The morality or obscenity of going "biblical" on t

[Frank S.]

Ran into this op-ed by John Podhoretz, son of Norman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Podhoretz) in the New York Post, a Rupert Murdoch publication with a circulation close to 700.000 and articles reprinted or posted on the net in unknown numbers:

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedc ... horetz.htm

TOO NICE TO
WIN?
ISRAEL'S DILEMMA

July 25, 2006 -- WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?
What if the universalist idea of liberal democracy - the idea that all people are created equal - has sunk in so deeply that we no longer assign special value to the lives and interests of our own people as opposed to those in other countries?
What if this triumph of universalism is demonstrated by the Left's insistence that American and Israeli military actions marked by an extraordinary concern for preventing civilian casualties are in fact unacceptably brutal? And is also apparent in the Right's claim that a war against a country has nothing to do with the people but only with that country's leaders?
[...] Can any war be won when this is the nature of the discussion in the countries fighting the war? Can any war be won when one of the combatants voluntarily limits itself in this manner?
Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Didn't the willingness of their leaders to inflict mass casualties on civilians indicate a cold-eyed singleness of purpose that helped break the will and the back of their enemies? Didn't that singleness of purpose extend down to the populations in those countries in those days, who would have and did support almost any action at any time that would lead to the deaths of Germans and Japanese?
What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?
If you can't imagine George W. Bush issuing such an order, is there any American leader you could imagine doing so?
And if America can't do it, can Israel? Could Israel - even hardy, strong, universally conscripted Israel - possibly stomach the bloodshed that would accompany the total destruction of Hezbollah?
If Lebanon's 300-plus civilian casualties are already rocking the world, what if it would take 10,000 civilian casualties to finish off Hezbollah? Could Israel inflict that kind of damage on Lebanon - not because of world opinion, but because of its own modern sensibilities and its understanding of the value of every human life?
Where do these questions lead us?
What if Israel's caution about casualties among its own soldiers and Lebanese civilians has demonstrated to Hezbollah and Hamas that as long as they can duck and cover when the missiles fly and the bombs fall, they can survive and possibly even thrive?
What if Israel has every capability of achieving its aim, but cannot unleash itself against a foe more dangerous, more unscrupulous, more unprincipled and more barbaric than even the monstrous leaders of the Intifada it managed to quell after years of suicide attacks?
And as for the United States, what if we have every tool at our disposal to win a war - every weapons system we could want manned by the most superbly trained military in history - except the ability to match or exceed our antagonists in ruthlessness?
Is this the horrifying paradox of 21st century warfare? If Israel and the United States cannot be defeated militarily in any conventional sense, have our foes discovered a new way to win? Are they seeking victory through demoralization alone - by daring us to match them in barbarity and knowing we will fail?
Are we becoming unwitting participants in their victory and our defeat? Can it be that the moral greatness of our civilization - its astonishing focus on the value of the individual above all - is endangering the future of our civilization as well?

Those questions are essentially answered by Yoel Marcus, over at Ha'aretz in his last paragraph (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/743765.html):

Before any international agreement, Israel must sound the last chord, launching a massive air and ground offensive that will end this mortifying war, not with a whimper but with a thunderous roar.

So what's out on the table, being debated in "polite", "civilized" society is whether George Bush and Ehud Olmert have the fortitude to do what came naturally to Pol-pot, Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein and Milosevic.
Intentionally killing, man by man, the entire population of a major ethnic group in Iraq (Sunnis) and Lebanon (Shias).
Whether they have the fortitude to lauch a genocide.
Reminds me of that song "exterminating angel":

Plumes of dirt
Caress a urine coloured sun
Swarms of angels
Come to kill your sons
And there's nothing but black holes
Where the stars should have been
Nothing but black holes
Where the stars would be watching

Podhoretz asks:
"Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?"

Pretty decadent zeitgeist, if you ask me...

[Sisyphus]

So what's out on the table, being debated in "polite", "civilized" society is whether George Bush and Ehud Olmert have the fortitude to do what came naturally to Pol-pot, Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein and Milosevic.
Intentionally killing, man by man, the entire population of a major ethnic group in Iraq (Sunnis) and Lebanon (Shias).

Podhoretz asks:
"Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?"

Frank

Even if they have the 'fortitude' they obviously didn't get the lesson from history: that every one of those quoted failed. And the survival of Sunni men was an inevitability.

Just piece of illogical propoganda. Otherwise known as crap.!

The basic cause of the sectarian violence is that they live in a sectarian society. My prediction before the war started was that the US would fail and Iraq would end up as three separate countries/autonomous regions with the Kurds in the north, the Shi'ites in the south and the Sunni in the middle. I might be wrong but time will tell.

By the way, when was the last time anyone heard the word 'Kurd' in the television or press? Presumably they no longer exist?

[harry hackedoff]

Wot?
Lemon kurd
Call me a fick barst but wot`s lemon kurd got to do wiv it, no wot i meen yerr

[Frank S.]

Just piece of illogical propoganda. Otherwise known as crap.!

Bill, if this keeps up, and I see no signs it won't, I wouldn't be surprised if Rupert Murdoch produced his own version of "Triumph of the will"...



Trouble ahead,
trouble behind.