Category Archives: Islam

Lebanon & The Partisan Punditocracy

Islam, Israel, Lebanon, Terrorism, War

Once again, American pundits have fallen into camps on the matter of Israel’s leveling of Lebanon. With few exceptions (mostly in the silenced libertarian camp), the issues remain unexamined; everyone is a hack, rooting for a party to the conflict, and ignoring the principles being sacrificed in the process.

The “argument” I most detest—a holdover from that theater of triumphs, Iraq—is the false dichotomy set-up: “What would you have done in Israel’s position?” the custodians of intellectual debate ask plaintively (and deceptively).

How about not destroy an entire (rather modern and open) society, for starters?

Facetiousness aside, whereas in the US it has taken a couple of years for media malpractitioners to catch up with libertarian prescients vis-Ã -vis Iraq, Israelis are already saying exactly what I said in “Call Off the Israeli Air Force!“: precise, limited and delimited, ongoing strikes.

Writes Yoel Marcus in Ha’aretz, “Israel was right to launch Operation Change of Direction. The big mistake was in not limiting it to a reprisal raid with a time frame and specific dimensions.” A far cry from the crazed recommendations the “sofa samurais” in the US have been issuing.

As I’ve said, develop a different kind of warfare. Big, bloated armies of conscripts are no match for lean mean voluntary militia. Also fascinating about the robustness of debate in Israel is this: I wishfully wrote that the Israeli Air Force ought to have refused when it “was told to carry out air raids on Lebanese roads and residential real estate.” And sure enough, some magnificent men have shown such independent-minded judgment. Read about it in this Observer article, “Israeli Pilots Deliberately Miss Targets.”

Commentators often evince an astute ideological understanding of the conflict—one I may even share. But the notion, for instance, that Hezbollah is a Jihadist organization that would like to see Israel destroyed does nothing to address whether there is utility or justification in destroying Lebanon. (And by that I imply the need to use western precepts such as Just-War ethics and reason. We are fighting for the West, aren’t we? Or is that just a hollow slogan!?)

From believing Hezbollah is spearheading jihad, it does not follow that one ought to pummel Lebanon and kill many more innocents than guilty. Hezbollah, moreover, represents a small segment of the Lebanese population and government, contrary to the Palestinian Authority, where the jihad agenda is widely shared on the street and by the state apparatus.

The gains from the Israeli assault have been minute and probably temporary, as is evident from the steady stream of Hezbollah-powered rockets (140 just today) launched into Northern Israel. To claim Israel is effectively dealing with the guilty in Lebanon is pie-in-the-sky.

Again, it’s interesting that quite a few military men in Israel as opposed the armchair ideologues abroad, agree with the above propositions. In Israel’s defense, and in deference to that country’s people, the debate over this war there is already in full swing.

Here in the US, it’s still safer to shut up about the “miracle” in Mesopotamia and the Leader who led us there, Peace Be Upon Him.

Lebanon & The Partisan Punditocracy

Islam, Israel, Jihad, Just War, Lebanon, Terrorism, War

Once again, American pundits have fallen into camps on the matter of Israel’s leveling of Lebanon. With few exceptions (mostly in the silenced libertarian camp), the issues remain unexamined; everyone is a hack, rooting for a party to the conflict, and ignoring the principles being sacrificed in the process.

The “argument” I most detest—a holdover from that theater of triumphs, Iraq—is the false dichotomy set-up: “What would you have done in Israel’s position?” the custodians of intellectual debate ask plaintively (and deceptively).

How about not destroy an entire (rather modern and open) society, for starters?

Facetiousness aside, whereas in the US it has taken a couple of years for media malpractitioners to catch up with libertarian prescients vis-Ã -vis Iraq, Israelis are already saying exactly what I said in “Call Off the Israeli Air Force!“: precise, limited and delimited, ongoing strikes.

Writes Yoel Marcus in Ha’aretz, “Israel was right to launch Operation Change of Direction. The big mistake was in not limiting it to a reprisal raid with a time frame and specific dimensions.” A far cry from the crazed recommendations the “sofa samurais” in the US have been issuing.

