Mark Steyn Reviews Londonistan

Mark Steyn likes this book:

One final thought: Miss Phillips is one of Britain's best-known newspaper columnists. She appears constantly on national TV and radio. No publisher has lost money on her. Yet Londonistan wound up being published first in New York, and its subsequent appearance in Britain is thanks not to Little, Brown (who published her last big book) but to a small independent imprint called Gibson Square. I don't know Miss Phillips's agent, but it's hard not to suspect that glamorous literary London decided it would prefer to keep a safe distance from this incendiary subject.

That's how nations die -- not by war or conquest, but by a thousand trivial concessions, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal.

Israeli War Blogs

Here.

Raymond Lloyd: An Atlantic Rim Partnership

I recently received this interesting proposal from Raymond Lloyd, of Britain's Council for Parity Democracy for an "Atlantic Rim Partnership":

An Atlantic Rim Partnership
first circulated at NATO Summit Madrid 1997 updated 10 July 2006 @ Raymond Lloyd

The end of the Cold War, and its hot war proxies, has loosened up such trading and security blocs as the OECD and NATO, but without always creating the new alliances necessary to meet the challenges of the new century. One particular challenge is that of finding a partnership with the new democracies of Africa, independent of the Lome and other European aid conventions, which grouped together all former colonies, however repressive their regimes. A new beginning might be made with an Atlantic Rim Partnership, drawing from the trading experience of the Pacific Rim and Indian Ocean Rim alliances, but now based also on shared democratic, and even religious and cultural, ideals. Indeed, with the coming bicentenary in March 2007 of Britain’s abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, there is also a moral challenge to assist those countries whose human resources were pillaged by the Western democracies, and whose descendants in both hemispheres were too often left in economic, social and political stagnation.

For over three centuries, from the early 1500s to the mid 1800s, the Atlantic Rim constituted the world's most important trading bloc, with metals and textiles going to Atlantic Africa, human cargoes being transported to the plantations of the Atlantic Americas - 15 million slaves alive, 3 million dead - and sugar, rice, coffee, tobacco and cotton coming to Atlantic Europe. For a critical period in the mid twentieth century the Atlantic also formed the oceanic lifeline of European democracy, with many troops coming also from Brazil and South Africa, the West Indies and the African colonies, to fight for Europe's freedom.

Thus, while the NATO focus is on Central and Eastern Europe, to make up for our standing by during the repressions in 1956 of Hungary, 1968 of Czechoslovakia, and 1981 of Poland, our duty should not be forgotten toward those who, between 1939 and 1945, volunteered to fight for freedom, despite their having a much poorer educational base on which to reconstruct their postwar, postcolonial world. In 1816, 1823 and 1831 it had been the British who savagely repressed their fellow Christians seeking freedom in Barbados, Guyana and Jamaica. And, with all the current concern for child labour, it was the British who put slave girls to work at age six.

The whole rich North Atlantic should now develop a free trade area with the new democracies of Africa, and with the black and aboriginal peoples of the Americas, and offer security arrangements, such as partnership-for-peace programs, to help protect their freedoms. In the last few years we have seen how fragile have been would-be democracies in the Congo and Gambia, in Haiti and Venezuela. Too often our reaction, where not one of indifference, has been of an adhoc curative nature, rather than a longterm constructive approach. The situation has been particularly tragic in Sierra Leone, created as a slave rehabilitation state, along with Liberia, whose 150th anniversary as an independent republic we remembered in 1997.

The first country to abolish the Atlantic slave trade was Denmark, by decree on 16 May 1792 and fully effective by 16 May 1802. Britain, after transporting 2.8 million blacks, abolished the slave trade on 25 March 1807, and slavery itself throughout the Empire in 1838. The movement continued for at least another fifty years, till Brazil, the recipient of 4.2 million Africans, abolished slavery in 1888. But the involvement of most of the great European powers is evidenced by the fact that Dutch, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese (though no longer Danish and Swedish) are all official languages on the Atlantic coasts of both Africa and the Americas. Slaves were also traded from non-Atlantic East Africa, by Arabs and Persians, but in nothing like the same numbers. And, while no reparations can be expected from the Middle East before it becomes democratic, it is also true that Islam absorbed the blacks more fraternally than most Christians, or Protestants, as the faces of many current Gulf rulers show.

