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May 17, 2006
The worst ex-president ever
Jimmah Carter, voluptuary of tyrants, has penned another anti-Israel screed, this time planting his lips firmly on the backside of "Moderate" Palestinian President Abbas.
Unlike St. Jimmah, who believes that the only solution to disputes between Western democracies and tyrants and terrorists is to surrender, I've always thought that peace is never possible until there is a clear-cut winner and a undisputed loser.
World War I sowed the poisoned seeds that bore the bitter fruit of World War II, in large measure because the Armistice of 1918 came about without a decisive military defeat of the Wehrmacht on the battlefield. This, combined with the fact that no major combat operations took place on German soil, allowed the myth of the "stab in the back" to take hold; the Nazis used this alleged betrayal by Jews and Communists to great effect, harnessing the electorate's anger over a defeat it believed was unearned and undeserved.
By the time the Japanese signed the surrender documents aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay in the Fall of 1945, Berlin and Tokyo had been devastated, vast regions of both nations reduced to rubble, their soldiers killed by the bushel, civilians dying city blocks at a time.
There was no question in 1945 -- unlike 27 years earlier -- that this defeat was well deserved.
Today, the defeated nations, formerly dictatorships all, are democracies, no threat to the world -- or their neighbors. One could say that the fires of Dresden and Hiroshima cauterized the wounds inflicted by Hitler, Tojo and their cronies.
Today, all evidence seems to indicate that Hamas thinks it's winning the fight to destroy Israel -- a goal endorsed by the Mad Mullahs of Iran, too.
I'm less than convinced by the arguments of Jimmah and Pres. Clinton, who have insisted that all it take for peace to break out in the Middle East is more concessions from the Israelis. I think peace will only come when the Palestinians suffer a complete and absolute defeat.
As Hamas sees things, Israel is on the political, military, and PR defensive. The mighty Israel Army has not defeated Hamas. It has not deterred Hamas. It has not intimidated Hamas. It has not frightened Hamas. And despite targeted assassinations and artillery barrages, Israel hasn't prevented Hamas from lobbing rockets and missiles into Israel almost daily.
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If it is true that in war there is no substitute for victory, it is truer that victory comes only when the victor breaks the will of the vanquished. One vanquishes an enemy not by winning his heart and mind, but by crushing him militarily.
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Israel need not use carpet bombing to prevail over its foes. It can use less Draconian measures, such as destroying terrorists' homes after each and every terrorist act, and ending all economic ties with the Palestinians. It is absolutely absurd that the Israelis hire Palestinians for day labor in their country. It is equally absurd that they supply electricity every day to the very people who pray, and wish, and work for their destruction.
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Hamas has no qualms about killing innocent Israelis - that's what Arab terrorists are supposed to do - and then waiting for Israel's inevitable response. When that response results in the unavoidable death of innocents, not only is Hamas delighted, but there are the inevitable anti-Israel letters to foreign newspapers, such as this one in The Oregonian of March 9, 2006: "Does the World War II atrocity [of the Holocaust] give the Jewish state the right to murder an 8-year-old [Palestinian] boy?"
The only way for the Israelis to end the Palestine-Israel conflict, and also to end the deaths of innocent civilians on both sides, is to employ effective force. They must kill the terrorists in their very beds. And if their beds happen to be next to the beds of Palestinian civilians, that is sad. But the deaths of innocents is the price the Palestinians decided to pay when they vote for Hamas and when they support its terrorist and rejectionist agenda. Israel has nothing to apologize for if the Arabs deny the truth that every action has a consequence.
After a successful commando raid in Beirut in the spring of 1973, during which a seventy-year-old Italian woman was unfortunately killed, the then Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General David Elazar, said: "Israel won't play by the rules of partial war; wars are not won with a strong defense."
If despite Elazar's dictum, contemporary Israelis keep playing by the rules of partial war, and refuse to fight their enemies by the rules of the region in which they live, both the conflict and the innocent civilian casualties will continue until the end of time.
A nation that refuses to fight to win is doomed to defeat -- and a nation unwilling to admit defeat will never win peace.
Posted by Mike Lief at May 17, 2006 12:03 AM
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Comments
I agree with much of this. Using total force to remove Hamas would redefine the citzenry. But what about the generations that follow? That inbred (trained) conflict between the two sides will fester where... or be contained, where.
And this is what people here at home don't seem to grasp: "One vanquishes an enemy not by winning his heart and mind, but by crushing him militarily."
Liberals need to be convinced. How to achieve that, who knows.
Posted by: Vermont Neighbor at May 17, 2006 08:57 AM