I’m catching up now with events in Lebanon. Every single time I have travelled to southern Africa, a major Middle Eastern crisis has begun right after I arrived. I realize that given how often such crises unfold, that’s roughly like saying, “The sun comes up in the morning whenever I visit South Africa”, but still.
I don’t have a lot to add to what’s being said in many venues. The disproportionate character of Israel’s response strikes me as being both unwise and unjust, and the same for unqualified American support for those actions. The unwise part seems more pertinent: the actors in this situation (including Hizbollah and Hamas) have a deeply flawed understanding of cause-and-effect, of the likely outcomes of what they’re doing. But then, what else is new in the Middle East?
I am a stickler for consistency, so I also really do struggle to understand how we can fiercely act in response to terrorism, defined as deliberate attacks on civilian populations, and then find ways to justify or excuse military action which either has enormous effects on noncombatants or which even appears to deliberately target them.
Crooked Timber draws attention to a particularly egregious case of such excuse, Alan Dershowitz’ argument that civilians in Lebanon aren’t civilians if they stay in their own homes and communities. At the least, his definition of “civilian” and “combatant” would clearly apply also to Israelis who stick up for the legitimate right of their nation to defend itself and seek the freedom of its soldiers. Or, as one commentor at Crooked Timber observes, it would seem to be roughly the same logic as Ward Churchill’s justly infamous argument about “little Eichmanns”. Not seeing a lot of cries for Dershowitz’ resignation just yet, but I’ve been out of touch.
I guess that’s just me hobgoblinly dreaming of consistency again. Asking for that in this case is obviously unrealistic, it always is. It’s one thing to say, “Israel has no choice to fight Hizbollah in this way, horrible as the costs are”. I think that’s still wrong, but it’s something that some kind of meaningful debate could form around. There’s no question that Israel has some difficult, maybe impossible quandries to struggle with in trying to legitimately defend itself. But to try and categorically justify what’s happening on the logic that some civilians are less civilians, that they’re all legitimate targets: how is that different from terrorism?
It is terrorism, state terrorism. That’s what hung me up about this whole mess beginning way back at 9/11. The obvious, most immediately effective response to terrorists is to terrorize them right back, with interest and vigor. Don’t tug on Superman’s cape. But, but, we don’t want to be terrorists do we? Is there some sort of right and wrong about all this? Where does it stop? When there’s one left standing or when everybody just gets bored and tired?
I’m not claiming to have a good answer to terrorism. I have some questions.
Like you, Tim, I started out thinking that Israel’s response was disproportionate, though some kind of action was clearly justified. But articles like this background on Hezbollah’s long term preparation for this conflict have lead me to believe that Israel is actually responding responsibly — though Alan Dershowitz is not — to provocations more akin to state-state conflicts than unofficial border skirmishing.
Actually, reading that article I wondered if what we need is a new Truman Doctrine: a pledge to aid, with blood and treasure, democracies threatened by totalitarian theocratic subversion. It would make more sense than “war on terror” and probably get closer to the roots of the problem. Though this time I think we should try to be a bit more pro-democratic rather than simply anti-communist….
Tim, show me where Dershowitz says “they’re all legitimate targets.” In fact he doesn’t say that, or anything close to it. Nor do the baying pack of hounds over at CT get him right: they’re crying, “Dershowitz denies the civilian/combatant distinction, he says they’re all combatants.” But in fact he questions the usual civilian/combatant distinction not in order to collapse it into a single category, but to insist on a complex gradation of roles and responsibilities. He may be right or he may be wrong, but for heaven’s sake can’t we at least pause long enough to note what he actually writes?
Derhsowitz makes several distinctions in his piece:
(a) “There is a vast difference — both moral and legal — between [1] a 2-year-old who is killed by an enemy rocket and [2] a 30-year-old civilian who has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets.”
(b) “There is also a difference between [1] a civilian who merely favors or even votes for a terrorist group and [2] one who provides financial or other material support for terrorism.”
(c) “Finally, there is a difference between [1] civilians who are held hostage against their will by terrorists who use them as involuntary human shields, and [2] civilians who voluntarily place themselves in harm’s way in order to protect terrorists from enemy fire.”
