Freedom's Fidelity

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Asymmetrical Civilization

Recently returning Israeli soldiers describe fighting against Hezbollah. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but in light of some comments I made yesterday I took particular note of this passage:

Another soldier said that serving in the Palestinian militant stronghold of Jenin in the West Bank, as he had, was nothing compared with fighting Hezbollah's guerrillas. "It was horrible," he said. "You don't know what it's like, with every second a rocket- propelled grenade shooting over your head."

A third soldier said: "All the time, they fired missiles at us. They never come face to face, just missiles. When we find them we kill them. It's just not right, the way we are doing it. Our air force can just bomb villages and not risk our lives fighting over there."

So why doesn't Israel simply pound Hezbollah into submission from the safe distance of the air and not risk soldiers' lives? And the answer of course, is because they are doing their best to prevent civilian casualties in Lebanon even if it means a marked increase in the risk of their own soldiers' lives and of their own civilian population. Every day that the war drags on is another day that Hezbollah has to rain missiles down on Israel.

Got that? One side is purposefully targeting civilians. The other side is taking on more risk to her own civilians and soldiers to preserve at least some modicum of civility.

Yet, guess which side catches the brunt of criticism from the international intelligentsia.

Absurd.

posted by Paul  permalink | |