Several Atlantic cities, from Nantes to Liverpool to Charleston, have held exhibitions or created museums dedicated to an erstwhile prosperity based on the slave trade, and there is a growing movement for black reparations. In June 1997 the US President pondered publicly on making an apology for slavery, but offered no restitution comparable to the $20 000 per person paid to all Japanese Americans sent to concentration camps during World War II, or the $60 billion paid by Germany to compensate for the nazi holocaust.

- 2 -

In the 30 June 1997 issue of Time magazine, it was calculated by Jack E White, the grandson of a slave, that the 244 years of unpaid labour between 1619 and 1863 by ten million slaves, at 25 cents a day, doubled for pain and suffering, would come to $444 billion which, compounded at 3% interest over the 134 years since emancipation, would amount to some $24 000 000 000 000 ! In the 1830s, of course, it was the slave-owners who received £20 million compensation from the British Parliament, not the slaves.

In recent years, as long as African dictators bought golden bedsteads or crowned themselves emperor, and as long as an apartheid South Africa tracked the soviet navy, we could postpone our moral debt to the African people. But just as, in the nineteenth century, abolition went hand in hand with the extension of the franchise within a country, so now, with the beginnings of democracy in Atlantic Africa, we will realize that political rights and civil liberties are interdependent with the prosperity and security of all free peoples. Also, Africans are now articulating their own responsibility for the slave trade as in the 2000 epic film Andanggaman, by Ivory Coast director Roger Gnoan M’Bala. Here I have drawn up a list of some 84 states and territories which, when democracies, would be eligible to become members or associate members of an Atlantic Rim Democratic & Economic Partnership:

Possible Members of an Atlantic Rim Partnership
as rated for Political Rights (PR) and Civil Liberties (CL) in 2005-2006 by Freedom House of New York
Where 1 represents the highest degree of freedom and 7 the lowest
* inland countries dependent on Atlantic outlets

NATO Democracies PR CL African Democracies PR CL Caricom Democracies PR CL

Belgium 1 1 Benin 2 2 Antigua & Barbuda 2 2
Canada 1 1 *Botswana 2 2 Bahamas 1 1
Denmark 1 1 Cape Verde 1 1 Barbados 1 1
France 1 1 *Central African Rep 5 4 Belize 1 2
Germany 1 1 Ghana 1 2 Dominica 1 1
Iceland 1 1 Guinea Bissau 3 4 Grenada 1 2
Italy 1 1 Madagascar 3 3 Guyana 2 2
Luxembourg 1 1 *Mali 2 2 Jamaica 2 3
Netherlands 1 1 Mozambique 3 4 St Kitts Nevis 1 1
Aruba 1 2 Namibia 2 2 Saint Lucia 1 1
Neths Antilles 2 1 *Niger 3 3 St Vincent 2 1
Norway 1 1 Nigeria 4 4 Suriname 2 2
Portugal 1 1 Sao Tome & Principe 2 2 Trinidad & Tobago 3 2
Spain 1 1 Senegal 2 3
United Kingdom 1 1 South Africa 1 2 OAS Atlantic Democracies
Anguilla 2 1
Bermuda 1 1 Other AU Atlantic Members Argentina 2 2
Br Virgin Islands 1 1 Brazil 2 2
Caymans 2 1 Angola 6 5 Colombia 3 3
Falklands 2 1 *Burkina Faso 5 3 Costa Rica 1 1
Montserrat 1 1 Cameroon 6 6 Dominican Republic 2 2
St Helena 2 1 Congo Brazzaville 5 5 Guatemala 4 4
Turks & Caicos 1 1 Congo Dem Rep 6 6 Haiti 7 6
United States 1 1 Cote d'Ivoire 6 6 Honduras 3 3
Puerto Rico 1 2 Equatorial Guinea 7 6 Mexico 2 2
Gabon 6 4 Nicaragua 3 3
Other EU Atlantic Gambia 5 4 Panama 1 2
Guinea 6 5 *Paraguay 3 3
Ireland 1 1 Liberia 4 4 Uruguay 1 1
Sweden 1 1 Mauritania 6 4 Venezuela 4 4
Morocco 5 4
Sierra Leone 4 3 Other Slave Recipients
Togo 6 5 Cuba 7 7

Because of its potential size, the Partnership could have as its nucleus a new Group of Five, comprising the most populous Atlantic democracies or democratic groupings, namely Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, the United States and the European Union, supported by a rotating council of two or three members from each of the Partnership's four quarters: Africa, Caribbean, Europe and Latin America.

