There is a wonderfully misguided article in this morning's Jerusalem Post which beautifully captures the liberal cum pacifist world view. In this view there is an argument to be made for attacking one's enemies during a shooting war, but during what the columnist, Larry Derfner, refers to as a period of "peace and quiet" on the northern border, targeting someone even as evil and dangerous as Imad Mugniyeh, is a provocation:
Rattling the Cage: When in doubt, bomb
When I heard the news that Hizbullah's number one terrorist had been blown up in Damascus, I thought: This wasn't Israel's doing. We've had a year-and-a-half of cease-fire with Hizbullah, nobody wants to ruin that. We still haven't gotten over the last war in Lebanon, nobody's going to risk starting another one now, not when there's been 18 months of peace and quiet on the northern border.
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I don't understand. Everybody knows they're going to hit back, or at least they're going to try as hard as they can, and, based on experience, they probably will succeed sooner or later. Mughniyeh was evidently very special as terrorists go, but as we've seen over and over again, no terrorist is irreplaceable.
We're waiting for the other shoe to drop. And then what will Israel do? Invade Lebanon again? Yet everybody is happy and proud that, as far as anyone can tell, and according to some of those good old foreign media reports, our guys got him. Mazel tov. L'chayim.
THIS WAS the stupidest, most reckless thing Israel has done in a long time - and if our guys didn't do it, they might as well have because all of Israel is acting like they did. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Syrian President Bashar Assad would have to be crazy to believe Israel didn't kill him.
The logic seems to be that if the enemies of Israel, who use surprise attacks on Israeli civilians and Jews around the world to advance their cause, which includes the destruction of Israel, are not actively involved in a terror atrocity at the moment, we should not attempt to anger them by fighting back. Derfner carries this argument to its logical extreme:
Yediot's banner headline for this last rub-out read: "Mughniyeh was preparing another mass terror attack." The headline was based on Israeli speculation that Mughniyeh had been given the job of paying Israel back for its bombing in September of a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria.
THAT WAS another stupid, reckless, wildly popular move by our leaders. We'd just gotten through the summer without the war with Syria that everyone was worried about, people here were starting to think the danger had passed, and boom - Israeli jets, ATFMR (According To Foreign Media Reports), bomb Syria.
Even if that was a nuclear reactor in the making that they wiped out, it was a very, very long way from being a threat to Israel. "My guess is that in the worst case, North Korea gave Syria the most embryonic sort of equipment needed to manufacture nuclear weapons, which would take dozens of years of work by thousands of technicians that Syria doesn't have."
Talk about failing to connect the dots. For Derfner's benefit and the benefit of those who find his logic unassailable, allow me to point out a few minor details his article elides:
Intelligence estimates vary widely on the time frame for Syria (and Iran) to acquire nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them. Recent Israeli report, and based on their proximity and the hatred of their neighbors, Israel has little choice but to be quite cautious in their assessment, place a viable threat only 2-3 years out; certainly not even the NIE supports the contention that the threat is "dozens of years" away.
Waiting until Syria was close to a warhead would mean they had a significant quantity of enriched Uranium on premises; as attack at that point would have risked dangerous dissemination of radioactive material throughout the Middle East. While few of the terror supporters care about such collateral damage, civilized nations try their best to avoid it.
Syria, Iran, and their proxies in Hezbollah and Hamas, are officially at war with Israel (though admittedly sub-state terror groups do not actually have the international standing to wage war legally, a point someone should bring up at the Hague perhaps.)
The Syrian, Iranian, Hamas, Hezbollah axis is currently deeply engaged in efforts to acquire the means to destroy Israel.
Although Iran does not directly admit to "outsourcing," there is evidence, and convincing logic, to support the contention that the Syrian plant destroyed by Israel was indeed involved in work directed toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Iran continues to work on building missiles capable of reaching Israel and of carrying warheads.
The rhetorical attacks on Israel from its enemies have never abated, though since the assassination of Mugniyeh they have certainly stepped up their rhetoric.
Presumably, none of these points would seriously undercut Derfner's certainty that when things are quiet it is best not to stir the pot. And, isn't this part of the core of the liberal approach to foreign affair? The Clinton administration always responded to attacks with a measured and proportional, and ineffective, military attack. The anti-war cohort has insisted, despite no specific data to support the claim, that our invasion of Iraq has created more terrorists than it has killed. (Interestingly, recent events in Iraq and Pakistan, where the vast majority have repudiated Islamic terror after being the primary victims of such terror, raise questions about the liberal supposition.)
According to Derfner and those who adhere to policies proscribing a proactive approach to terror, during periods of quiet we must not attack our enemies lest we make them angry and increase the risk of a terrorist response. On the other hand, when our enemies proclaim repeatedly that as soon as they have the means, they plan on committing another genocide on the Jewish people, such diffidence seems touchingly naive. According to Derfner, Israel should have waited and allowed Mugniyeh to plan, train his forces, continue his efforts to obtain more and more deadly means for killing innocents, and then, only after an attack, react with some proportional response.
This is the same logic that American liberals use when they oppose FISA and the war in Iraq. Many of us here have commented that it will take a nuclear weapon destroying an American city before the bulk of American liberal/pacifists become wiling to strike back. Of course, at that point, very few will care what American liberals have to say and FISA will seem like the height of concern for civil liberties once a terrified Congress has convened to demand the Administration protect us from further attacks.
Derfner's article reminds me of an old joke. A traveler finds him living in obscurity in Argentina and is amazed to learn his drinking companion is none other than Adolph Hitler. Hitler talks about all his plans to come back and undo his defeat. Trying to discover if Hitler had learned anything form his disastrous defeat and the destruction of the Third Reich, the traveler asks what would be different once Hitler makes his triumphant return. Hitler's answer? "Next time, no more Mr, Nice-guy."
I suppose if we had the chance to ask Imad Mugniyeh, surrounded by his 72 raisins, what will be different when he comes back, we should expect the same answer.
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