not even moral equivalence; it is sympathy for the devil.

Until the arrival of Arafat and the Palestinian terrorists, Lebanon was a Christian democracy. But Islamic radicalism could not tolerate either Christianity or democracy. This - not the presence of tiny Israel (one hundred times smaller than its current antagonists) is the root cause of the violence in the Middle East. The cause is Arab intolerance and Islamic hate. One Jewish state among 22 Arab states was one too many. Six million Jews among 300 million Arabs was too much to bear. A sliver of land, less than one percent of the Arab land mass, which belonged to first to the Turks and then to the British was an imperialist outrage. Lebanon, a country raped by the Syrian-Iranian axis and the Palestinians has become an integral component of the terrorists' war plan to push the Middle Eastern Jews, who have lived continuously for 3,000 years in the region, into the sea. Lebanon is a tragedy of the 58-year Arab war against Israel, against democracy, and against Christianity in the Middle East. But it is not innocent.

in the Arab world is an awkward one where European categories do not quite work. (Although those categories do work for the Turks and Iranians). In Europe ethnicity is tied closely to language, but the Arabs have one language which unites them-- or do they? The dialects of Arabic are at least as divergent as Swedish, Dannish and Norwegian are from oen another, in fact some are quite unitelligible to one another. Yet there is a common written standard so, as in the case of China and Chinese also, we admnit to a single language, "Arabic", which really ought to be eight or nine languages based on purely linguistic concerns.

Of course history has provided a few Arabic-speaking people with a distinct national identity, notably the Egyptians and Moroccans. As for religion, only in Yugoslavia did nationality in Europe ever depend on religion; elsewhere there could be Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Albanians, Protestant and Catholic Germans and so forth.

When empires collapsed in 1918 and again when the Soviets fizzled out in 1991, their domains could be divided up properly by ethnolinguistic boundaries (Yugoslavia being the one big mistake; Czechoslovakia a rather minor goof). But in the Middle East that's not really an easy option.

A minor quibble: Arab Christians are not being annihilated (at least not literally). Mostly they are simply being forced out, and taking up their abodes in Europe and North America: I attend a church with some of these folks. That is of course a form of ethnic cleansing too, but not quite the same magnitude as an outright genocide.

A Washington Post columnist recently asserted that the problem is the existence of Israel.

Do you believe that the answer to the problem... that of Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Islamism in general... is as simple as that? If the world were to do away with the existence of Israel, would the conflict between Islamic cultures and other cultures go away?

What about Bosnia and Kosovo? What about Chetznia (sic?)? What about history?

I don't believe that you will seek to sustain the assertion that Israel is the problem. Much less can particular actions of Israel be the cause of the problem. The root of the problem must lie in something deeper. Islam is not forced to become political by circumstances. In its history, it is originally political, unlike our western perception of religion in which we perceive that Christianity was co-opted by politics.

...are condemned to repeat it"

What policy options that steers us toward is not necessarily clear, but I think it's a pretty strong retort to, "So what if we created the terrorists?"

Another answer might be, "well, we'd really prefer to not to create any more!"

Sorry for being off topic, but just had to note that you're on a huge roll here, Josh.  I don't recall ever seeing someone write so much, so fast, that he had three recommended diaries at once.

What relevance is it whether Israel or the U.S. or Winston Churchill indirectly inspired Hezbollah or any other terror group?

Insofar as Hezbollah is a product of the Lebanese reaction to Israeli occupation, perhaps it might be wise not to repeat the process whereby they were created?

What consolation is that argument to the little Jewish ladies getting freaked out by rockets landing on their head?

This seems to be the nub of the "argument" of the advocates of unlimited force:  That the Israelis must continue wrecking Lebanon, not because doing so will achieve either victory or peace, or accomplish any desirable political goal, but because "little Jewish ladies (sic)" are "freaked out (sic)."  Never mind that the Israelis have tried all this several times before, with uniformly dismal results, leading in one instance to the unfortunate, unintended consequence of the creation of Hezbollah - we must do this because it, basically, makes us feel better.  For a while, anyway, until the next group launches more rockets.