More immediately, we now need statespersons who will take up the challenge of a new Atlantic Rim Partnership, just as sixty years ago the challenge of the European Recovery Program was recognized by President Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall. Good opportunities to launch such a Partnership will , as stated above, occur on 25 March 2007, the 200th anniversary of the British parliament abolishing the transatlantic slave trade, and for which the UK Treasury has already announced a £2 (200 pence) coin; and 12 February 2009, the bicentenary of the birth of the Emancipator-President Abraham Lincoln.

Andrew McCarthy: Israel's War Is Our War...

Writing in National Review, McCarthy takes Tony Snow to task, for saying this is not America's war:

Jihadists of both Shiite and Sunni stripes executed acts of war. The acts were unambiguous, but just in case we hadn’t gotten the point, they told us, again and again: This was a war, America was the principal enemy, and the jihadists were playing for keeps. Then, as now, we refused to listen.

By 1990, Hezbollah was already the vanguard of the jihad that united competing Muslim sects against America. Railing back then at a Danish rally, Omar Abdel Rahman, an infamous Sunni Egyptian cleric better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” invoked Shiite Hezbollah’s 1983 suicide bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines: “If there are Muslim battalions to do five or six operations to the Americans in surprise attacks like the one that was done against them in Lebanon, the Americans would have exited [the Persian Gulf] and gathered their armies and gone back by air and sea … to their country.” Abdel Rahman later instructed his American acolytes that the Koran had “ordered” them to be “terrorists,” and that “every conspiracy against Islam and scheming against Islam and the Muslims — its source is America.” They responded by bombing the World Trade Center and failing in an even more ambitious plan to attack various New York City landmarks.

Equally devoid of nuance was Abdel Rahman’s confederate, Osama bin Laden. As is well-known, he is the Saudi leader of al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has been schooled for years by Hezbollah, pursuant to an understanding bin Laden struck with Iran in the 1990s — a fact that is not very well-known and certainly not much spoken of by the Bush administration these days. In 1996 — the same year his al Qaeda appears to have combined with Hezbollah and Iran to murder 19 members of the American air force in the Khobar Towers bombing — bin Laden issued his “Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques,” urging Muslims to pool their resources, the better to kill Americans.

Abdel Rahman, serving a life sentence by then, was still issuing fatwas against the United States, decreeing that “Muslims everywhere [should] dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, . . . shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.” Bin Laden plainly agreed, proclaiming in 1998 that Muslims were obliged to kill Americans — soldiers or civilians — wherever in the world they could be found.

We’re Not Listening
But we didn’t listen to them. In the comfort of our over-confidence, we blinkered reality. We deluded ourselves into believing that clever words and feints at action could massage a fierce, incorrigible enemy into something less than it was — a nuisance, a crime, or a lamentably unavoidable cost of doing diplomatic business-as-usual.

The litany of failure writ by this approach, much of which well predated the Clinton administration, is grimly familiar: Iran’s storming of the American embassy and sneering seizure of the hostages; the Marine barracks bombing; Hezbollah’s bombings of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon; Hezbollah’s kidnap/torture murders of government officials; Somalia and “Black Hawk Down”; the World Trade Center bombing; the “Bojenka” scheme to blow U.S. airliners out of the sky; Iran and Hezbollah’s pact with al Qaeda; the Khobar bombing; the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; the Millennium plot against Los Angeles International Airport; the Cole bombing; 9/11; Iran’s determined nuclear-weapons program; Iran’s harboring of al Qaeda fighters fleeing from U.S. forces in Afghanistan; Iran’s arming of anti-American insurgents in southern Iraq; Iran and Hezbollah’s cultivation of Moqtada al-Sadr, the thug whose Mahdi Army continues to fight American forces even as the Democracy Project transforms him into a political power broker. (Under the Bush Doctrine, he’d have been a casualty).