As I’ve said, develop a different kind of warfare. Big, bloated armies of conscripts are no match for lean mean voluntary militia. Also fascinating about the robustness of debate in Israel is this: I wishfully wrote that the Israeli Air Force ought to have refused when it “was told to carry out air raids on Lebanese roads and residential real estate.” And sure enough, some magnificent men have shown such independent-minded judgment. Read about it in this Observer article, “Israeli Pilots Deliberately Miss Targets.”

Commentators often evince an astute ideological understanding of the conflict—one I may even share. But the notion, for instance, that Hezbollah is a Jihadist organization that would like to see Israel destroyed does nothing to address whether there is utility or justification in destroying Lebanon. (And by that I imply the need to use western precepts such as Just-War ethics and reason. We are fighting for the West, aren’t we? Or is that just a hollow slogan!?)

From believing Hezbollah is spearheading jihad, it does not follow that one ought to pummel Lebanon and kill many more innocents than guilty. Hezbollah, moreover, represents a small segment of the Lebanese population and government, contrary to the Palestinian Authority, where the jihad agenda is widely shared on the street and by the state apparatus.

The gains from the Israeli assault have been minute and probably temporary, as is evident from the steady stream of Hezbollah-powered rockets (140 just today) launched into Northern Israel. To claim Israel is effectively dealing with the guilty in Lebanon is pie-in-the-sky.

Again, it’s interesting that quite a few military men in Israel as opposed the armchair ideologues abroad, agree with the above propositions. In Israel’s defense, and in deference to that country’s people, the debate over this war there is already in full swing.

Here in the US, it’s still safer to shut up about the “miracle” in Mesopotamia and the Leader who led us there, Peace Be Upon Him.

Israel’s War is Not Ours

Islam, Israel, Middle East, Neoconservatism, War

It’s ominous to hear prominent American neoconservatives speak of Israel’s war as our own and the conflagration in the region as the commencement of WWIII. “What’s under attack,” writes William Kristol, “is liberal democratic civilization.”

It’s ominous but not surprising. Hyping a war as a symbolic war gives it momentum—and facilitates its expansion beyond regional confines.

Iran and Syria’s involvement in instigating the recent aggression against Israel is, moreover, hard to ascertain. We know only that both countries are “paymasters” to Hezbollah and Hamas; we have no way of knowing they ordered the attacks, which were, incidentally, the culmination of ongoing and incessant aggression against Israel.

Even if Iran and Syria ordered the hostilities, it by no means warrants an American intervention on Israel’s behalf. It falls to that presumably sovereign country to defend herself, as she is quite capable of doing.

Israelis, as I’ve contended for a while, are stupid and rudderless. To their great credit, this idiocy is because they are no longer a pioneer nation, but a modern people. They want to get on with the productive business of making money and having fun. They would rather head for the beach than the battlefront. Conversely, too many Arabs are still stuck in that pre-modern destructive phase, which accounts for their zeal, savagery, and affinity for terror as a way of life.

(Classical liberal economist Ludwig von Mises didn’t go as far as to say that the “Mohammedan countries” were barbaric, but he did genteelly point out that there was a reason the East—far and near—had not contributed anything to “the intellectual effort of mankind” for centuries. You cannot force the culture of freedom and individual rights where it never arose, and where the legal framework that would protect private wealth and guard against confiscation by the rulers is missing.)

In their stupidity, Israelis have conflated America’s unlimited worldwide war on terror with their narrowly delimited battle for survival, conducted since the inception of the Jewish State. Kristol, in particular, argues that Israel’s battle has morphed from an “Arab-Israeli conflict” to an “Islamist-Israeli war.” Maybe so, but it’s still the same struggle for survival—one that is diminished and tainted by the Israeli leadership’s insistence on hitching their cause to the American crusade.