Heck, those might be rational reasons but the simple fact is that there's a gun to your child's head and the crack addict's got the jitters.

Obviously, I shoot the crack addict.  I don't think the analogy holds, though.

The problem with Peace in Galilee was not, in fact, that it was total war that gave rise to vengeful resistance movements. It was that it was a halting, limited, poorly executed war, that left its targets in a good enough position to regroup and rearm.

Religion provides part of the narrative and justification of the anti-Israeli forces, but not the whole.  To claim that Israel's enemies are motivated wholly by Islam, Islamism, or antisemitism, is, though it fits very well into Israeli and now American propaganda, to pretend that Israel is blameless and that her opponents are subhuman (Nazis, and the like).  It's a pleasing bit of self-validating justification, but it doesn't do justice to history.  While I much prefer Israel to the PLO or Hezbollah, and do not object to either the concept or the fact of a specifically Jewish state, the fact is that the Palestinians and all Lebanese, but especially the Shiites, have legitimate grievances against Israel - pursued in admittedly reprehensible ways - and it simply won't do to call them all savages and try to beat them into submission.

historically beaten savages into submission. I mean it seems to me that, with unfortunate blips like the Huns sacking Rome, it has worked pretty well since the dawn of civilization.

It certainly has a better success rate than negotiating with them.

The problem with Peace in Galilee was not, in fact, that it was total war that gave rise to vengeful resistance movements. It was that it was a halting, limited, poorly executed war, that left its targets in a good enough position to regroup and rearm.

Well, I can't square total war - awful enough in the context of WWII, let alone in the more morally ambiguous environment of the Middle East - with my understanding of just war or of Christianity, but yes, "no man, no problem."

I'm curious. How was the European theater less morally ambiguous?

And my essential point is that a concentrated, boots-on-the ground, tip-to-tail war is better in the long run in terms of death, pain, dislocation, and political consequence. Limited wars yield things like Hezbollah and the Vietnamese boat people. Total war yields Helmut Kohl and Zell Miller.

nonsense about trying to understand whatever the reasons are for stone age fascists wanting to kill Western Civilization and me with it. If there is a mosquito on my arm, I slap it into pate. The fact it was just trying to get on in the world it knows and procreate etc, etc. is of no concern to me. Its life is of lesser value than the itching the bite would cause. If I heard at 11:45 this morning that every Hezbolla member and the innocent persons foolish enough to be standing in close proximity were blown to bits, my response would be "Good. What's for lunch"

Squish the ones we have NOW and stop folling with WHY they are there and THEN worry about why.

Had gone through the same worries and questions as you are now trying to drag us and Israel BEFORE we stopped Hitler, we would have lost.

We went over those questions AFTER he was dead and done with.  For some strange reason, I just don't see a German started WW3.

Furthermore, How is Hezbollah and their ilk different from Nazi Germany?  Why is Total War not acceptable in this situation?

I posit that if Total War is not acceptable, No War is acceptable.  If you are going to send in the troops, Do It Right.  Or don't do it at all.

And, btw, I'm not sure who said that Israel created Hezbollah, but I would like to point out that the "war" that "created" Hezbollah was waged to destroy the PLO.  Out of the ashes of one came the other.  Care to tell me where the PLO came from?

Barak said it the other night.  He said that Israels  occupation of Leb. fostered the creation of Hez.

Cite some examples of the following:

"Palestinians and all Lebanese, but especially the Shiites, have legitimate grievances against Israel"

I mean really... are you serious?  Are you devoid of empathy, or just in a black hole of ignorance?  I hope it's the latter.  The Palestinians were deliberately ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel, and in the West Bank, and in Gaza until very recently, have lived under the none-too-friendly governance of the IDF for almost forty years while succeeding Israeli governments have sent colonists further to encroach on their land.  Re: Lebanese Shiites, google Sabra and Shatila, plus 18 years of occupation of southern Lebanon.  For Lebanese as a whole, well, the country has been in a downward spiral ever since the Palestinians settled there in 1947-48, getting worse after Black September (another ripple from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) resulted in the ensconcement of the PLO in Lebanon, which contributed to the civil war which provided the justification for Syrian and Israeli intervention, etc.  