And now we can add Sadr’s determination to send fighters to Lebanon to join with Hezbollah against America’s ally, Israel. Sadr is doing that because he knows there’s a war on. Not a skirmish between Hezbollah and Israel, but a war pitting Islamic militants against America and our allies. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, desperate to support the new Lebanese “democracy” (in which hallucination Hezbollah appears as a political party, not an implacable terrorist organization), suggests that a “buffer” of NATO troops might be the peaceful solution — a first step toward Hezbollah’s disarming and eventual conversion to civilized politics.

… Except that no one in NATO — including the United States — wants to contribute its troops to the buffer because each knows that would inevitably mean fighting Hezbollah. (Indeed, Germany, the most receptive to the buffer idea, will join only if Hezbollah agrees to the arrangement!) As NATO well knows, Hezbollah has no intention of disarming. It has no interest in either democracy as a system or Lebanon as a country independent from the so-called “Muslim umma.” Hezbollah is fighting for what it sees as the single, worldwide Muslim nation. If it put down its weapons it would no longer be Hezbollah. It would no longer be of any use to its masters in Iran. Hezbollah looks out at Israel and sees America. The enemy. In a war.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s how Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, put it with admirable bluntness in early 2005: “We consider [the United States] to be an enemy because it wants to humiliate our governments, our regimes, and our peoples. Because it is the greatest plunderer of our treasures, our oil, and our resources.... This American administration is our enemy. Our motto, which we are not afraid to repeat year after year, is: ‘Death to America!’”

We’re not listening. Not our war.

The critics roll their eyes at the “hawks.” They point toward the disintegration in Iraq and snicker, “So, now you want another war?” But it’s not “another” war; it’s the same war. And it’s not, for most of us, about testing the syncretic limits of democratic acculturation. It’s about defeating the enemy who started this, who can’t be reasoned with, and who will be content with nothing less than our demise. His war is here. We can hide from it, but it has an ugly way of finding us.

Melanie Phillips: America Must Act Stronger

Israpundit tipped us off to this article by British journalist Melanie Phillips:

It is far from certain that Israel will get the better of Hezbollah in Lebanon – at least, not before the fickle world stops it on the basis that it is not performing a miracle by eradicating an army which has deliberately dug in within a civilian population without harming that population. Israel may well have to send ground troops into Lebanon, where it will surely be met with savagery, including the weapon of the human bomb.

Even if it were to destroy Hezbollah, however, this is not the head of the snake. That lies in Syria and Iran. Only if those regimes are toppled will the fight-back against evil have any chance of success. The fear that worse may follow is a recipe for pre-emptive surrender — not just by Israel, but by the free world on whose behalf Israel is currently fighting. And it is this attitude which is why we are currently losing the war against Islamic fascism — as David Selbourne writes in a fine piece in the Spectator. The real problem is America. Far from being too gung-ho, it has flinched from what needs to be done. Its failure to hold Iran and Syria to account explains in large measure why it is in such a mess in Iraq — precisely where Iran wants it to be. These terrible events now unfolding in the Middle East have been caused by Iran and Syria —but it is America’s lack of steadfastness, courage and strategic vision over many years which have allowed this crisis to unfold.

BTW, Israpunding highlighted this post from Phillips' blog about the UN and Hezbollah:

Retired Canadian General Lew MacKenzie — who is speaking in Toronto tonight at a Stand with Israel rally — was interviewed on CBC Toronto radio this a.m.

He told the show’s anchor that he had received an e-mail only days before from the dead Canadian observor who was a member of his former battalion. MacKenzie says that the message indicated in effect that the UN position was being used as cover by Hezbollah, who, MacKenzie explained, can do so quite freely as they are not members of the UN and not subject, therefore, to official condemnation. MacKenzie further took issue with the misleading reportage (citing CNN in particular) that suggests that Beirut is being bombarded by the IDF and that the city is in ruins. He said that the bombing is no where near the saturation levels that constitute a bombardment and the IAF have specifically targetted a twelve-block area that is, more-or-less, Hezbollah City, and only after dropping leaflets warning civilians to vacate well in advance of the planned airstrikes.

