Obsidian Wings

The Next Step

by Andrew

I suppose the administration's latest request of Congress was to be expected. Alberto Gonzales wants Congress to give American personnel special protection against the War Crimes Act of 1996. It turns out that Congress made it a criminal offense for soldiers to violate the Geneva Conventions, including the potential use of the death penalty when detainees die in U.S. custody. What with the Supreme Court deciding that Geneva applies to anyone we capture, that means that U.S. personnel involved with their interrogations could face criminal charges. Since the Bush administration wants to avoid the rather unpleasant spectacle of U.S. soldiers going before courts-martial and testifying that their actions were in keeping with their instructions, they want Congress to change the law.

This is the natural result of the Bush administration's attempts to skirt the very edge of the law in order to prosecute this war. In their zeal to extract information from captives, the administration pushed hard to eliminate any protections for the captives the U.S. took, actions which led to the kinds of abuses we saw chronicled at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and which have severely undermined (not to say eradicated) the U.S.'s ability to claim the moral high ground in this war. Indeed, in a war where 35 detainees have died in U.S. custody, it would seem we've killed more captives than the enemy has to date, an appalling and shameful record. And now that these actions have come to light, the administration still wants Congress to protect it from the consequences of those actions.

I have no desire to see U.S. personnel prosecuted for actions they took that they were told were legal. I would like to believe that, had I been told to apply interrogations techniques like waterboarding, I would have the courage to stand up and say no, although the Milgram experiments suggest that humanity has a sad tendency to go with the flow in such cases and I have no reason to believe I'm markedly superior to the rest of humanity. I'm sure that a number of the interrogators did what they did because they were assured (as Katherine noted several days ago) that it was all nice and legal. But that doesn't change the fact that many (most?) of the techniques being employed were improper, and the people who employed them should face the consequences of those actions. If that means (as it almost certainly will) that people who made an honest mistake face criminal sanction, that's unfortunate but not unfortunate enough to relieve them of responsibility for those actions.

What is truly unfortunate, however, is that the people who originated these policies will not have to face still worse consequences for their actions. If an interrogator was wrong for using waterboarding to extract information, how much more wrong were the senior personnel who approved such techniques? Once upon a time, officers were expected to face much more serious penalties than enlisted personnel for similar misconduct. A transgression that might rate only a slap on the wrist for a common soldier could be cause for the discharge (or worse) of an officer, because officers were held to higher standards commensurate with the greater responsibility they were expected to wield. That tradition seems to have gone the way of the dodo, as to the best of my knowledge the highest ranking person to be convicted for any misconduct in the war to date has been a Captain, while senior officers like COL Karpinsky escaped almost scot-free. (Not to mention the civilian leadership, but let's face it, who's going to go after them?)

The Bush administration has sown the wind. It's time they reaped the whirlwind.

No Exit

by von

THE WORDS OF Kofi Annan, Wednesday:

In a statement, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting" of the "clearly marked U.N. post at Khiyam." Annan said Olmert had given him "personal assurances" that U.N. posts would not be targeted, adding that the UNIFIL commander had been in "repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular U.N. position from attack."

The words of the Dead, today:

The words of a Canadian United Nations observer written just days before he was killed in an Israeli bombing of a UN post in Lebanon are evidence Hezbollah was using the post as a "shield" to fire rockets into Israel, says a former UN commander in Bosnia.

....

The strike hit the UN observation post in the southern Lebanese village of El Khiam, killing Canadian Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener and three others serving as unarmed UN military observers in the area.

Just last week, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener wrote an e-mail about his experiences after nine months in the area, words Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie said are an obvious allusion to Hezbollah tactics.

"What I can tell you is this," he wrote in an e-mail to CTV dated July 18. "We have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both (Israeli) artillery and aerial bombing.

"The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity."

Those words, particularly the last sentence, are not-so-veiled language indicating Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets near the post, said Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie.

"What that means is, in plain English, 'We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defence Forces)," he said.

That would mean Hezbollah was purposely setting up near the UN post, he added. It's a tactic Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie, who was the first UN commander in Sarajevo during the Bosnia civil war, said he's seen in past international missions: Aside from UN posts, fighters would set up near hospitals, mosques and orphanages.

....

The UN post, he wrote in the e-mail, afforded a view of the "Hezbollah static positions in and around our patrol Base."

"It appears that the lion's share of fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah has taken place in our area," he wrote, noting later it was too dangerous to venture out on patrols.

The e-mail appears to contradict the UN's claim there had been no Hezbollah activity in the vicinity of the strike.