I know, I know, we could easily write a long list of Arab outrages, too, and would be right to do so, but let's not pretend for an instant that Israel has clean hands, or that it has not contributed mightily to the very situation that it now claims justifies its latest frenzy of violence.  Both sides are guilty of some horrendous crimes, and as an American, I resent being told that it's my fight and that I'm an appeaser, an antisemite, or worse because I notice a few blemishes and holes in Israel's armor of imputed righteousness.  Nothing good for Israel will come of this, and nothing, more importantly, for America either.

to have it's soldiers murdered and kidnapped?

Please enlighten..

I think my touchy feely, empathy, sympathy tank ran out of gas about 10 years ago.

At this point I think the only real solution is to just smash whatever it is trying to destroy to the point that they know they are defeated.

Trying to "understand" why they want to destroy you is only, in the end going to give them one more weapon to use against you.

about a lot of this stuff?

Palestinians are overwhelmingly Sunni so how you rope them into the "especially Shiites" category is unclear.

Sabra and Chatila were carried out by Phalange fighters and the victims were Palestinian refugees, i.e. Sunni.

So color me devoid of empathy here, because blowing up pizza parlors and weddings inactivates my empathy-meter.

I am becoming a huge fan of total war.  Limited war hasn't yielded answers to questions.  Total war, for example, resolved the Civil War.  Total war resolved the issue of Nazism.

Limited war did NOT resolve the First Gulf War.  (One can argue that it didn't resolve the Iraq War either, but that's another discussion.)  The limited war attitude caused us to "lose" Vietnam.  Limited war sends a muddled signal to enemies, and reduces the cost of their actions.

War is awful.  War is terrible.  War is reprehensible.  But war settles things. (Indeed, artillery has been noted as the Final Argument of Kings.)  But if War is not truly waged, then what reasons do our enemies have to avoid it?

You think back to the days of dueling.  If you believe the movies, a duel could be called for what would today be considered a minor infraction or insult.  As a result, your behavior changes because you just might get asked to duel (imagine the body count that would result from just one blog page!).  The cost of inpugning that guy's wife's virtue isn't worth a chance of sudden lead poisoning, so you mind your manners and your behavior is modified by the credible threat of force.

Apply that approach of "massive retaliation" to international relations.  How would diplomacy change if the United States, upon being slighted, obligated itself to waging total war?  Sounds mad, but the behavior of foreign states would be modified significantly.  I would argue that we need to signal more of a "hair trigger" in our diplomacy.  You see this approach with Israel, who surprised Hezbollah by responding so forcefully.  One can imagine soldiers won't be killed and kidnapped so readily in the future.  And certainly, Israel is justified in its approach.  You may not like it, but crossing a border and killing soldiers is an act of war, right?  As a sovereign nation it's Israel's option to choose its response.

I know there are issues with this diplomatic approach, perhaps worthy of it's own thread.  But I think the pendulum needs to swing in that direction.

hey it's our fault you created yourself and decided to start killing people, therefore we won't hold you accountable for your actions?

See this is where the idiotic "understand them" crap starts to get rediculous.

Okay-great, the political climate at the time led to a bunch of scary freaks banding together with one goal in mind-to utterly destroy Israel and drive it into the sea.

Too late, we now have the group with the goal, we can't turn back time, but we can do what we can to cut the head off this snake and destroying it.

You can't negotiate with people whose main goal of existence is to destroy you.

Black September was the Jordanian idea of How to Solve the Palestinian Problem. I guess we could blame Israel for that, if you decide that the only way the Jordanians could handle a refugee problem was to slaughter them.

Furthermore, Israel did not ethnically cleanse Palestinians from what is now Israel, or there would be no Israeli Arabs. The Israelis learned efficiency the hard way.