Konstantin's Russian Blog on a Pro-Terrorist Boston Globe

Konstantin explains why the Boston Globe, in its coverage of Chechnya warlord-terrorist Shamil Basayev's death, has been objectively pro-terrorist:

During this “tragically brief era of moderation” Chechnya was run by cave-age Sharia laws, there were at least two open slave markets, trading hostages became the biggest Chechnya industry, the country was ruled by warlords and Islamists. In fact the “moderation” was so high that every human rights organization or NGO left Chechnya for security reasons. They all came back in 1999 when the second war started. Under protection of Russian arms human rights defenders started doing what? Right – documenting Russian soldiers’ crimes that protected them from freedom-loving Chechnya gunmen. Not a single Western NGO in Chechnya did publish a single report on slave trading or hostage taking.

By 1999, when Basayev led a disastrous raid into neighboring Dagestan -- which Russia seized upon as the rationale for its second invasion of Chechnya -- Basayev had grown a long beard, come under the influence of the rabid Arab Islamist known as Ibn al-Khattab, and plunged into the terrorist maelstrom of beheadings, kidnappings, and hostage-taking.

The Boston Globe editor lies here – Basayev invaded Dagestan already with Khattab, already with a long beard and “the maelstrom of beheadings, kidnappings, and hostage-taking” started long before the invasion. When we cannot tell what is the cause and what is the effect, we would hardly understand the bin Laden syndrome.

Daniel Pipes: An Anti-Hezbollah Coalition

From DanielPipes.org (ht IsraPundit):

The current round of hostilities between Israel and its enemies differs from prior ones in that it's not an Arab-Israeli war, but one that pits Iran and its Islamist proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, against Israel.

This points, first, to the increasing power of radical Islam. When Israeli forces last confronted, on this scale, a terrorist group in Lebanon in 1982, they fought the Palestine Liberation Organization, a nationalist-leftist organization backed by the Soviet Union and the Arab states. Now, Hizbullah seeks to apply Islamic law and to eliminate Israel through jihad, with the Islamic Republic of Iran looming in the background, feverishly building nuclear weapons.

Non-Islamist Arabs and Muslims find themselves sidelined. Fear of Islamist advances – whether subversion in their own countries or aggression from Tehran – finds them facing roughly the same demons as does Israel. As a result, their reflexive anti-Zionist response has been held in check. However fleetingly, what The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh calls "an anti-Hizbullah coalition," one implicitly favorable to Israel, has come into existence.

Kasparov v. Cohen on the Future of Russia

Last night's Charlie Rose Show provided a welcome relief from the Lebanon war, the diverting topic of "The Future of Russia." Gary Kasparov faced off against Professor Stephen Cohen, who I believe is married to Katrina vanden Heuvel, millionaire oligarch of The Nation magazine. Charlie Rose, as usual, was completely out of his depth and didn't appear to know what anyone was talking about. But the Kasparov-Cohen faceoff was instructive. I actually came to like Kasparov, when he got sick and tired of Cohen's condescending attitude and snapped at him not to tell him what to do. Real Russian pride--just like the Russians I met in Moxcow, Kasparov didn't want to be bossed around, especially by an American. Good for Kasparov!

Let Russia be Russia...

I've printed some criticism of Kasparov on this page, but his backbone versus Cohen makes me think that he might actually be able to pull something off. And if not, he's still very good on TV. Next time, I hope Charlie Rose lets him appear solo.

You can watch the video here.

JTA Video News From Israel

Here's a link to the website of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

IsraPundit: 1948 Redux

From a Letter from a European Friend:

Israel is back where it started in 1948. Peace is impossible and negotiations lead to nowhere. What is left is only the use of force. But this is not without problems either. Israel is expected to fight without killing and this is clearly not possible. Muslim fundamentalists are simply not impressed by blowing up empty buildings. Neither do they care if their activities ruin the country from which they operate. Anyway they get their money from Iran. Basically Israel will need to kill a lot of Hezbollah terrorists in order to win this conflict, but the West will not allow this. Doing nothing would surely have been fatal, but this counter offensive in Lebanon could be very risky indeed. If Israel cannot, or is not allowed to, break Hezbollah then the North of Israel, including Haifa, might suffer missile attacks for a long time to come. I am sure that terrorists in the West-Bank are taking notice as well. Israel might very soon be confronted with a situation where missiles strike anywhere in the country at anytime.