Minor Celebrity!

by hilzoy

Look what Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon did:

"I was so amused by the fact that Muir showed up at Hilzoy’s place in an attempt to defend himself and failed miserably that I decided to recaption mine so that the dialogue is all from that thread. Muir is played by the gray-haired fellow and Hilzoy by the red-headed lady."

Suddenly, I feel I've really arrived as a blogger. Now I just need to work on getting my back to talk.

Not About Lebanon!

by hilzoy

This is your official non-Lebanon open thread. A few tidbits to get you started:

First, Michael O'Hare's invaluable guide to dealing with heat. Besides awnings/blinds and fluorescent bulbs (which you all have anyways, right? right???, the invaluable fan set to exhaust trick:

"Dump the hot air out of your house in the evening! This is done with a window fan installed in the top (preferably) of a window, in a room where you will mind the noise least, usually a guest room or the kitchen, running to blow out. If you can put it on the second floor, you will exhaust the hottest air in the house and convection helps you. (Don't use a window facing your prevailing wind, though!) It is much more efficient at moving air through the house set to exhaust, and the incoming air in other rooms won't stir up all the papers on your desk. We successfully used two of the $20 box fans you can find at the hardware store for my daughter's LA apartment, mounted in a plywood panel, but you will probably be happier with something more expensive, like 3C614 or 4TM66 from Grainger. I use one 3500 cfm fan in a four bedroom house in Berkeley successfully.

Mounting this fan can require some tools and improvisation; you want it inside the window so the window can be opened and closed without removing it. You can't just put it on a table pointing vaguely at an open window, but it doesn't need to seal perfectly around the sides; the outgoing jet will actually induce some additional air flow around the edges by the Venturi effect. Remove the insect screen from this window, it greatly impedes the fan's performance (the coarse grid that keeps fingers and the cat out is not a problem).

The fan needs to be managed as well. Turn it on in the late afternoon or evening, as soon as the outside temperature is below the inside. Partly open a window in each of the rooms you want to occupy, for example, the living room and bedroom (the total open area of these inlet windows should be about two to three times the area of the fan, . Each of these will generate a jet of nice cool air perpendicular to its opening (you cannot steer this jet by the direction you are sucking from) that's nice to sit or sleep in front of. In the morning, turn it off, close the windows to keep out as much hot daytime air as possible, check the shades, turn off all the electrical devices you can, especially lighting, and go to work or the beach.

I cannot overemphasize how much cheaper and more environmentally responsible a fan is than air conditioning, nor how much more effective it is than most people realize if used properly. A small air conditioner for one room draws five times as much electricity as a 3500 cfm exhaust fan."

Second, I closed on the house I was selling yesterday. Hooray! Back to being a one-home person (and, mercifully, down from three loans to two, and back down again to one as soon as the relevant checks clear.) (Mortgage 1, mortgage 2, bridge financing.)

Third: via Brad DeLong, I see that Nouriel Roubini now thinks that there's a 50% chance of an outright recession next year. And since there are some scary aspects to the economy -- huge amounts of consumer debt; a housing market that has (trust me on this!) started to go soft, meaning that consumers will therefore no longer be able to refinance their way to higher spending as in the past; skyrocketing oil prices; and the always scary federal and trade deficits -- I find this rather scary.

So: how hot is it where you are?

Asymmetric Warfare

By Sebastian

Discussions about rules of warfare tend to mix and muddle the reasoning behind such rules.  A classic example of this is can be found here at CrookedTimber. 

Of course the reason people don’t line up to be shot at, wearing proper uniforms, distinguishing themselves from the civilian population, and so on, is that it would be suicidal so to do. And here lies a real difficulty for conventional just war theory. If recourse to war is sometimes just—and just war theory says it is—but it may only be justly fought within the jus in bello restrictions, then it looks as if an important means to pursue justice is open to the strong alone and not to the weak. Faced with a professional army equipped with powerful weaponry, people who want to fight back have no chance unless they melt into the civilian population and adopt unconventional tactics. If those tactics are morally impermissible because of the risks they impose on non-combatants, then it looks as if armed resistance to severe injustice perpetrated by the well-equipped and powerful is also prohibited. And that looks crazy.

The Ethics of War (eds Sorabji and Rodin). Rodin proposes to address the problem by strengthening the jus in bello constraints on the strong. In particular he suggests that they be restrained from attacking “grey area” targets (targets that have potentially military uses by serve important civilian functions, such as TV stations, and power plants), that before an attack is authorised they be required to establish with a far higher degree of certainty than at present that a proposed target is indeed legitimate, and, third, that they be made to take “exceptionally rigourous” steps to ensure that civilians are not exposed to collateral harm and also to ensure that the environment in which those civilian live is not damaged and degraded.