Most of the Palestinians' romp through heaven in Gaza and the West Bank has been in UN camps, which explains why they so rarely left.

I fail to see the moral dimension to colonialism.

I know, we could easily write a long list of Arab outrages, too, and would be right to do so, but let's not pretend for an instant that Israel has clean hands, or that it has not contributed mightily to the very situation that it now claims justifies its latest frenzy of violence.

Paying no more than the slightest lip service to the Islamist aggressions against Israel over its nearly 60 years of existence is leaving out the entire casus belli in the region. The six-day war, the Yom Kippur war, and every other battle Israel has had to fight for its land and its life against groups which have sought it and its ethnicity's destruction for centuries, cannot be left out of the discussion; nor can the recent phases of intifada be ignored.

The occupation you decry was the result of giving back land taken during wars of aggression undertaken by the nations surrounding Israel; can you think of another country which has taken land in a war, and then, bowing to world pressure, given it back?

I will agree that Israel's hands are not completely clean; however, I would suggest that you revisit your idea that ethnic cleansing has been carried out against Palestinians in Israeli territory; rather, those who have experienced the greatest prosperity and quality of life are those who have been (a) living in Israel, or (b) commuting to work there.  

The more civilian-targeting terrorists that are disposed of in the region, and everywhere, the better the result will be, both for Israel and for America.  The radical Islamist world -- and, by extension, the Islamist Arab world -- has not pogressed significantly since the 13th century. While that may, to a point, be their prerogative, it becomes a matter of interest when they indiscriminantly -- or, worse, premeditatively -- target civilians and others, especially on the scale which we have been seeing throughout the world, with the intent of bringing the rest of the world back down to their level.

While you can call attention to the misjudgments of Israel, it is not correct to use these issues as a reason to (a) support civilian-targeting terrorists, or (b) call on Israel to simply sit back and allow their people to be murdered. Doing so is akin to making the similarly irrational argument that, because America lent some assistance to the Afghan mujahedeen in their fight against Soviet imperialism, America deserves whatever Osama bin Laden wishes to inflict upon her, and must accept it without a fight.

Get real here, please.

They all seem to have AK 47s. In that they don't believe in uniforms, they can be Skins and the IDF Shirts. As far as I know, there is no significant percentage of Jews world wide who want to roll back western civilization and kill me in the process. Consequently, I be rootin' for the IDF to kill so many that the funeral yippers tongues fall out. The only thing that I ask is that Kofi "the Krook" Annan stand in the middle and drop the hanky.

as streiff & Thomas have adaquitly responded.

I will say that we can point to wrong doings on both sides since 1948 but thats not the root cuase. the problem as I see it was when offered a state in 1947 by U.N. Resolution 181 partition plan to divide the remaining 25% of Palestine into a Jewish Palestinian State and a Arab Palestinian State based on population concentrations. The Jewish Palestinians accepted and the the Arab Palestinians rejected. then on May 14, 1948 the "Palestinian" Jews finally declared their own State of Israel and became "Israelis." On the next day, the Arab armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen... invaded Israel.

Sabra and Chatila were carried out by Phalange fighters and the victims were Palestinian refugees, i.e. Sunni.

Re: the religion of the dead at Sabra and Shatila put the mixup in the same league as your comment earlier today about the Huns sacking Rome.  All of us, even the most able, make mistakes.  The Israelis surrounded the camps, the Israelis sent the Phalangists in, the Israeli government determined that they were indirectly responsible, with Ariel Sharon being sacked for it.  At least there was an investigation.  In any event, file that under legitimate Palestinian grievances.

So color me devoid of empathy here, because blowing up pizza parlors and weddings inactivates my empathy-meter.

Color me really devoid of empathy, because taking out powerplants, massacring refugees, and "accidentally" killing hundreds or thousands inactivates mine.  As I said - they're both pretty guilty.  

seems to have a lot in common with yours, or am I mistaken?  Something about "total war."  The Jordanian state could at least claim plausibly to be under existential threat, which is more than Israelis can claim now.  

