Category Archives: Just War

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.

Letters From 'The Front'

Foreign Policy, Iraq, Just War, War

Sifting through IlanaMercer.com’s archives, I found some of the many missives WorldNetDaily’s intrepid editors fielded about my coverage of the invasion of Iraq. Some of the comments were even more cutting than the hereunder. The letter’s date suggests Mr. Carr was piqued over the following pieces (among others): In bed With the Military, ‘Just War’ for Dummies, Tuned-Out, Turned-On and Hot for War, U.S.: Global Governor? Betraying Brave Boys, etc. To their great credit, most of the readers I hear from these days no longer support the war. —ILANA

From: Tim Carr
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003
To: David Kupelian
Cc: jfarah@worldnetdaily.com
Subject: Awful Ilana

Guys, I am about to boycott your splendid web site.

I am getting sick and tired of Ilana Mercer bashing the United States of America. If she (and anyone else for that matter) really feels that the current form of government is as corrupt and evil as she suggests it is, then she has but one of two choices: run away and hide, because a government that is as corrupt as she suggests cannot be stopped nor can it be trusted and is capable of any level of malevolence; or two, get a gun, march to DC and start an armed revolution, because her vote is worthless, democracy is a sham and a vote cannot and will not fix it.

As for me and my house, I am getting tired of seeing her anti-American sentiments being passed off as Old Right, legitimate conservatism. More to the point, I am getting tired of seeing her vitriol being bandied about on World Net Daily. Her views are so … out of touch with other contributors on your web site that she might as well just come right out and say that she wishes the US would lose the war in Iraq (Oh yes, I know, she supports our troops, she just does not support the USE of force in this war. That sound you hear is me yawning, and if my yawn were any bigger we would need to map it out and give it a name. Please, spare me that double speak.)…

Ilana and I have exchanged quite a few e-mails. Some of them were heated. They never really rose above the level of political debate. Strong views were expressed on both sides. I even called her a nut case and loopy in one instance. So, I came away from the exchange frustrated. I was frustrated, as I often am, because something was gnawing at me, and I could not pinpoint what it was. So, as I lay in bed thinking to myself, I had some revelations. Here is what I learned.

I love reading Ilana’s stuff. I always have, that is, until the last 4 months. Lately, some of the foundational underpinnings of her beliefs have come to the forefront and I have found myself increasingly offended by her comments and more and more critical of her work. What is interesting to me is that I tricked myself into thinking that I disagreed with her politics, and I was roped into this line of reasoning by way of Ilana’s rhetoric. Make no mistake, Ilana is brilliant. But what I failed to see is that Ilana is suffering from political tunnel vision. By this I mean that for all of Ilana’s erudite, political exegesis, her rhetoric never rises above the level of political debate [natural rights and Just War Theory, my purview, fall within the philosophical realm, surely.—ILANA]

Because of Ilana’s political tunnel vision, she is missing the most crucial lesson of Iraq. What is happening in Iraq has nothing to do with politics. This war is unlike any other, accept for maybe WWII, but even WWII takes a back seat to Iraq in terms of what is at stake here. This war is about nothing less than the survival of humanity. What we are talking about is a struggle of cosmic proportions between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, God and Satan, Man and demon. This struggle transcends the petty balance of control in the Senate and House. It transcends the debate of who is a true conservative, neo or paleo. This cosmic struggle relegates the notions of global expansion and democracy vs. communism to the level of petty strife

Do you subscribe to her isolationist views? If so, please let me know and I will make sure to avoid WND from this point forward. [“Isolationism” in this context is used to discredit individuals who do not support recreational, unprovoked wars—ILANA]

Thanks
—Tim Carr