Needless to say this is a problem that is simply ignored by the many blogs that drone on incessantly about jus in bello violations by the weak (and, in the face of those violations, parrot the synthetic moral outrage of the spokespeople for strong states). On the other side, though, it hardly seems to be satisfactory to say that non-conventional forces should be subject to weakened jus in bello restrictions, since the restrictions are there to protect those who have immunity from attack and whose immunity is not removed or diminished by the fact that one side or the other are militarily disadvantaged. So I was interested to read a recent paper by David Rodin, “The Ethics of Asymmetric War” in The Ethics of War (eds Sorabji and Rodin). Rodin proposes to address the problem by strengthening the jus in bello constraints on the strong.

The first error is in thinking that the rules of war are interested in the underlying justice claims of the combatants.  In many respects the Hague Conventions and Geneva Conventions are very pragmatic as originally designed.  If two sides are willing to go to war, it should be obvious that there is a serious disagreement between them about the underlying justice claims.  This is not to say that it is impossible that one side may be objectively correct when analyzed from the outside.  The rules of warfare don't address that because they are intended to cover the people who are engaging in warfare against each other--people who are in disagreement about the just resolution to the underlying cause or causes of the war. 

The rules of warfare are not about getting to the most just resolution.  The fact that a more just but weaker force will often lose to an unjust but stronger force is a different philosophical problem entirely.  The rules of warfare are meant to apply to both sides, with members on each side presumably believing that their own side is in the right.  Given that, the question the rules of war tries to resolve is what kinds of tactics are permissible. 

Since the Hague Conventions, the rules of warfare have tended to have two organizing principles:  First that war should be conducted between combatants and second that war methods should be proportional to their aims.  These two principles are sometimes called "non-combatant immunity" and "proportionality".  I will use these terms because they are the proper terms of art, but I want to take special note of the fact that they are specialized terms.  Interpreting them as general terms--outside their special meaning--tends to confuse things.  This confusion is especially great with respect to "proportionality".  In the laws of warfare context it should not conjure the idea of a tit-for-tat response structure, but rather whether or not the means is justly related to the ends.  The term "non-combatant immunity" can also cause confusion.  It does not mean that non-combatants can never be injured in war.  It means that they are not to be targeted in war. 

These principles lead to a number of secondary issues (only some of which I will be addressing).  The most difficult for current purposes is the principle of distinction.  In order to facilitate non-combatant immunity by allowing the combatants to identify and target one another, the Hague Conventions, Geneva Conventions, and other codifications of the laws of war outline a large number of things that are supposed to separate combatants from non-combatants.  These include identification schemes (uniforms and symbols on vehicles), fairly rigid organizational schemes (so that there is someone to negotiate an end to hostilities), and spatial rules (so that military targets may be targeted by the enemy without unduly endangering civilian objects).  All of these rules are designed to minimize civilian casualties by allowing the combatants to focus on fighting only one another. 

Modern asymmetric warfare is about turning the rules of non-combatant immunity and proportionality on their heads.   Guerrillas tend to target civilians and civilian objects.  Their attacks are often linked to no military objective.  They tend to wear no distinguishing uniform and they often place their military targets in or next to civilians and civilian objects.  Everything they do gravely endangers civilians on both sides.  This strategy serves a number of purposes.  It protects their own fighters by making them difficult to target.  It allows propaganda victories whenever they kill civilians on the other side.  It allows propaganda victories whenever civilians near them are killed. 

Killing civilians (on both sides of the conflict) is not a side effect of trying to hide from the enemy.  It is the most important positive strategy of asymmetric warfare. As a result of these practices, civilians are placed in much more danger than they would otherwise face.

Rodin's proposal (and I believe from his post that Bertram endorses it) would have a number of negative effects. 

First, and in my mind most importantly, it would dramatically extend the length of wars.  Fighting guerrillas is already very tough, and the proposal to severely curtail attacks on mixed targets would make it even more difficult.  This (combined with the often loose organizational structure found in many guerrilla groups) would make negotiated settlements or surrenders very unlikely.  The wars can (and do) continue across many generations.  This isn't good for civilians. 

Second, it would reinforce the already existing impulse to mix military and civilian targets.  If you give extra-special protection to mixed targets, you are directly incentivizing the co-location of military and civilian targets.  This will tend to be very bad for civilians in the long run unless you completely ban attacks on mixed targets, in which case you lead directly into the indefinite war scenario I outlined above. 