Rabbi Aron Moss on Proportionality in War

From Arutz Sheva:

Q: Isn't Israel's response a bit disproportionate?

A: If Israel were merely taking revenge, then it would need to be proportionate. But Israel is waging a defensive war. Since when is war proportionate? In war, you don't measure your response to the enemy by what they have done to you in the past, but rather by what needs to be done to stop them attacking in the future. Israel's actions are proportionate to the threat, not to the damage done.


Q: Doesn't Israel understand that they are just creating more terrorists? The anger and fury at Israel as a result of bombing Lebanon will only make more people want to join Hizbullah.

A: Feelings of frustration, anger, fear and rage do not make you into a terrorist. A culture of death and an education of hate does. Israel doesn't need to do anything to create terrorists - Islamic extremism does that - but Israel must act to destroy those who threaten its people.

Q: Hizbullah indeed has a militant wing, but it also does a lot of good. They are responsible for social programs, educational projects and humanitarian work in South Lebanon. By destroying Hizbullah, Israel also destroys all the good they do. Isn't that demonising a group that is not all bad?

A: If a serial killer also happens to volunteer for his local hospital, has donated money to an orphanage, and looks after his ailing grandmother, he is still a serial killer, and should be treated as such. The danger he poses far outweighs the concern for any good he may do.

Q: By using violence, how is Israel any better than its terrorist enemies?

A: That is as ridiculous as saying that a woman who fights off an attacker is no better than her attacker. Israel would not touch Hizbullah if it did not attack. Israel seeks to live in peace with its neighbours; Hizbullah and its allies seek to destroy Israel, no matter what Israel does.

Look at the Hizbullah flag. It depicts a rifle lifted in the air. Violence is a part of its very identity. On the other hand, the very name of the Israeli army defines its purpose: the Israel Defense Forces. Its flag depicts an olive branch and a sword: peace is a priority; war is a last resort.

For Hizbullah, war is holy. For Israel, war can never be holy. War may be necessary, like when your citizens are being attacked unprovoked. War may be moral, like when innocent lives are being threatened; but even then, war is never holy.

There is a world of difference between a moral war and a holy war. A moral soldier fights reluctantly, while holy warriors glory in the fight. A moral soldier is burdened by the obligation, while holy warriors delight in the pain inflicted on the enemy. A moral soldier fights when there is no other option; a holy warrior seeks violence as a way of life. A moral soldier takes measures to limit innocent casualties; a holy warrior seeks to maximise them.

A holy warrior fears times of peace, because then he has no purpose. A moral soldier dreams of a time when peace will reign. Then, the Israel Defense Forces will be made joyously redundant, as "one nation will not lift a sword against another nation, and they will no longer learn to wage war."

Israel's Actions are Legal

In today's Washington Post--a paper whose news coverage of the war has quickly deteriorated from bad to worse--there is a quite reasonable defense brief for Israel's actions under international law, written by attorneys David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey:

Israel's conduct has been fully compliant with the applicable norms of international law.

The primary claim by Israel's critics is that it used force disproportionately in response to Hezbollah's initial attack against Israeli soldiers, eight of whom were killed and two captured. The underlying assumption appears to be that Israel should have treated these provocations as terrorist acts and limited its response accordingly, rather than as justifications for a full-scale attack on Lebanese territory.

But in determining the existence of a legitimate casus belli , a state is entitled to consider the entire context of the threat it faces. Hezbollah is not simply a terrorist gang, like Germany's Baader-Meinhof or Italy's Red Brigades. It is a substantial political and military organization that has more than 12,000 short- and medium-range rockets and that has operated freely on Lebanese territory for many years, periodically launching attacks against Israel. Its stated goal is Israel's destruction, and it is the client of a major regional power -- Iran -- whose government appears dedicated to the same goal.