Dershowitz clearly thinks that Israel is justified in making war on Hezbollah, even if some innocent people are killed — about which he may be right or may be wrong. He also, equally clearly, says that “Every civilian death is a tragedy,” but obviously thinks that a1 and c1 above are a hell of a lot more tragic than a2, b2, and c2, with b1 being in an unclear position.
I have some problems with Dershowitz’s distinctions. For instance, I’m sure at least some people who “allow” their houses to be used to store rockets don’t believe that they have a choice, and indeed probably don’t (they are virtually, if not in the most literal sense, kidnap victims). And second, if — and this is Dershowitz’s main argument — the media have some responsibility to distinguish among these various kinds of civilians, what obligation do the Israeli armed forces have? Can they do a better job of making the distinctions than they have so far? I suspect so. But let’s confront the argument that Dershowitz is actually making, rather than turning him into a straw man just because straw men are easier to burn.
Alan, your problems at the end strike me as only the beginning of the problems his “continuum” opens up. His continuum as a legal construct would be unable to respond to Hizbollah or Hamas’ insistence that all Israelis are legitimate targets because they are agents of occupation: the only answer left once you abandon a strong distinction between civilian and soldier is that our side is the good one and their side (whomever they are) is the bad one. That might serve sometimes but it strikes me as a really bad place to stand if you’re trying to put all terrorism off-limits. In any event, trying to get out the weights and measures and decide which tragedies we’re really supposed to mourn most strikes me as a creepy and cold-blooded exhortation, quite aside from the extremely slippery slope it is already surfing down.
Jonathan, yeah, I’m picking up some of the same news now myself, reading deeply about it all. But even given that Hizbollah is essentially using Lebanon as a giant human shield, and that this action is deeply premeditated, there’s still a pragmatic reason for Israel to think twice about this. In South Africa, there were scenes of South African nationals arriving home in tears from Lebanon; I’m sure that’s been true all over the world. Beirut had just rebuilt itself: destroying it again is not mere “collateral damage”. Arguably what Israel most needs is a strong Lebanon, able to command its own territory on behalf of its own citizens: does this help accomplish that?
The only answer left once you abandon a strong distinction between civilian and soldier is that our side is the good one and their side (whomever they are) is the bad one.
I don’t think that’s true, Tim, and I certainly hope it isn’t — because when you are talking about a terrorist organization there simply isn’t a “strong distinction between civilian and soldier.” That distinction is a product of the existence of a state which has an army. If there is no state and no army, but only a heterogenous group of people with varying levels of commitment to violent resistance — and when the people with the deepest commitment to violence make a core strategy of hiding in the midst of the others — a “strong distinction between civilian and soldier” can only be a fiction.
Please understand, I say this not to defend any Israeli actions but only to point out the facts on the ground that must be dealt with. That the civilian/soldier distinction is obliterated among the Palestinians creates a horrific situation that I don’t see a way to deal with; but I am sure that it can’t be dealt with by taking refuge in categories that console but do not describe. Dershowitz’s continuum is a much more accurate descriptive tool; but of course one can accept that tool without drawing the conclusions that Dershowitz draws about its implications for Israeli response.
Every single time I have travelled to southern Africa, a major Middle Eastern crisis has begun right after I arrived. I realize that given how often such crises unfold, that’s roughly like saying, “The sun comes up in the morning whenever I visit South Africaâ€, but still.
On such perennials, we sometimes play a game after dinner where you had to sound knowledgeable out the history of a given year, talk at length about it, but actually say nothing substantive. A favourite ploy was to start “there was trouble in Ireland that year…”
I also really do struggle to understand how we can fiercely act in response to terrorism, defined as deliberate attacks on civilian populations, and then find ways to justify or excuse military action which either has enormous effects on noncombatants or which even appears to deliberately target them.
The same way we justify our invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq. They harbor our enemies. Therefore, they are the enemy.
That said, it seems silly to undermine the power of the Lebonese government – they will be even less likely to control Hizbollah now as they divert more of their resources to picking up the mess in their country.