Third, it gives no incentive to engage with combatants on the other side.  Why fight soldiers who can fight back?  You can attack civilians exclusively and retreat to your mixed civilian/military sites with impunity. 

Fourth, it gives state actors an even greater incentive to engage in proxy wars with guerrillas as their soldiers.  Warfare with non-state guerrillas is bad enough, but thought not to be as dangerous because they don't have regular access to the weapons that only states can produce.  If you combine them with state sponsorship, they become much more dangerous to civilians because they have access to the weaponry of a state war but fail to respect non-combatant immunity. 

Fifth, and perhaps as important as the first, it directly plays into the propaganda war that the guerrillas want to play.  It not only reinforces the tactical need for safety, it helps the strategic goal of propaganda--if mixed targets are offered heightened protection when used by guerrillas as opposed to regular military then any civilian deaths (or combatant deaths that can be reported as civilian deaths) have even greater propaganda impact. 

I'm not certain how to best approach the problem of fighting an asymmetric opponent, but I'm certain that strengthening his strengths and shoring up his weaknesses isn't the ideal way to go about it.

I suspect that one effective technique would be to directly play the propaganda about civilians deaths by highlighting how the guerrilla put them in danger.  It is in this that I believe Israel is failing in its current offensive.  It would be immensely useful to be able to say--for every single target--"Hezbollah endangered people thusly".  (This seems to be true of the 4 UN deaths.  Hezbollah appears to have been using the UN station as cover.  If true, this is the angle that should be trumpeted to the heavens by Israel.)

It isn't a full answer, so...

[Conclusion Deliberately Left Blank]

See also this article at Quando.net.  One interesting but depressing suggestion is that if Hezbollah cannot be dealt with soon, the IDF will have to have a spin off a similarly unaccountable militia group to fight it. 

Yet Another Post On Lebanon

by hilzoy

I want to start by making, as clearly as I can, a point I've been making in comments, namely:

It is not OK, when arguing about what Israel should do, to say something like: do you expect them to accept Hezbollah's presence, with rockets, just over the border? You need to show that there is some way in which Israel could actually root out Hezbollah. If there is nothing Israel can do about the presence of Hezbollah, then the answer to the question "do you expect them to just accept it?" is: well, they can accept it, or rage against it, or adopt any attitude they like, but apparently they can't do anything to change this situation. And if there is nothing they can do, then the choice between (a) a course of action that does not root out Hezbollah, but that does kill hundreds of people, send hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives, inflict billions of dollars in damage, and risk toppling a very fragile democracy that, while imperfect, is better than a lot of other possibilities, and (b) a course of action that also fails to root out Hezbollah, but that has none of these consequences, seems to me pretty clear.*

I do not believe that Israel's actions will stop Hezbollah from firing rockets at Israel. I have three sets of reasons for thinking this. First, nothing in my reading of history leads me to believe that when you're fighting an insurgency with serious popular support, and a source of weapons and funding just across a long and porous border, killing a lot of people actually helps. (Establishing that you will respond to attacks does help, as a deterrent; that's why I supported the first day or two of bombings. Everything after that point, however, cannot be justified by the need to establish that kidnapping soldiers will have serious consequences. That point has already been made.) That killing a lot of people will not help to root out an insurgency is especially true when you're unwilling to occupy the country in which the insurgents are to be found. Second, I assume that if it were possible to wipe out Hezbollah, then the IDF would have done so during the 18 years when it occupied southern Lebanon. The fact that it did not succeed then makes me think that it is unlikely to succeed now, when it is not occupying the country. Third, Andrew doesn't think it's possible now, and he knows a lot more about this than I do; and other military analysts agree with him.

What it will do, aside from causing enormous amounts of destruction, is turn people who might have opposed Hezbollah into supporters, and people who might have supported getting along with Israel into Israel's enemies. In comments, several people have described this set of concerns as 'not wanting to upset the terrorists'. So let me be very clear about it: this is not a matter of thinking: oooh, Israel shouldn't do anything that would offend the tender feelings of terrorists! I am not, in the first instance, concerned about what the terrorists think. [Note added about a minute after posting: This is in the first instance. I can get interested in the views of terrorists later; they're just not my most immediate concern.] I am, however, greatly concerned about what Lebanese who were not members of Hezbollah before this crisis erupted think. The reason I care about this is not because I am worried about their having hurt feelings, or not liking us, or anything like that. I am worried that someone who might otherwise not have supported Hezbollah will strap a bomb to his body and blow people up; that someone who might otherwise have turned Hezbollah members in to the Lebanese government might allow them to operate with impunity instead; or that the Lebanese government might become unable to consider various courses of action that would enhance the prospects of peace with Israel because, after this bombing, any attempt at reconciliation would strike too many people as appeasement or capitulation, and reject any government that tried to make them.