Moreover, although international law requires a state to have a lawful reason to use force -- such as self-defense -- it does not mandate that a state limit its military response to "tit for tat" actions. Once a country has suffered an armed attack, it is entitled to identify the source of that attack and to eliminate its adversary's ability to attack again. Its actions must be consistent with otherwise applicable international norms, but it is not required to accept a limited conflict that fails to meet and resolve the danger it faces.

That Lebanon has suffered from Israel's actions does not change the legal rules involved. No state has the right to permit a foreign military force to use its territory to launch attacks against another country. Indeed, every country has an obligation to control its own territory. Lebanon's failure (or refusal) to expel Hezbollah would in and of itself have been a legitimate cause for Israeli military action. It was the Taliban's sheltering of al-Qaeda that was the basis of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in 2001. And, although the current Lebanese government is certainly more democratic than the feudalistic Taliban, democratic credentials cannot insulate a state from responsibility for controlling its territory.

The specific aspects of Israel's military operations in Lebanon and Gaza have also been condemned as being disproportionate and as thereby violating the laws of war. Although there is some grim humor in the spectacle of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose troops have ravaged Chechnya, criticizing Israel for a "disproportionate" use of force, the claims -- including dark warnings from Louise Arbour, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, about "war crimes" liability for Israel's leaders -- are without merit.

If the authors are right, and I believe they are, then it certainly is time for Louise Arbour to go...

NATO's "Disproportionate" Bombing of Serbia

Among others at the time, the World Socialist Website condmned NATO for "disproportionate" attacks on Serbia in 2000:

Human rights advocates accuse NATO of deliberately bombing Serbia's civil infrastructure. The executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), Kenneth Roth, said the targets chosen by NATO were "disproportionate and should be found violations of international humanitarian law".

HRW is drawing up a detailed report that will be submitted to the war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Among the examples of targeting violations it will cite are electricity grids, oil refineries and radio and television stations.

The report is also expected to attack the use of cluster bombs by US and British aircraft. At least 5 percent of these bombs failed to explode on impact, and many lie unexploded in Kosovo, where HRW say they are still killing or maiming two civilians a day.

HRW place the number of civilian Serbs killed by NATO bombing at around 600, and Belgrade claims the figure is as high as 2,000. The charges being brought forward against NATO by HRW and others serve to unravel the tissue of lies assembled in Washington, London and Brussels to justify the bombardment of an innocent population.

Russia's "Disproportionate" Chechnya Campaign

From the BBC's December, 1999 report:

NATO has condemned Russia's military campaign in Chechnya, saying that disproportionate and indiscriminate force was being used against civilians.

The RAF's "Disproportionate" Bombing of Iraq

Anti-war websites also called Western military action in Iraq "disproportionate." For example, this Common Dreams post condemns Britian's Royal Air Force bombing of Iraq :

Ministers were last night asked to explain the circumstances in which the RAF participated in a spectacular increase in bombing raids on Iraq in apparent defiance of Foreign Office legal advice.

"It did not take very much to work out that the increase in bombing bore no relation to the protection of Iraqi citizens in the north or the south of the country," Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said referring to the ostensible reason for the "no-fly" zones. He told the Guardian: "The obvious explanation was that air defenses were being degraded deliberately and that any provocation by the Iraqi military would be met with a disproportionate response".

America's "Disproportionate" Bombing of Afghanistan

The condemnation of Israel reminded me that I had heard similar complaints about "disproportionate" use of force and civilian casualties before--from critics of America after the US bombed Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11.

Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire has a website still dedicated to attacking the 2001-2002 Afghan campaign. Here's a sample of his criticism:

The American Afghan War -- historically the Fourth Afghan War -- is anything but a 'just war' as James Carroll has adroitly pointed out.26First, the disproportionate U.S. response of making an entire other nation and people 'pay' for the crimes of a few is obvious to anyone who seeks out the real 'costs' perpetrated upon the people of Afghanistan. Action should be based upon some measure of proportionality, which here clearly is not the case. Secondly, this war does little to impede the cycle of violence of which the WTC attacks are merely one manifestation. The massive firepower unleashed by the Americans will no doubt invite similar indiscriminate carnage. Injustices will flower. Thirdly, by defining these events as a war rather than a police action without providing any argument for the necessity of the former, the American Afghan War is un-necessary and, hence, not 'just.' As Carroll writes, "the criminals, not an impoverished nation, should be on the receiving end of punishment."

