The Education of Kevbo

What follows is a fascinating conversation (between the characters Anonpic and Kevbo) that Dhun tipped me off to on the topic of war, violence, and morality. I think it’s great for many reasons, but most importantly because it demonstrates the classic divide between the relativist-utopianism outlook and that of a more tragic view of human nature and history, and how predictable prescriptions naturally follow from both. It also a rare example of how most political/philosophical conversations between individuals with conflicting visions are typically not conducted: with civility, respect, and honest, dialectic inquiry in mind.

Anonpic: This is my response to Feralm (and anyone who would assign moral responsibility based on body count alone):

"What we euphemistically describe as 'collateral damage' in times of war is the direct result of limitations in the power and precision of technology. To see that this is so, we need only imagine how any of our recent conflicts would have looked if we had possessed PERFECT weapons--weapons that allowed us either to temporarily impair or to kill a particular person, or group, at any distance, without harmingothers or their property. What would we do with such technology? Pacifists would refuse to use it, despite the variety of monsters currently loose in the world: the killers and torturers of children, the genocidal sadists, the men who, for want of the right genes, the right upbringing, or the right ideas, cannot possibly be expected to live peacefully with the rest of us. [Pacifism] seems to me to be a deeply immoral position that comes to us swaddled in the dogma of the highest moralism--but most of us are not pacifists. Most of us would elect to use weapons of this sort.

A moment's thought reveals that a person's use of such a weapon would offer a perfect window onto the soul of his ethics. Consider the all too facile comparissons that have recently been made between George Bush [or Israel] and Saddam Hussein (or Osama bin Laden, or Hilter, etc.)--in the pages of writers like Roy and Chomsky, in the Arab press, and in the classrooms throughout the free word. How would George Bush [or Israel] prosecute war...with perfect weapons? Would he [or Israel] have targeted the thousands of...civilians who were maimed or killed by [their] bombs? Would he [or Israel] have put out the eyes of little girls or torn the arms from their mothers? Whether or not you admire the man's [or Israel's] politics--there is no reason to think that [either] would have sanctioned the injury or death of even a single innocent person. What would Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden [or Hassan Nasrallah] do with perfect weapons? What would Hilter have done? They would have used them very differently"

--Sam Harris, The End of Faith [parentheticals added]

Indeed, after reading Nasrallah's statements about the Jews, it is quite clear there would be narry a Jewalive if he had a perfect weapon. So, Feralm, there is no moral equivalency between Israel's actions andHesbollah's in this war, despite the deaths of some innocents. Any discrepancy in casualties is simply the"result of limitations in the power and precesion of technology", not a reflection of moralsuperiority/inferiority/responsibility.

Kevbo: Sam Harris' writing is great stuff. Lots of good reason to be had there.

In a time like this with so many ideologies clashing at home and abroad, with motivations of faith, greedand revenge fueling warfare, peace will only come when people stop placing blame and decide to just move on. Violence simply fuels violence and will never bring resolution to any issue. We are all so connected now that no conflict occurs in a vacuum. Someone, somewhere has to decide not to respond to violence with more violence. It has to start somewhere.

There is no more right and wrong that can be strictly determined in the Middle East. There is no justifiedagressor or justified avenger after so many centuries of tit-for-tate bloodshed. It's all so clouded andgray and allies must be judged upon the same scales as enemies. All sides in the Middle East... Americans,Christians, Jews, Arabs of any sect have all lost my favor and sympathies. Someone has to make a decision that violence will not work for them and that everyone needs each other to survive. Cooperation and non-violence will bring each race, faith or nation farther in the world than anybullet or bomb ever will.

Unfortunately abusers of many faiths are drawing everyone into conflict. Ignorance, terror and tyrranyare what we all must collectively stand against and must not allow to draw us into battle. But ourresistance against such foes of peace need not involve weaponry. Our resistance should come in the form of education, open communication, fair economics and blind compassion. When death and destruction are responded to with more death and destruction, no one wins, no matter how 'right' they are or who has 'god on their side,' who has lost more civilians, who has less land to theirname, who was here first or who was here last.