No one who cares about the interests either of Israel or of Lebanon could regard any of these outcomes as not worth taking seriously.

One might think that this campaign might end up rooting out Hezbollah in the following way: Israel degrades Hezbollah's capabilities, and occupies some part of southern Lebanon until the arrival of an international force. That international force then disarms Hezbollah, and continues to occupy southern Lebanon until the government in Lebanon is strong enough to control its own territory. If that government is willing to keep Hezbollah from rearming, the international force then leaves, and Israel is secure. I am somewhat skeptical of this, for several reasons. First, the Israeli army is one of the best in the world, and, as I said, they had eighteen years in which to disarm Hezbollah. I don't see any reason why a multinational force should succeed where Israel failed.

Second, it is not at all clear to me that this force will have the requisite mandate. Disarming Hezbollah against its will would, essentially, mean going to war with Hezbollah. It's worth asking: why would any country sign its army up to do this? In fact, it's not clear that many countries are:

"The United States has ruled out its soldiers’ participating, NATO says it is overstretched, Britain feels its troops are overcommitted and Germany says it is willing to participate only if Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that it would police, agrees to it, a highly unlikely development.

“All the politicians are saying, ‘Great, great’ to the idea of a force, but no one is saying whose soldiers will be on the ground,” said one senior European official. “Everyone will volunteer to be in charge of the logistics in Cyprus.” (...)

Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, laid out the goals in a meeting on Sunday with senior officials of the British, German and French governments. Ms. Livni told them that Israel’s goal was to disarm Hezbollah and that either the Israeli Army or an international force would have to do it, said officials from those four countries who were familiar with the discussion at the meeting.

By contrast, the Europeans, including Britain, France and Germany, envision a much less robust international buffer force, one that would follow a cease-fire and operate with the consent of the Lebanese government in southern Lebanon.

Such a situation would mean that Hezbollah, which is part of the Lebanese government, would be part of a decision that led to its own disarming and the protection of Israel, which the Europeans see as far-fetched."

There are, of course, non-European possibilities. Some of them are not good enough to take on Hezbollah, and those that are will probably demand some interesting payback in return for their participation. For instance:

"Condi might ask the Turks to jump in. This has certain uncomfortable historical overtones (call it the return of the Ottomans) but the Turkish Army is pretty good and might actually be able to handle the job, if anyone can. But one imagines that before the Turks agreed to do any such thing, they would name their price. And if I were the Kurds, I'd be a little nervous about that."

So would I.

If the multinational force does not have robust rules of engagement -- the sort that would allow it to forcibly disarm Hezbollah -- then it will be another peacekeeping force, able at best to watch and see whether Hezbollah actually strikes Israel, but not able to actually disarm it. And that would prevent this scenario from bringing about the end of Hezbollah.

Third, I do not believe that any democratically elected Lebanese government will be able to prevent Hezbollah from rearming for quite some time. This was not necessarily true before the current crisis. It was certainly not true during its first couple of days, when there were a lot of reports of Lebanese anger at Hezbollah's having unilaterally dragged them into a war. But it is true now.

***

If we're going to argue about this, let's at least recognize that we are not living in a world in which any state of affairs we might want is achievable. Stopping Hezbollah from firing rockets is difficult. Katyushas are nine or ten feet long, which makes them a lot easier to smuggle and to conceal than, say, your average ICBM. They can be fired from any hard surface, using a pipe and a car battery. Hezbollah has hidden them all over southern Lebanon, and they would not be hard to smuggle in from Syria. A force with popular support -- say, the army of a popular Lebanese government -- might be able to keep actions against Israel to a minimum, if not to stop them altogether. But an unpopular occupying force, whether Israeli or multinational, probably will not, even if it does have the right mandate and rules of engagement.

If you think I'm wrong about this, then argue with me. But don't just ask me whether Israel is supposed to just accept the presence of people willing to use rockets on the other side of the border, without explaining what alternative there is. And don't say that Israel has to do what it's doing since it was attacked, without being willing to explain why exactly you think that Israel's actions will in fact make it more secure.

***

*Update: The choice between two courses of action that have identical outcomes save for the fact that one kills hundreds of people, and so forth, is presumably clear. One might object, however, that this isn't the choice Israel actually faces. They will presumably degrade Hezbollah's capacity to some extent, and it might take some time to rearm.

