Proportionality?

Bruce McQuain over at Q&O has a piece up called:

Hamas has no desire to negotiate “peace”

The import of that title is manifestly obvious to anyone who’s been watching the situation for any length of time. Bruce raises a couple of points in that general neighborhood:

Let’s be clear about something – while Hamas may not pose a serious threat to the existence of Israel at the moment that doesn’t mean, given the Hamas charter which calls for the destruction of Israel, that it won’t pose a very real future threat.

While true, there’s a problem with this statement; to demonstrate the problem lets postulate together Mexicans lobbing non nuclear weapons into the southern United States.  Let’s further postulate, that they’re not hitting anything in particular , and only in random are any injuries taken.  Does this mean that we do not respond with overwhelming force?  Of course not. It’s not just the future trheat… it’s the current one, as well that needs response.

Further, the issue isn’t the rockets being lobbed in, it’s the attitude of the group that’s doing the attacking.  Regardless of the lack of quality of the weaponry, eventually given their attitude that are going to succeed having something.  To not respond with force is to be seen as exhibiting weakness, and in any event the outcome will be more attacks, until such time as eventually something or someone the value is in fact hit. Getting smacked upside the head tends to alter attitudes. Negotiation usually doesn’t.

Further still, as Bruce suggests that future threat, is very real, particularly when considering the specter of nuclear weaponry being handed them by one of their parents states.  Iran, for example.  The motivations surrounding Iran, I have already discussed here.Bruce says:

At some point, you have to say “enough” and stop the attempts on your citizen’s lives. The fact is, as I pointed out in a post about proportionality, Israel’s response had been quite proportional.

Quite so.  But I think that they’ve done so to their own detriment and the prologation of the war against them.

 Prudence demands a show of overwhelming force. This concept of ‘proportionality’ is one with which I have run out of patience.  As I say over there ;

(cough, Drezden, Nagasaki,Hiroshima, cough)

You see, reality keeps rearing its head.

We waited for about half a decade before responding in that fashion. How long do you propose to hold Israel to your mythical “proportionality”? Do you really think that those seeking to destroy Israel, large chanting death to Israel, and who were seeking nuclear weapons for the specific purpose of a wiping Israel from the face of the map, give a tinkers cuss about your concept of proportionality, except as it benefits them?

It’s time you get out of the notion that this is going to come to some kind of a mutually agreeable end. That civilization is going to have any sway whatsoever over a band of people who insist on remaining in the fourteenth century, and who are, by their own words quite willing to kill 1000 of their own for the purpose of killing one Jew..

If they bring a knife, you bring a gun. That’s the only way to survive, and in reality,  the only way to bring about the quick end to a war. The very reason that their problems have gone on for as long as they have, I suggest, is their ‘proportional’ response, and the dogged insistance on “Negotiation”.

Zbignew Brezinsky  over the weekend issued a comment on one of the talking head shows to the effect that left on their own, Israel and their neighbors would never come to a peace. The thrust of his comment was intended to make the case that the west would have to get involved and broker a peace deal.  The problem of course is that we’ve tried that, already, many times over, which is exactly why we are where we are… no closer to a real peace than we were four decades ago.  Were we to leave Israel and it’s neighbors to work out their differences without getting involved… insisting on a ‘measured’ response, for example, yes, even letting it go to war if it came to it…  the issue would have been settled decades ago, and we’d be lving in peacetime right now… and this conversation wouldn’t be taking place.

I’ll say it again; Peace is not a product of negotiation Negotiation merely postpones or re-directs war.. Peace in reality is a happy side product of actually winning the war waged against you. Our insistance on negotiated settlements which Israel’s neighbors break before the ink is dry, has only served to prolong the war there, and increase the number of dead. It’s the best way I can think of to ensure that the Islamic nutjobs attain the power they seek, thus winning the war for them.

You really have to wonder if that’s not what the proponants of ‘proportional response’ want.

Addendum: (Bit) A reader writes me in feedback:

But what brought all this about now?

Well, that’s an important point… and the answer is, The America election. We go again to my post in the comments section of that thread, in which I adrdress a point Bruce makes:

I suggest their conclusion was that they couldn’t live with, as you say, a government run by a death-cult that continues to attack it…. and which would soon have US support, ala Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton. … you’ll doubtless recall that Arifat all but had his own office in the White House, for example, while Clinton was busy pounding on Israel for consessions. The added weight of ‘negotation’ as it’s been played out over the years… where the “Palatsinians” use “Negotation” as they would any other weapon.. against their enemy… As I said back in 2001:

“From Oslo to Camp David, Clinton has pushed Israel to the bargaining table, and pressured her to give up vital strategic and cultural assets she has no business giving away, if survival is at all on her agenda. Ehud Barak, by his giving into Bill Clinton (who, along with his staff including Jim Carville, did much to put Barak into office), has done little more than demonstrate just how empty the Palestinians’ peace talk really is, and how desperate Clinton was to be seen as a good President, his crimes against his oaths not withstanding.

Consider….

At Clinton’s insistence, Barak offered Arafat the keys to the kingdom; just about all of the West Bank and Gaza, plus East Jerusalem and even Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. How do the peace loving Palestinians respond? Yasser Arafat turned it all down, and gave us another few nights of headlines, filled with kids in the street throwing stones, and being shot, occasionally. He also sent his armed forces, (You recall, they’re supposed to be policemen?) to fire at the Israelis, apparently hoping for an excuse to tell the rest of the world how Israel is a war-mongering nation.

Of course that should have been a signal to about anyone with a brain that he didn’t give a damn about peace. All he and his followers are interested in is the destruction of Israel. It should have also been a signal that Clinton’s attempt at a legacy backfired, big time, and more, that it didn’t have a chance to start with…. something that Clinton should have known, did he have any understanding of the situation at all.

What I’m suggesting is that Israel saw all of that developing against them all over again, and reacted accordingly.

And, I’ll add at this point, correctly.