Of course, Kristol’s formulation lends itself nicely to the notion that we must help Israelis in their war. A coherent recognition that Israel is engaged in a just war against war lords that seek her demise is one thing—it has moral clarity. The same moral suasion ought to ensure we avoid mistaking Hamas and Hezbollah’s relative military weakness for moral innocence. The policy prescriptions that we ought to follow are another matter entirely.

Neoconservatives tend to make artificial ideological distinctions, such as Israel’s “old” war with the Arabs vs. her “new” war with “Islamofascists.” These distinctions appear to help conflate our own interests with Israel’s. As far as I can see, Palestinians and their leaders have always channeled Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem. Al-Husseini, Arafat’s hero, “supported the Nazis, and especially their program for the mass murder of the Jews. He visited numerous death camps and encouraged Hitler to extend the ‘Final Solution’ to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine.” How Hamas and Hezbollah’s enterprise differs from his quest, bequeathed to Arafat, is unclear to me.

What I am clear on is the imperative not to be swept up with the neoconservative’s total-war talk.

Israel's War is Not Ours

Islam, Israel, Middle East, Neoconservatism, War

It’s ominous to hear prominent American neoconservatives speak of Israel’s war as our own and the conflagration in the region as the commencement of WWIII. “What’s under attack,” writes William Kristol, “is liberal democratic civilization.”

It’s ominous but not surprising. Hyping a war as a symbolic war gives it momentum—and facilitates its expansion beyond regional confines.

Iran and Syria’s involvement in instigating the recent aggression against Israel is, moreover, hard to ascertain. We know only that both countries are “paymasters” to Hezbollah and Hamas; we have no way of knowing they ordered the attacks, which were, incidentally, the culmination of ongoing and incessant aggression against Israel.

Even if Iran and Syria ordered the hostilities, it by no means warrants an American intervention on Israel’s behalf. It falls to that presumably sovereign country to defend herself, as she is quite capable of doing.

Israelis, as I’ve contended for a while, are stupid and rudderless. To their great credit, this idiocy is because they are no longer a pioneer nation, but a modern people. They want to get on with the productive business of making money and having fun. They would rather head for the beach than the battlefront. Conversely, too many Arabs are still stuck in that pre-modern destructive phase, which accounts for their zeal, savagery, and affinity for terror as a way of life.

(Classical liberal economist Ludwig von Mises didn’t go as far as to say that the “Mohammedan countries” were barbaric, but he did genteelly point out that there was a reason the East—far and near—had not contributed anything to “the intellectual effort of mankind” for centuries. You cannot force the culture of freedom and individual rights where it never arose, and where the legal framework that would protect private wealth and guard against confiscation by the rulers is missing.)

In their stupidity, Israelis have conflated America’s unlimited worldwide war on terror with their narrowly delimited battle for survival, conducted since the inception of the Jewish State. Kristol, in particular, argues that Israel’s battle has morphed from an “Arab-Israeli conflict” to an “Islamist-Israeli war.” Maybe so, but it’s still the same struggle for survival—one that is diminished and tainted by the Israeli leadership’s insistence on hitching their cause to the American crusade.

Of course, Kristol’s formulation lends itself nicely to the notion that we must help Israelis in their war. A coherent recognition that Israel is engaged in a just war against war lords that seek her demise is one thing—it has moral clarity. The same moral suasion ought to ensure we avoid mistaking Hamas and Hezbollah’s relative military weakness for moral innocence. The policy prescriptions that we ought to follow are another matter entirely.

Neoconservatives tend to make artificial ideological distinctions, such as Israel’s “old” war with the Arabs vs. her “new” war with “Islamofascists.” These distinctions appear to help conflate our own interests with Israel’s. As far as I can see, Palestinians and their leaders have always channeled Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem. Al-Husseini, Arafat’s hero, “supported the Nazis, and especially their program for the mass murder of the Jews. He visited numerous death camps and encouraged Hitler to extend the ‘Final Solution’ to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine.” How Hamas and Hezbollah’s enterprise differs from his quest, bequeathed to Arafat, is unclear to me.

What I am clear on is the imperative not to be swept up with the neoconservative’s total-war talk.