I do not, myself, think that hundreds of lives, over a thousand wounded, 800,000 fleeing for their lives, and hundreds of billions in damages is a remotely OK price to pay for the few months that it would take Hezbollah to rearm and reconstitute itself. If you look at this handy chart of Hezbollah attacks (h/t d+u), there are a bunch of periods lasting around six months with no Hezbollah attacks on Israel; attacks seem to have come at a rate of three or four a year. That is, obviously, three or four too many; but it also means that if Hezbollah regroups and starts attacking again, that will be more or less what one would expect to have happened had Israel just tried to respond in a way serious enough to serve as a deterrent, without going on to trash the country.

Slogans

by von

GLENN REYNOLDS, BLOGFATHER:

"DIPLOMACY is the art of saying 'nice doggie' while reaching for a stick." Condi is saying 'nice doggie.' Israel is the stick.

One may disapprove of this strategy, but complaints that Condi isn't accomplishing anything merely indicate that the complainer doesn't know what's going on.

I don't mean to beat up on Reynolds -- though I suppose that two makes a trend.  This comment, however, is unbelievably foolish both in general and as applied to the crisis du jour. 

First, if we're going to put this in Cesar Millan terms, diplomacy is not "the art of saying 'nice doggie' while reaching for a stick." Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggie while holding a stick.  Indeed, one of my long-term criticisms of this Administration's foreign policy is its fundamental inability to distinguish the sticks we hold from the sticks we don't.  It's also a failing of several prominent warbloggers, including Reynolds.  (A more extreme example is Wretchard at the Belmont Club.)

Second, Israel is not a stick we're reaching for, nor is it a stick that we already hold.  It is a stick that is being currently wielded by itself, Sorcerer's Apprentice style, to go smashy-smashy-smashy.  Now, make no mistake:  Israel has the right to go smashy-smashy and, despite my misgivings regarding the strategy, I wouldn't stop them yet. But when Reynolds talks about reaching for stick-Israel, he's not describing this world.  He's describing some alternate universe in which we have a helluva lot more options than we do. 

And so endeth the rant, but for this:  I find it mind numbing to see such unseriousness expressed with so much force (and be so popular).  Foreign policy is not a bad bout of the Thunderdome; nor is there any inherent strength to taking the most aggressive position possible; nor, importantly, is the most aggressive position usually the strongest position.  Indeed, the inability to differentiate aggression from strength seems to be a near-constant failing of certain folks.  I do realize that it can feel pretty good to lead with your testicles (real or metaphorical) in the privacy of your home.  But it's not always the wisest move to do so in the outside world, where there are plenty of things for them to smash against. 

*     *     *     *     *

In any event, be sure to read Djerejian, who seems considerably less comfortable with Israel's strategy than I, and who also seems ready to have Ms. Rice intervene and try to stop the assault.  He's right on several points and, between him and Hilzoy, all my misgivings about the long-term consequences of Israel's strategy are expressed.  Nonetheless, I don't think it makes sense for Israel to stop quite yet, with soldiers in the field and actively engaged.  (More bombings of Beirut, however, are probably a bad idea.) 

Generally Speaking

by Andrew

Left-wingers all hate America, want to eliminate personal freedom in order to impose their own egalitarian ideas, drink lattes, are atheists who want to force everyone else to be atheists as well, and are Communist-wanna-bes.

Right-wingers all hate gays, want to keep women subservient to men, worship an ignorant and bigoted God, watch NASCAR, are ignorant of history and the world beyond the United States and want to impose theocracy on the United States.

I could go on, but I figure that should annoy the majority of readers sufficiently to make my point. If your politics trend left, you read my first paragraph and probably identified about five things wrong with it. If your politics trend right, you read my second paragraph and noted about six things wrong with it. But I'll wager that many conservative readers agreed with parts of the first paragraph, and that many liberal readers agreed with parts of the second paragraph. (And let's note here that many does not equal all; if you recognized both paragraphs as pure hogwash, more power to you.)

When you're a member of a group, it's easy to see the differences that differentiate you from your fellows. Conversely, when you're opposed to a group, it's easier to note the similarities between the 'other.' Indeed, while each of the paragraphs I used to start this discussion are parodies, there are hints of truth in each. I'd wager that atheists are more likely to lean left than right, and the reverse for Christians, for example. That's what makes the stereotypes so easy to adopt; you can probably find an example of them if you look hard enough.

