Saturday, July 22, 2006

Proportionality? Preposterous!

Over the last two weeks, as Israel has responded aggressively to the murder and kidnapping of its soldiers, some world leaders have wrung their hands and whined loudly about proportionality. Obviously, these world leaders never saw military service or, if they did, they were never trained for combat.

Proportionality belongs in the realm of art and "touchy-feely" encounter groups. In the real world, if I am threatened, or my family is threatened, I don't believe that I will worry about whether my response is viewed as proportional to the threat. Israel should not either.

In the real world, a war is prosecuted to a successful conclusion only by utterly removing the will of the enemy to fight by inflicting as much pain as necessary to make continued aggression undesirable. This is the tack that I hope Israel takes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

For those liberals who are suddenly concerned with the plight of Lebanese civilians, the question du jour is "why then weren't you proactive in demanding that Syria and Iran stop supplying Hezbollah with weapons that could be used to attack Israel?". Last I checked, Hezbollah had not been given the authority by the Lebanese government to defend its borders.

Let's get a reality check here. As a good acquaintance has put it, if the Palestinians lay down their arms, they get peace. If Israel lays down its arms, it gets annihilated.