Category Archives: Just War

Updated Again: Webb Wallops W.

Bush, Iraq, Just War, War

Although “classless behavior” and George Bush are interchangeable (groping the German Chancellor was just one of many Bush vulgarities), the descriptive was applied, oddly enough, to his interlocutor, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA). A “pathetic story of classless behavior” is how Webb’s recent retort to George Bush has been described by some. Reports the Washington Post:

“At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia’s newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn’t long before Bush found him.

‘How’s your boy?’ Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

‘I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,’ Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

‘That’s not what I asked you,’ Bush said. ‘How’s your boy?’

‘That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,’ Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.”

Let’s rewind. You’d have to be a dedicated Bush bootlicker to misidentify the ignoble savage in this interaction.

Give Bush the benefit of the doubt and assume that, knowing Webb’s principled opposition to his invasion of Iraq, the president was still sincere in inquiring after Webb’s soldier son. (Bush is known as quite a spiteful and petulant man, so it’s not unreasonable to consider that he may also have been pushing Webb’s buttons.)

Webb then answered in a manner that comported with his convictions, yet still addressed Bush’s query politely (he was careful to call him “Mr. President”). What does the president do in response? He upbraids Webb and speaks down at him.

Append “boy” to end of “That’s not what I asked you,” and you get my drift ‘and Bush’s’ loud and clear.

Update: Here’s a likeminded appraisal of Jim Webb’s worth from Tom DiLorenzo, a man who has had the courage to take on a far more blood thirsty leader than Genghis Bush. My Mother, who doesn’t live on this continent, marveled the other day at how militaristic Americans are. That’s how foreigners experience us. Other American friends I have were aghast to learn that I think that, while Americans are very concerned about the well-being of fetuses, they are callous about the lives of fully formed human beings. Having experienced a couple of cultures during my life, that’s certainly been my abiding impression — there’s a glorification of death for the fatherland in the US. Scary.

Updated Again: It appears I was right. Being the bully he is, Bush was simply pushing Webb’s buttons. So reports ThinkProgress, which obtained its information from Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA):

“Bush was told that Webb’s son had a recent brush with death in Iraq and was warned to be ‘extra sensitive’ when talking to the Sen.-elect. ThinkProgress yesterday spoke with Moran’s office and confirmed the congressman’s statement, first reported by hcc in VA: Not only did Bush know about it, he was specifically briefed on the incident before meeting with Webb, and was cautioned to be extra sensitive in speaking with Webb about his son.”

I’ve always been a good judge of character. I don’t need to look into those beady, dead eyes to see the barren soul. A survey of Bush’s utterances and actions will suffice. Once again, Bush was being Bush.

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.

So, the 'Presstitutes' Can Tell Right from Wrong

Just War, Media

Brent Bozell pointed out this week that media coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah war has been quite fair, with few acknowledged exceptions.

I happen to agree with him this once.

It has become as clear as crystal that those who slept with their sources in the ramp up to war in Iraq actually know quite a bit about unbiased reporting. They understand the need to report both sides but to avoid moral equivalence between them; they get the necessity to warn viewers when they’ve been taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah. And they’re good at showing the misery on both sides, while not ignoring that because the one side is inflicting so much more suffering on innocents, the legitimacy of its cause is at stake.

The same people who hyped the Iraq war, its prosecutors, and their propaganda, and concealed the destruction to that country’s infrastructure, have remained so far relatively detached. They’ve simply stepped aside so the viewer can survey the damage for himself.

And get this: one-time jingoists who suffered Alzheimer’s when it came to Just-War ethics and the international law (the naturally compatible type, not the UN version) vis-Ã -vis Iraq are suddenly debating concepts such as proportionality.

To be fair, a great deal of credit goes to the Israelis. Washington controlled and shaped every snippet of emerging information in the count down to war, and thereafter. It did so through an elaborate set of limits and conditions imposed on reporters in exchange for access via the embed program.

Embeds were supervised by the military in the same way Saddam once assigned minders to accompany Western journalists. Even so, American TV networks went beyond the call of duty in green-lighting the home team.

That journalists are doing an adequate job covering the war in south Lebanon has a lot to do with the fact that they’ve a far freer hand; Israel hasn’t an “In Bed with the Military program. Their soldiers — unlike ours — are not allowed to propagandize. In fact, they can’t even talk to the press about any aspect of the operations, much less pose for staged photo ops.

So much for the “formidable Israeli propaganda machine.” If they had one, they’d have set up an embed filter.

Ultimately, it’s good to see reporters doing their job — it’s good to know that when they try, they are not entirely incapable of telling right from wrong.

So, the ‘Presstitutes’ Can Tell Right from Wrong

Just War, Media

Brent Bozell pointed out this week that media coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah war has been quite fair, with few acknowledged exceptions.

I happen to agree with him this once.

It has become as clear as crystal that those who slept with their sources in the ramp up to war in Iraq actually know quite a bit about unbiased reporting. They understand the need to report both sides but to avoid moral equivalence between them; they get the necessity to warn viewers when they’ve been taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah. And they’re good at showing the misery on both sides, while not ignoring that because the one side is inflicting so much more suffering on innocents, the legitimacy of its cause is at stake.

The same people who hyped the Iraq war, its prosecutors, and their propaganda, and concealed the destruction to that country’s infrastructure, have remained so far relatively detached. They’ve simply stepped aside so the viewer can survey the damage for himself.

And get this: one-time jingoists who suffered Alzheimer’s when it came to Just-War ethics and the international law (the naturally compatible type, not the UN version) vis-Ã -vis Iraq are suddenly debating concepts such as proportionality.

To be fair, a great deal of credit goes to the Israelis. Washington controlled and shaped every snippet of emerging information in the count down to war, and thereafter. It did so through an elaborate set of limits and conditions imposed on reporters in exchange for access via the embed program.

Embeds were supervised by the military in the same way Saddam once assigned minders to accompany Western journalists. Even so, American TV networks went beyond the call of duty in green-lighting the home team.

That journalists are doing an adequate job covering the war in south Lebanon has a lot to do with the fact that they’ve a far freer hand; Israel hasn’t an “In Bed with the Military program. Their soldiers — unlike ours — are not allowed to propagandize. In fact, they can’t even talk to the press about any aspect of the operations, much less pose for staged photo ops.

So much for the “formidable Israeli propaganda machine.” If they had one, they’d have set up an embed filter.

Ultimately, it’s good to see reporters doing their job — it’s good to know that when they try, they are not entirely incapable of telling right from wrong.