And stereotypes are comforting. If the guy I disagree with is a genuinely good person who wants to do the right thing, then maybe my own position isn't as solid as I think. After all, the other guy has access to the same information I do, yet he came to a different conclusion. Maybe that means that I'm wrong. That's rarely a comforting thought. It's a lot easier if the other guy's a scoundrel. He's a bad guy, his motives are base, and that's why he's come to that conclusion. Because, obviously, right-thinking people believe the way I do, right? If he doesn't, he must either be a fool or a genuinely bad person. That's a lot easier to believe, since it means I don't have to question my beliefs.

The problem is, stereotypes are rarely accurate in more than the broadest sense. While they may make it easier to understand the world around us, that understanding is flawed because it's based on a flawed belief. And if our premises are flawed, our conclusions are going to be wrong. That may seem like a blinding flash of the obvious, yet I see it all the time (and no doubt commit the same error myself without noticing it, since we're all much more able to see the mote in the other guy's eye than the log in our own). I see that Andrew Sullivan is after left-wingers at the moment for their silence on the fighting in Lebanon. One of his readers writes in to explain that the left is 'loaded with anti-Semitism,' a damning claim that Sullivan seems to endorse, at least for the antiwar left. Now I'm sure that, were I to look about the antiwar left, I could find some who hold anti-Semitic positions. But to tar the entire group with that brush is ridiculous and insulting. Yet it provides an easy way to 'understand' the other side, so on goes the pigeonholing.

We are not going to agree on everything [originally said anything, which was a typo]. No matter how long Hilzoy and I talk about it, she's unlikely to convince me that universal health care is a great idea, nor am I likely to convince her that we ought to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment. But the fact we're going to disagree doesn't mean that I have the right to ascribe views to her that she doesn't hold by assuming that because she's on the left, she must hold the normal panoply of left-wing views (whatever those are). Doing so only makes it so much less likely that we'll be able to come to agreement on areas where our views are closer, and it makes politics that much more virulent and vicious. I see so many claims that this election is more important than any other, and that we can't let the other side win because of the dire consequences it will have for the republic. And so the right savaged Clinton, and the left savages Bush, and the chances for reasonable discourse are greatly reduced.

After all, if the other side really is as venal as this side's partisans claim, how could we possibly coexist with them? If they really do all the awful things ascribed to them, then how can we not do whatever it takes to defeat them, to prevent them from causing further damage? And as the rhetoric escalates, so does the willingness of a few on each side to go further than rhetoric. This is not healthy for debate and it's outright bad for republican government that ultimately depends on the consent of the governed.

Are there some bad people on the other side? I've no doubt of it; our system of government guarantees that each side is going to have some people you'd prefer not to associate with. But there is a vast difference between noting that David Duke is a Republican or Al Sharpton is a Democrat and assuming that every Republican is like David Duke and every Democrat is like Al Sharpton.

I'm not suggesting we should take Rodney King's advice. We disagree sharply on many things,  politics is where we fight those battles, and that's just fine. But just because we disagree doesn't make the other side bad people. Reasonable people disagree all the time.

To borrow from the first American, Ben Franklin, perhaps we should all doubt a little of our own infallibility when we argue, and give our opponents the benefit of the doubt.

Not Yet

by von

Hilzoy writes (below) that "this has to stop" in Lebanon -- that, whatever justifications Israel may have had going into Lebanon, they're outweighed by the damage now being done to the nascent Lebanese democracy and to Lebanese civilians. 

However, the fact the Hezbollah is wrong does not mean that Israel is right; nor does the fact that Hezbollah started this mean that anything Israel does as a result is OK. If someone attacks you, there's a point at which your response crosses a line and stops being mere self-defense and becomes a horror of its own.

I actually agree that Israel's quasi-invasion of Lebanon was probably a strategic mistake (and it's not even clear, now, that it will be tactical success in the sense that it will significantly degrade Hizbollah's war machine). I also respect Hilzoy a great deal. But I think that she misstates the issue, and that her prescription -- STOP! -- is the wrong one.

Whether Israel's response is "proportionate" actually has two components.  The first is whether Israel's decision to attack Hizbollah was proportionate to its injuries -- e.g., the capture of two its soldiers, past rocket attacks too numerous to count, and the promise of future rocket attacks without end.  I think it quite obviously was, and I don't  hear Hilzoy to disagree.  It is true that Israel's response was unexpected -- check out this translation of an interview with Hizbollah's senior leadership (via Kos) -- but that's not the same thing.  And, as we'll discuss in a moment, the fact that Israel's response was unexpected is actually a point in its favor.