It is simply unacceptable for civilians to be slaughtered as a side-effect of an intentional strike against a specified target. There is no difference between the attacks upon the WTC whose primary goal was the destruction of a symbol, and the U.S-U.K. revenge coalition bombing of military targets located in populated urban areas. Both are criminal. Slaughter is slaughter. Killing civilians even if unintentional is criminal.

Sound familiar?

An Israel-Hezbollah War Blog

Here.

Here's an interesting graph from the blog, showing a pattern of recent Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel:

What Next for Israel & Lebanon?

Writing in Haaretz, Amos Harel says Israel's next steps will be tough. (ht War and Piece)

Where do we take it from here? The general staff admits that Nasrallah can go on firing at Israel for many days. Some of the officers are talking of the necessity for a diplomatic move, at the same time as the ground action, that will speed up the conclusion of the battles without the IDF's going into too many more villages and suffering heavy losses. But Israel still has two basic problems: Only a massive blow to Hezbollah can lessen its stranglehold over the Lebanese government, something which has not yet been achieved. Secondly, even if this is achieved, it will be necessary to have a very strong political arrangement to prevent Iran from rearming Hezbollah and waiting to open another round next summer.

Israeli TV News in English

You can watch here.

Francisco Gil-White:Why Hezbollah is Responsible for Civilian Casualties

Francisco Gil-White makes a logical case with this analogy:

The argument that the Israeli response is ‘too harsh’ says that some Lebanese civilians are dying as a result of Israeli firepower, and this means that Israel is guilty for their deaths and hence ‘too harsh’ in its response.

To see whether this is a valid argument, let us conduct another thought experiment.

Suppose that a criminal is shooting at you and your family. You shoot back in self-defense, to protect your spouse and children -- your life. Accidentally, you shoot dead a bystander. Question: Who is morally responsible for the death of the bystander? Morally responsible. You were not aiming for the bystander, and you would not have used your gun if this criminal had not been shooting at your family in the first place. And you do have an obligation to defend your family; you cannot simply turn your family over to anybody who is prepared to use violence. Therefore, the moral responsibility for the death of that bystander belongs to the man who decided to shoot at your family and in so doing forced you to perform your moral duty and defend it. If the bullet that killed the bystander came out of the barrel of your gun, that does not absolve the man who attacked your family, and neither does it convict you.

Now, consider the situation of Israel.

Hezbollah means to kill every last living Jew. Hezbollah is growing fast inside the Lebanese state across the border. And Hezbollah attacked Israeli civilians. When the Israeli government retaliated against Hezbollah, this was its moral obligation, because the Israeli government must protect Israeli citizens. Hezbollah must be destroyed because the purpose of Hezbollah is to kill all the Jews. No such organization can be allowed to exist, and recruit, and arm itself to the teeth. If we tolerate such organizations, we tolerate genocide. Therefore, Hezbollah must be destroyed. This is the morally correct thing to do.

In the effort to reduce Hezbollah, the Israeli government has not been able to keep casualties of Lebanese civilians to zero, this is true. It is a terrible thing when anybody dies, but we are not discussing whether this is good or bad -- we agree that the deaths of civilians are a terrible thing, and the same goes for the deaths of soldiers. What we are trying to do is decide whose fault this is.

Hezbollah’s core doctrine is to seek the total destruction of the civilian Jewish population, and it deliberately targets Jewish civilians. The Israeli government, by contrast, is not trying to kill Lebanese civilians: it is dropping leaflets to warn civilians before it strikes a place. And the Israeli government would not be shooting at all if Hezbollah had not attacked Israeli civilians in the first place. In attacking Hezbollah, the Israeli government is discharging its moral obligation to Israeli citizens, precisely in the manner that you protected your family in the above thought experiment. Israel is not guilty for the deaths of the bystanders. It is to Hezbollah that you should account these deaths, because Hezbollah forced the Israeli government to attack Hezbollah, and the Hezbollah ‘soldiers,’ like the cowards they are, hide among Lebanese civilians, thus endangering them.