Anonpic: In many ways I agree with you. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, violence is almost never the answer. However, the history of nations suggests, regretably, that force is often required to prevent tyranny and saves lives. Respectfully, when it comes to international relations, I think your position is a little naive and a lot dangerous.

Sam Harris makes a compelling case that pacifism is, under many circumstances, an immoral and impractical position, and I believe the present conflict is just one example of that: "It should be enough to note that a single sociopath, armed with nothing more than a knife, could exterminate a city full of pacifists. There is no doubt that such sociopaths exist, and they aregenerally better armed." --Sam Harris, "The End of Faith"

Few would seriously argue that we should not resist such a sociopath. The ony question is to what extent,by what method, and when. As a thought experiment, suppose that such a sociopath had a magical talismanthat would protect him from being physically restrained, but not killed, and suppose that we had aperfect weapon like that described in my comment above that could kill this sociopath without harming others. Under such a circumstance, your comment that violence will not resolve any issue is patently untrue. Violence WILL resolve this issue, the only question is whether it is our violence or his, and how many innocent people must die before we decide to kill him. In the present conflict in the Middle East, we are faced not with one, but with many such sociopaths, and they reside safely within sovereign nations which prevent us from physically restraining them without the use of force. Their explicitly stated goal is not just to "wipe Israel off the map", but to kill every single Jew on earth, and there is no reason to believe that they would stop there. These are not my words and conclusions, but there's. As just one example of many, see see Nasrallah's own quotes in the "Views on Israel" section of the following link:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasrallah

I could provide you with similar quotes, and worse, from the likes of Ahmandinejab, Hamas, Bin Laden and many, many others. All that keeps these people from fulfilling their mission is capability, and there is absolutely no sane reason to believe that these people will be appeased if we only approach them with "education, open communication, fair economics and blind compassion" any more than other fascists (and I'm using that term in its actual rather than it's rhetorical sense) throughout history would have been placated by these things.

It is for this reason that I am so put off by your (and others) arguments of a "moral equivalency" between Israel and/or the US and the islamo-fascists. Although it might take a little more effort to recognize it, there is undoubtedly a right and wrong that can be easily discerned in the present Middle East conflict, and your unwillingness to recognize this is frankly scary and extremely frustrating. Regardless of whether you agree that the State of Israel should exist or with all of its past actions, NO ONE of consequence in Israel or the US is calling for Iran, or Syria, or an other country to be "wiped off the map." NO ONE of consequence in Israel or the US is calling for the systematic extermination of all Arabs or Persians or Palestinians. NO ONE of consequence in Israel or the US is trying to kill large numbers of innocent civilians (see my previous comment about perfect weapons).

Israel and the US are not sending suicide bombers into restaurants, buses and weddings with the objectives of killing only non combatants. In the present conflict, Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from all of Lebanon five years ago. Just within the last year, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. And, during the Clinton administration, srael had agreed to give back 99% of the disputed territories (including virtually all of the West Bank)in exchange for peace, only to be rebuffed by Arafat. What did Israel get for all its efforts? Islamo-fascists simply set up camp in the recently abandoned territories of Gaza and Southern Lebanon and, unprovoked, began launching rockets filled with ballbearings into Isreali cities, and celebrated each resulting civilian death. The latest round of rockets is only the most recent in a long string of attacks.

What would you have Israel do in the face of such sociopaths?

After the last holocaust, the pacifist Ghandi suggested that the Jews should have simply committed mass suicide in order to arouse the world to Hitler's violence. However, as Sam Harris noted, "we might wonder what a world full of pacifists would have done once it had grown "aroused"--commit suicide as well?"

So, respectfully, the question is not whether or not Israel should resist with violence the attempts of the present generation of fascists sociopaths at another holocaust. It is both a practical and moral imparitive for it to do so. The only question is to what extent, by what method, and when. To this I answer, "to the greatest extent possible, by whatever method is likely to kill or constrain the most fascists, and before the fascists have the capability of killing millions of Jews and others (i.e., before they obtain nuclear weapons)." While such action will undoubtedly result in innocent deaths, it it only because we lack perfect weapons to prevent them, and the resulting death toll will almost certainly be far, far less than if we let these sociopaths run loose in a world filled with pacifists.