Furthermore, Israel did not ethnically cleanse Palestinians from what is now Israel, or there would be no Israeli Arabs. The Israelis learned efficiency the hard way.

They forcibly removed quite a few during the 1947-48 war, Thomas.  Justified or not, and it probably was, (I tend to agree with Benny Morris) few now dispute this.  Even most Israelis have come to terms with this fact.  Sadly most Americans have yet to receive the memo.  

I don't think I did.

The Jordanian idea seems to have a lot in common with yours, or am I mistaken?

You are, but your comments in this thread have been unusually attention-to-detail free, so I'm not gonna get miffed over it.

The Jordanian state could at least claim plausibly to be under existential threat, which is more than Israelis can claim now.

The first part of that sentence is arguably true. The second is not.

They forcibly removed quite a few during the 1947-48 war, Thomas.

Yes, they did. And there's a significant difference between that and ethnic cleansing.

detailing Arab outrages.  Why should I add to the din?  No one, least of all me, is defending pizza parlor and dance hall bombings.  We seem to have lots of fans of excessive use of force, though.

I would suggest that you revisit your idea that ethnic cleansing has been carried out against Palestinians in Israeli territory

Do you deny that there was ethnic cleansing in the 1947-48 war?  

While you can call attention to the misjudgments of Israel, it is not correct to use these issues as a reason to (a) support civilian-targeting terrorists, or (b) call on Israel to simply sit back and allow their people to be murdered.

I do neither.  I doubt that Israel's current tactics will accomplish anything of value, though.

Doing so is akin to making the similarly irrational argument that, because America lent some assistance to the Afghan mujahedeen in their fight against Soviet imperialism, America deserves whatever Osama bin Laden wishes to inflict upon her, and must accept it without a fight.

Hardly.

Yes, they did. And there's a significant difference between that and ethnic cleansing.

What is the difference, Thomas?

You are, but your comments in this thread have been unusually attention-to-detail free, so I'm not gonna get miffed over it.

We ought not get miffed.  It's just the intarweb.  But, please, elaborate.  What military tactics could Israel use that would suffice, in your estimation, to destroy Hezbollah and not also amount to slaughter?  I recall we discussed this earlier, but don't believe you went into any detail.

They've rejected a deal every time one has been offered, and always gotten a worse deal by fighting.  That doesn't mean that forcible dispossession doesn't constitute a wrong.

what did Israel do to deserve having Hez. come over, murder, and then kidnap their soldiers?...

And why do you think their responce to those acts are "excessive"?

Generally doesn't leave the cleansed population at just under fifty percent of the total population from which they've been cleansed.

Let's try it this way: Name an ethnic cleansing that left the subject population at 45% or greater of that remaining by the time the cleansing was done.

Good luck.

What military tactics could Israel use that would suffice, in your estimation, to destroy Hezbollah and not also amount to slaughter?  I recall we discussed this earlier, but don't believe you went into any detail.

We did, but you (twice) abandoned those threads, so I presumed you were uninterested. I'd start with not deliberately targeting civilians, as the Jordanians did and the Israelis, even during much-evil-inflicted Peace in Galilee, did not.

but you don't answer the mail here.

You attribute the grievances of "Lebanese Shiites" to Sabra and Chatila but they weren't involved there but the Amal militia, Lebanese Shiites, were involved in large scale killings of Palestian, alongside the Phalange, at those camps.

My issue here is your total butchery of the history of the war in Lebanon and the evolving of these alleged grievances.

So really, spare me your outrage and highmindedness at least until you take the time to unscrew your facts.

By your definition, the forcible removal of Israeli settlers by the Israeli government from Gaza was ethnic cleansing.

I don't know what you think, but I don't think that's what it was.

and I've admitted my mistake, which, while regrettable, doesn't take away from the point they were adduced to support, which is that the Lebanese and Palestinians have legitimate grievances, and are not simply antisemites or bloodthirsty jihadists (though many are both).   In any event, are the areas of Lebanon that were occupied by Israel not majority Shiite areas?  Presumably unwanted military occupation provides some grounds for dislike.