But there's a second aspect of proportionality, which is Hilzoy's real focus:  whether Israel is now using proportionate means to its end of eradicating Hizbollah.  Hilzoy says no.  I have to disagree.  Israel wanted to change the calculation of terrorism; the result of its "expected" response to Hizbollah's various provocations was more Israeli depths. That's a rational act, and one perfectly in line with Israel's right to defend itself. Hizbollah, that well-fed and -armed proxy for Iran, had declared war on Israel.  There is no wrong in Israel taking Hizbollah up on its offer -- even if Hizbollah was counting on Israel sitting this one out.

Having decided that it needed to mount a serious response to Hizbollah, there was every reason to make it a serious response.  You say, "Two wrongs don't make a right?"  Baby, you don't wanna mess with the platitudes I've got. Like: in for a dime, in for a dollar; don't start what you won't finish; don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

Israel's goal is to stop the attacks on it, which means that it must degrade Hizbollah's ability to wage war.  One can't do that without disrupting Hizbollah's supply chain, destroying command and control, and taking on Hizbollah's fighters. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how Israel could achieve its military goals without using its current, quite limited, tactics. Those who decry Israel's response as disprotionate are really saying that Israel's end -- stopping Hizbollah's rocket attacks -- is improper.  But that can't be true.  Surely a state has a right to fight those who wage war upon it.

Now, as I suggested, none of the above makes Israel's decision to launch these attacks a wise one.  Indeed -- to go back to the platitudinous well -- I see a strong possibility that this latest round will end up biting Israel in the butt.  Yet, having committed, leaving the job half done can't be an option. Worse than engaging in a bad policy would be to engage in a bad policy badly: we have learned that, have we not, from Iraq.  Israel has to play this one out.  The calls to withdraw are premature.

*    *    *    *    *

It also bears remembering exactly who Israel is fighting.  Indeed, it's good that we've dispensed with any analysis of comparative ethics because, of course, there is no comparison.  Hizbollah intentionally targets civilians. Moreover, as even Israel's critics now admit, Hizbollah's cowardly tactics are what are killing Lebanese civilians:

"Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," he said. "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men."

(H/T RedState.)

Hizbollah isn't interested in any kind of defense or resistence; it's interested in a publicity stunt, using dead Lebanese civilians as its advert. If we grant Israel a right to defend itself, we cannot hold it responsible for the evils of its adversary.

Lebanon: This Has To Stop.

by hilzoy

David Adesnik wonders why liberal bloggers aren't writing about Lebanon. In my case, it's the combination of unremitting gloom and vivid memories of the last time Israel invaded Lebanon, which I got to see from closer up than I wanted to. Whenever I sit down to try to write something about this, I find myself drowning in press coverage, each bit more depressing than the last, until eventually I just get up and do something else. Still, I have to write something, so here goes.

The continued bombardment of Lebanon is obscene, and it should stop now.

When I first wrote about this, I said that it was Hezbollah's fault. Israel had withdrawn from Lebanese territory, and Hezbollah crossed international boundaries and kidnapped their soldiers without provocation. I also said that Israel had a right to defend itself, which of course it does. My views about the Middle East tend to be complicated, but the one point I am absolutely clear on is that the rejectionists -- the people who would rather provoke a war than countenance some settlement that they view as inadequate -- are completely and utterly wrong. Hezbollah: that means you.

However, the fact the Hezbollah is wrong does not mean that Israel is right; nor does the fact that Hezbollah started this mean that anything Israel does as a result is OK. If someone attacks you, there's a point at which your response crosses a line and stops being mere self-defense and becomes a horror of its own. (There's your attacker, lying limply on the ground, and yet you go on slamming his head into the sidewalk over and over and over.) That's the point at which your friends, if they're around, should pull you off your attacker and say: for God's sake, stop, you're going to kill him! In my opinion, Israel crossed that line after the first couple of days of bombing; and the reason I wrote this post ten days ago was that I thought it was past time for Israel's friends intervene.

We should do this not just for the sake of the Lebanese, but for Israel. For reasons I tried to explain here, I think that the idea that this campaign will strike a decisive blow against Hezbollah -- let alone bring about its "complete defeat" -- is a fantasy. Moreover, it makes the only real long-term solution to this problem -- having a Lebanese state that is able and willing to police its border with Israel -- much more difficult than it was before. (And it was already quite difficult enough.) If I'm right, then whatever part of the Israeli campaign was not needed to show that there are large costs to kidnapping Israeli soldiers -- that is, most of it -- is pointless, and harms everyone involved for no reason.

And killing hundreds of people, wounding thousands, displacing nearly a million people, and inflicting damages that are now thought to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention basically destroying a country, for no good reason, is, as I said, obscene.

Israel should stop, and it should stop now.