So we can debate, it you want, whether the means presently being employed are likely to kill or constrain the most facists, or whether some other means would perhaps work better, but let's not not equivocate as to which side is right and which is wrong here, and let's not complain when Israel defends itself and all Jews against those who would anialate them if they only had the means. History has shown that, when battling ideologically motivated fascists, peace only comes through victory,not pacifism, and victory through a combination of military dominance (not "proportional response")followed by economic and political investment on a massive scale. Despite all the casualties of WWII. howmany more innocent lives would have been saved had the allies moved MORE quickly (rather than LESS quickly) against the Germans. In short, WWII provides us with the necessary lesson, and the end result of WWII alone is enough to debunk your comment that "when death and destruction are responded to with more death and destructions, no one wins." In fact, during WWII the better side DID win, and only through the means of death and destruction, and in doing so, saved innumerable lives in the long run.

Kevbo: Sorry if I repeat or contradict myself, it's late...

I understand there are psychos out there. I understand they have genocidal intentions. I didn't mean to completely eliminate the need for self-defense with my more general statements. I don't expect anyone to simply bend over and be eliminated from the planet. Your insistence on military domination is frightening to me. It's simply that this advocacy of military dominance hasn't resulted in permanent peace anywhere on this globe. The cycle continues as the dominated rebel and hatred is passed on. No one suffers occupation lightly. Resentment brews. Keeping a big thumb on fascists or a country full of hatred has always been an incomplete solution. World War I was merely Act I before World War II. The state we left nations in economically after WWI made WWII inevitable. It didn't matter that we dominated them or handed their asses to them in 1917. And our rebuilding of Japan and Germany after WWII, while perhaps preventing an immediate repeat of another world war using guns and bombs, didn't prevent the onset of communism in East Germany or the persistence of violent factions in Japan. Those problem groups were in fact motivated by foreign presence in their respective countries after WWII. It's a Catch-22 after one has triumphed over an enemy. Some so called actions of self-defense become opportunities for retaliation that just perpetuate more fighting. Do you have a tally sheet that shows who has killed more civilians or caused more deaths over the last three or four thousand years between Jews and Arabs? Who's ahead now? Is whoever is behind in the killing the one who has the right to strike with moral impugnity? I think claiming no one of consequence in Israel advocates death to the Arabs is rather presumptive and so is assuming all righteous military action will always prevent all those hypothetical future deaths. Maybe in the last couple years, Israel has taken more positive steps toward appeasing the Arabs but over the scale of many centuries, it's not so clear that they've always been the victim in every single clash. Of course we can try and theorize and calculate on paper that lives were saved by such things as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but there is still uncertainty in a few minds that Japan couldn't have continued fighting for more than another year. We'll never know with 100% certainty of course. We can't subscribe to a sole policy of military domination in the face of fascism. It's naive to assume this single strategy is the only way to survival. (Just as it can be argued, as you do above, that absolute pacifism isn't the solution to all ills.)

You seem so willing to lash out with violence at any hint of fascism before exhausting other options. Pre-emptive strikes are dangerous to have as an absolute policy. Should we, the U.S. just go on a big bombing spree and wipe out Iran, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, all in the name of saving lives? How about Cuba? How about Russia during the Cold War? Why didn't we just go on a world tour of nuking the "axis of evil" after 9/11. Is that what you think we should be doing or have done already??? Gosh, would we have saved all sorts of lives by doing all that? NO. Look at the fact that billions live today because we didn't make the choice to handle those countries the same way we have with Iraq or Afghanistan. It seems by your reasoning we should just let loose all our nuclear stockpile as a preventative measure. We're trying to establish commercial ties with these nations, establish their survival and comfort based upon global trade, not antagonism and sabre rattling. There is very often a kind of paying of bribes and buying influence that is much more effective at saving lives than most obviously violent battles or dropping of nukes can be. Look at China... despite their horrible treatment of their own people, it appears that for the near future the possibility of greater economic ties will prevent any military interactions. Fewer lives lost. Negotiation and talks will be pursued first instead of untold deaths with attempts at military dominance. And that continued economic interaction may be our tool to improve the existence of the Chinese people. How else could change be achieved through efforts from without with a nation that size?? Not by bombs. You can keep fascists and kooks at bay in most cases if they haven't national resources to drawn upon to kill at will. There are kooks everywhere right now. Always have and always will be. Mathematically, there have to be Israeli advocates of genocide of Arabs. But they have luckily been kept from power or at least curbed their murderous intentions in the name of more measured interactions and clashes. Their numbers can be reduced with education and economics.