I don't have much internet access from home right now, and going through the archives, I see the discussion was on a Thursday two weeks ago when I had the following three days off.  We were in a digression about the Civil War at the time.

...but the only thing I disagree with you on here is the unspoken subtext of American money going to Israel -- our thumb on the scale is the only reason we care if it gets chopped off...

A Final Solution to the Israeli Problem (and that is what you're advocating) wouldn't affect me in America either way, as long as my executive branch kept bomb-chuckers out of my coffee.

If we can ignore China's 30,000 troops in Panama, then we can not care about what happens to  people in deserts who don't sell us cheap consumer goods.  We stopped fighting the Cold War halfway through... and our high school drop-out rates reflect those values.

We've got nukes.  Time to turtle up and look out for Number 1.  Time to issue that travel advisory for the planet.  Time to withhold American goodwill, and re-invest it here. Joke 'em if they can't take a ....

Sometimes, as in Afghanistan between 1979-1989, it has failed (none, I would hope, would accuse the Soviets of painstaking delicacy).

I would note, and perhaps this goes to your point, in that sometimes snot pounding is quite tricky, or perhaps mine, that the Soviets were not tender, but they were remarkably ineffective at bringing to bear the kind of force of which we're speaking in Afghanistan.

So, in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and under the military and political limitations applying to the belligerents, I must ask:  how would this work?  Israel, and the Lebanese not affiliated with Hezbollah, face in Hezbollah a capable guerrilla force.  Such forces can be destroyed, but to do so requires long periods of harsh tactics designed to separate the population from its guerrilla masters.

This much is true, though Hezbollah is also stupid enough to act in a paramilitary fashion, which means they can also be cluster bombed into nonexistence. A guerilla force, by itself, is a mosquito. It's only when it masses force that it becomes a serious problem.

It is a process involving torture, indefinite detentions, forced relocations, death squads, and massacres.

This, however, is not necessarily true. You can mix and match these, play psy-ops, and, if you have one, use a counter-insurgent force to great effect, inter alia.

Besides, after the first occupation of Lebanon, it is likely that Israel simply lacks the stomach for such a long-term involvement.

I grant this without hesitation.

Finally, they would in essence be proposing to conduct it on what is, historically and legally, a separate, sovereign state, which would place still further restrictions on their ability to act.

This kinda leads back to the Mexico example: If Americans were being shelled in, say, El Paso, by a paramilitary force acting out of Northern Mexico, which paramilitary force Mexico was unwilling or unable to control, what is the appropriate act of the sovereign whose citizens are being shelled? The first duty of a sovereign is the protection of its citizenry's lives. If it pays heed to the second duty, the maintenance and respect for borders, it forsakes the first.

The old State system doesn't work in this instance, unless we're willing to call a spade a spade and just admit that Hezbollah is de facto acting as Lebanon's agent, and allow that Israel has the right and duty to invade. If we insist on balancing this one out in the way you suggest, we're left with a system in which one State's ambivalence to the loss of the monopoly of force in its borders, and to the corresponding violation of the rights of its neighboring sovereign, must simply be ignored, or perhaps protested, with no action, by the state whose sovereignty is being leveled.

In other words, it is no good to say, Well, Lebanon is a sovereign State, so Israel can do nothing to punish Hezbollah as Hezbollah attacks Israel from Lebanese territory, as to do so, you have to decide that one of these sovereign States is actually a sovereign State, and the other is just a group of folks forced to sit there and take it.

Which, to cut the italics-commentary pattern of which I'm so fond, brings me to my point (and admittedly begs your entirely fair question, as I'm not sure whether you want a detailed campaign plan, or simply a descriptive combination of force, or what -- and this is an invitation to specify): What is the proper response of Israel to the mass murder and terrorization of its citizenry by the citizens of, and representatives of a minority party of the government of, another State, acting with at least no interference by that neighboring State? I understand that you belive that an effective Lebanese government would forestall this problem, and perhaps it would; but I'd submit that the Israelis may not be inclined to wait two decades for this dispute to clear up.

