Author: Charles Krauthammer
Publication: Washington Post
Date: July 28, 2006
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701725.html
What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked
aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown
clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless
of whether it has restored its own security?
What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate
rocket attacks into its cities -- every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize
civilians -- and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the
enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that
sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian
death and suffering?
To hear the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah
war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant
exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada
and a very few others), the world -- governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats
-- has completely lost its moral bearings.
The word that obviates all thinking and magically
inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate," as in the universally
decried "disproportionate Israeli response."
When the United States was attacked at Pearl
Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack
on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions
of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned
the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin.
Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly
attacked by an aggressor, one has every right -- legal and moral -- to carry
the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten
one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.
Britain was never invaded by Germany in World
War II. Did it respond to the Blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate"
aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest
air campaign and land invasion in history, which flattened and utterly destroyed
Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.
The perversity of today's international outcry
lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical
moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying
to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying
to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.
In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign
from the air since the London Blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli
cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can
penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim.
And they do.
But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents
must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must
also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides
its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among
civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty.
On Wednesday CNN cameras showed destruction
in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing.
But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa
are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites
that are deliberately placed in built-up areas?
Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian
infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first
hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back
Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead it attacked dual-use infrastructure
-- bridges, roads, airport runways -- and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent
the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten thousand Katyusha rockets
are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more.
Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to
use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no
desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have
leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight
against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets,
issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers
to evacuate so that they would not be harmed.
Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings
give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification
as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate
ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral
scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians
will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding
civilian life?
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