Moderation of radical views can be achieved. These problems must be fought over centuries with diplomacy, propaganda, occasional acquiescence, occasional trade wars, tariffs, blockades and more, not with one day or one year long bombings. No, we can't eliminate the need for self-defense but an absolute policy of pre-emption, and an automatic violent put down of fascists and potential murderers is short-sighted. We can't simply declare who is "the better side." It's all gray area. Sure, some aggressors were defeated in WWII but each individual nation composing the collective Allies has blood on its hands from centuries of both internal conflict and conflict with neighbors that was based in the same kind of fascism we self-righteously stood against in the 20th century. We slaughtered Native Americans. Oh, I guess the better side won there because we later won in WWII. The English brought the starvation and death of millions of Irish in the 19th century and still they have a hold on the country. But I guess that's okay. The better side won in WWII.

There have been divisions in every country's past and not all the victories were by "the better side." Fascism wasn't always conquered. Yet still those nations persisted to become to be a part of this "better side" that triumphed in WWII. No nation has a clean slate. The Jews, over the centuries have taken action that Muslims consider fascist and imperial. The Muslims think they're the better side in their conflicts and eliminating the Jews is not only a religious imperative but the key to their survival. Morally equivalent to Israel? Maybe not, probably not... but it doesn't matter in the end. And all the death and destruction between Jews and Arabs over several millennia has accomplished what? Nothing. They both survive and they both still hate each other. (I know we'll continue to disagree and not solve the world's problems but I appreciate the dialogue and different views at least. Talking's better than fighting.)

Anonpic: As I asked before, what would you have Israel do in this case? How would you have it defend itself? I am even more interested in your answer now that you haven't ruled out the need for self-defense. Military dominace HAS undoubtedly resulted in permanent peace in many, many, many places in the world. Not only do we have a permanent peace with Germany, Italy, and Japan, but they are actually our allies and they have stable democracies which are not a threat to us or their neighbors. And, we must remember that Germany and Japan at least were both originally motivated by an idealogical ferver that is not unlike what we currently see among the Muslims in the Middle East. The Nazi's were vehemently anti-semitic, while Japan even had its own version of the suicide bomber. The Romans were also incredibly succesful in establishing the Pax Romana through military domination, and it lasted in most parts of the empire for hundreds of years. The battles that were fought by Rome were mostly the result of Civil war among Romans, not revolt by occupied countries. And where there were revolts, it was mostly on the outskirts of the empire. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not arguing for empire here, just countering your argument that military dominace and occupation never result in lasting peace. That is just patently untrue. In fact, history shows that It is only where we are hunkered down in a purely defensive posture and DON'T attempt to dominate the enemy with sufficient forces (e.g., in Vietnam and perhaps Iraq) that we create a perpetual cycle of violence characterized by revolt and insurgency. (BTW, I'm not arguing that fighting in Vietnam was the right thing to do because it wasn't. I'm just saying that, if you're going to fight, lives are saved if you fight to dominate, not to offer up proportionate responses or merely seek to hold territory while your enemy attacks).