The heat was awful, the situation frustrating.  I hope you see this post.  

This much is true, though Hezbollah is also stupid enough to act in a paramilitary fashion, which means they can also be cluster bombed into nonexistence. A guerilla force, by itself, is a mosquito. It's only when it masses force that it becomes a serious problem.

Or when it lobs artillery rockets into your territory, which requires a few guys and a truck.  

This kinda leads back to the Mexico example: If Americans were being shelled in, say, El Paso, by a paramilitary force acting out of Northern Mexico, which paramilitary force Mexico was unwilling or unable to control, what is the appropriate act of the sovereign whose citizens are being shelled?

When American forces pursued Pancho Villa, they did so with at least the grudging cooperation of the Mexican government.  To pursue your thought experiment further, would the United States, in response to shelling from immediately across the border by a nonstate or quasi-state actor, begin bombing the slums of Mexico city, or blockading Vera Cruz?  Probably not.  Would the US begin attacking elements of Mexican society that were not affiliated with the group doing the attacks?  Again, probably not.  At a minimum, the US government would go to the Mexican government, and to the UN as well to make its case and at least appear to be working within the framework of the international system, just as we did after the 9/11 attacks.  The US issued an ultimatum to Kabul;  Vienna issued an ultimatum to Belgrade.  Israel ought to have attempted to work with the Lebanese state and the international system first because, as risible as many Americans find both institutions, doing so, even if it failed, would provide at least some veneer of legitimacy to Israel's actions.  They ought to have called for the enforcement of 1559 and formally accused Hezbollah's backers, chief among them Iran.  Instead, they dissipate all the sympathy that Ahmedinejad's rantings and ravings had generated.  

This, however, is not necessarily true. You can mix and match these, play psy-ops, and, if you have one, use a counter-insurgent force to great effect, inter alia.

Very well; grant at least that the process requires sustained, manpower-intensive presence, and will inevitably result in the sort of atrocities I named.

What is the proper response of Israel to the mass murder and terrorization of its citizenry by the citizens of, and representatives of a minority party of the government of, another State, acting with at least no interference by that neighboring State?

Since I don't think a military victory by Israel is practicable, trying for one, or appearing to be trying for one, will, when the inevitable failure to destroy Hezbollah becomes apparent, look like defeat.  This will be so, even if ten Hezbollah fighters die for every Israeli KIA.  Hezbollah's continued existence and political potency after standing up to the Israelis will be enough.  Worse still, the Israelis will look brutal as well as incompetent.  What the Israelis fail to apprehend, continually, is that they are in a political war, and that the harm done to them by one mistake like Cana harms their strategy far more than blowing up the rocket launcher that may have been there helps them.  

Which, to cut the italics-commentary pattern of which I'm so fond, brings me to my point (and admittedly begs your entirely fair question, as I'm not sure whether you want a detailed campaign plan, or simply a descriptive combination of force, or what -- and this is an invitation to specify): What is the proper response of Israel to the mass murder and terrorization of its citizenry by the citizens of, and representatives of a minority party of the government of, another State, acting with at least no interference by that neighboring State?

Very limited, localized military responses along with serious diplomatic efforts oriented toward the Syrians, with whom they still have outstanding territorial disputes, and the UN.  Hezbollah is harmful, but can be born for a while longer.  Israel should also fortify the northern border to keep out raiding parties.  

They simply have to regain some international legitimacy because, right now, outside of the United States, they have none.

I understand that you belive that an effective Lebanese government would forestall this problem, and perhaps it would; but I'd submit that the Israelis may not be inclined to wait two decades for this dispute to clear up.

I understand, too, but don't think they have much choice, either.  All of their other options are worse, which is why the Israelis ought to be very reluctant to reach for the sword, and not grab it as a first resort.  There will still be Shiites in Lebanon in twenty or thirty years, and God willing, there will still be Jews in Israel, too.  This is a long-term problem.

I don't have much hope, really.  The antagonists can't win, and can't stop fighting.  So the dreary conflict just drags on and on.