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.

Letter of the Week by Professor Paul Gottfried

Anti-Semitism, Classical Liberalism, Free Speech, Individual Rights

Letter of the Week is by Paul Gottfried, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, and author of The Conservative Movement, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy. Professor Gottfried’s new book is The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium.–ILANA

Ilana,
This commentary, “One Man’s ‘Malady,’ Another Man’s Fetish,” is entirely on target. Gibson’s stupid remarks while under the influence are grist for the mills of the leftist social engineers and coercive anti-fascists who run our cultural industry. Although Foxman may care about Jewish women who fall victim to Arab terrorists, he cares much less about such embarrassments than he does about the opportunity to play up the anti-Semitic faux pas of an avowedly conservative Catholic, who dared to make a film on the crucifixion.
By the way, the Passion, which I did see, was not only unbelievably gory but totally implausible. It is impossible for any human being, outside of the Catholic iconographic imagination, to endure so much suffering and blood loss and to survive for an entire day. A German Protestant friend who saw the movie thought it was the greatest advertisement for the Puritans that he had witnessed. The Reformation did away with such gory depictions, together with most other depictions, of religious figures. Watching the Passion was like revisiting a Sicilian shrine that I once stumbled upon in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

—Paul

P.S. I’ve always considered Gibson to be a bit of a loud-mouthed exhibitionist, and his movies have been anything but consistently rightwing. Remember the movie he played in with Danny Glover, in which American agents are trying to foil the machinations of powerful Nazi drug-dealers based in apartheid South Africa?

Mel's 'Malady,' Foxman's Fetish

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Hollywood, Judaism & Jews, Media

[Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League] “had more to say about Gibson than he had about Seattle’s jihadist du jour, Naveed Afzal Haq. Last week, Haq murdered a Jewish woman and critically injured five other women at the downtown Jewish Federation building…
As a representative of the Jewish community, albeit self-appointed, Foxman needs lessons in etiquette. It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act gracious—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering. Gibson may be uncouth, but Foxman is equally grubby…”

The complete column, “Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish,” is here. In it, I also take a good long swipe at the “The Delphic oracles of the disease theory of delinquency,” vis-Ã -vis Mel Gibson’s so-called disease.