As for who is ahead in the current conflict (in terms of casualties caused over the years), who cares? If the Arabs were ahead in the count, that wouldn't justify Jewish retaliation, and vice versa. Retaliation is never a formula for peace. Retaliation is a "tit for tat" "proportional" response that ultimately gets nowhere and just results in more violence, and that's exactly what we've had in the Middle East since the 1960's at least. It's time to for Israel to stop retaliating and start WINNING. Regretably, because one side of the conflict is unpersuadable, peace will only come to the Middle East through victory. So, I'm not justifying military action based on a theory of retaliation, but one of self-defense and pre-emption characterized by dominating the enemy and redefining the landscape, just like we did in WWII. However, having said that, contrary to common belief (including yours apparently), there is (and was) no centuries-long conflict of death and destruction between the Muslims and Jews. From the first century CE until about 1948, the Jews didn't have a state or the means of attacking anyone even if they had wanted to. They were dispersed throughout the world. Rather, it was the crusading Christians who repeatedly attacked the Muslims (and vice versa), while the Jews lived peacefully among the Muslims for centuries with the Muslims providing them with refuge and safe harbor from the European crusading anti-semites. And after the Jewish state was established in 1948 by UN mandate, it was the Muslims who unilaterally attacked it on several different occassions, each time getting their head handed to them. And it was only as a result of this Muslim aggression that Israel took and held the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights to serve as a buffer against future attacks. So, if we were keeping a tally sheet between the Muslims and Jews, it's pretty clear how things would shake out, not that this justifies present actions on either side. Are you suggesting that there are people of consequence in Israel who are calling for the genocide (be ti of Arabs, or Persians, Palestinians or all Muslims)? If so, be specific and cite examples.

I cited specific examples on the other side and could cite many more, but I don't think you'll find any on the Israeli side. I am not suggesting that military action is the only way to deal with all fascists, but it is the only proven way to deal with aggressive fascists who are bent on genocide and who are taking steps militarily to implement their plans. And, it should be used before these aggressive fascists get nuclear weapons, if at all possible. So Iran should definitely be on the top of our list (as should its proxy, Hesbollah), but I'd give China and Cuba a pass since they aren't bent on genocide or exanding beyond their borders.. N. Korea on the other hand is a tougher call. It's not fascist, but communist, and there's no evidence that they are bent on genocide or wish to go beyond their borders. Even so, one can make a compelling moral argument for acting against N. Korea--we could remove Kim Jung Il and replace his government at a cost of fewer lives than are lost EACH YEAR due to his starving his own people to death, and this is probably true EVEN if he were able to launch a few of the half a dozen or so nuclear weapons in his arsenal! This is not just "theorizing", this is fact. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in N. Korea die in the streets each year.

You argue that there are other alternatives to dealing with aggressive fascist governments, and I agree that we should no doubt give these alternatives a chance before acting militarily (assuming we are not attacked first). But we don't have "centuries" or even decades to wait for them to work. By that time, tens of millions will have likely died, and we will find our enemy armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. So while we can try these other methods, I'm concerned that we don't have time for them to work against our most dangerous enemy (Iran) and, historically speaking, they have proven ineffective in any event. Can you cite a single historical example where a fascist government of consequence was reformed with "diplomacy, propaganda, occasional acquiescence, occasional trade wars, tariffs, blockades and more." I don't think so, but I can and have cited examples of where they were reformed by force and where a strategy of appeasement only resulted in MILLIONS of unnecessary deaths. And I can likewise cite examples of how sanction killed more innocent civilians than war would have.

By the way, the USSR did collapse, but it was communist rather than fascists and rotted economically from the inside out because communism simply doesn't work, and because they couldn't keep up with us in military spending. Our fascist enemies don't suffer from this same limitation (though N. Korea, being another failed communist state, is likely to experience the same fate in time, as will Cuba). As for who is the "better side", you seek to obscure the issue by bringing history into the equation. Hitler was not justified in exterminating 6 million Jews, and the US wasn't disqualified from pointing out the staggering immorality of doing so, simply because the US once killed Indians. Nations are not people, and the fact is that AT THE TIME of WWII, the people of the US were in a morally superior position vis-a-vis the Nazi's. I'm not saying that the US or its people are or were perfect. Sure we still had (and have) problems with racism, poverty, etc., but at the time of WWII (and now) there is simply no comparison between our (or Israel's) moral shortcomings and those of people who seek the annialation of entire races of people. This is not a religious determination, but an ethical one. Surely we can agree on that much.

And as for the "fascist and imperial" aspirations of the Jews, there are none, and both you and the Muslims know it (unless your one of those who believe that Jews secretly dominate and control the world). They have never sought empire, at least not in the last thousand years (which predates the founding of Islam), and they are clearly not fascists. They have never sought the destruction of even a single Muslim state, for if they had they surely could have done it! So, no, the radical Muslims are not justified in believing that killing every Jew on earth, or even eliminating the Jewish state, is necessary for their own survival. It obviously is not, and any assertion to the contrary is clearly just propaganda. Kevbo, I don't think that you truly object to the use of force from a moral perspective. I think the truth is that you, and others who follow your line of reasoning, simply don't trust yourself to use force appropriately. I'm just guessing here, but it seems that, deep down inside, you fear that if you had the capacity to dominate another, you just might to it, rightly or wrongly. In other words, you (rightfully I think) fear the corrupting influence of power. As a result, via psychological projection, you don't trust those who are most like you (i.e., fellow Westerners) to use force appropriately either.

You appear to fear that George Bush will misuse force to achieve empire or selfish political goals more than you fear that Iran will use nuclear weapons against the West to murder hundreds of thousand or maybe even millions. It seems that the more unlike you a person or nation is, the more faith you have in their wise use of force, I guess because it is more difficult to project your own motivations and anxieties on people who are very unlike you. So it seems that, because you don't trust yourself or your goverment to use force wisely, you avoid the moral responsibility of having to act by creating a world for yourself where nothing is ever right and nothing is ever wrong. As you say, everything is "gray." And in this specific case, you go so far as to say that you can't say for sure if the "right" side won WWII! This is a staggering admission, and the logic you employ to arrive at this conclusion betrays your true concern: You attempt to establish a moral equivalency between Americans in the 1940's, whose ancestors a hundred years before had severely mistreated the Indians, and Nazi's in the 1940's who at that time were actively trying to kill every living Jew, and who did kill 6 million of them! This is a logical stretch at best, and seems to be a desperate attempt to not have to call a spade a spade. Respecfully, viewed at the time (i.e., the 1940's), there was no comparison! The Americans in 1940 were not responsible for killing Indians in the 17th and18th centuries. So, the Americans were morally far superior to the Nazi's of 1940, just like Israel is morally superior to the Islamic fascists who would kill every living Jew if given the chance, and this most certainly DOES matter. It matters because staying focused on the objective morality of events is how you keep yourself from being corrupted by power. It's how you know whether force is justified or not. It's how you protect the innocent from the sociopaths who would kill them.

To fear the use of force to such a degree that you're unwilling to call evil by its name simply because you might then have a moral obligation to act is both delusional and very dangerous. In my comments above, I do not mean to dismiss the corrupting influence of power. As they say, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutley." But the solution is not to refuse to exercsise your power to protect the innocent from bands of murderers who would destroy them just because you don't trust yourself to exercise it rightly. Rather, the solution is to stay focused on the morality of the situation and make sure that your actions are consistent with that morality so that you do come to trust yourself, and you save thousands or millions as a result. When I speak of morality, I don't mean a religious morality where something is moral because "the Bible told me so" or "the Koran told me to kill infidels", I mean an ethical morality free of religiouis manipulation. For example, even atheists agree that genocide is wrong. I also understand that there are occassions where determining who is right and who is wrong is difficult to impossible (Vietnam, for example), but for the all the reasons noted above, the present conflict is no tone of them. Not even close. That's why we have chosen to speak out on this issue. I too appreciate the dialogue and hope I've made some progress in convincing you that I'm not arguing for the indiscriminate use of force against anyone who disagrees with me, or even against every fascist. But force should clearly be used against those whose repeatedly-stated objective is the genocidal murder of millions and who will soon have the means of achieving that objective.

Kevbo: Maybe I can understand your thoughts on things better and clarify some of my own thoughts without getting caught up in merely contrarian responses. i.e. sound like less of an idiot. I hope other people are finding our words worth their time or fuel for discussion elsewhere. Hey, a cease-fire. Good news in a shitty situation. The problem I have with Israel's self defense in this case was that it involved the death of so many civilians. There was either a failure of intelligence or overconfidence in the precision of their missile strikes (see Harris above). Here we are a little while later and Lebanon's wrecked and ripe for the undefeated Hezbollah to take over again. The Lebanese government can't control Hezbollah and the Israeli government can't take them out it appears. Hezbollah had gotten things stirred up most recently with their deadly attack and hostage taking and now after their seemingly random rocket flinging, they can tell themselves they've beaten the Israelis. Iran and Syria claim victory also and the U.S. has earned even more loathing from Arabs for aligning with Israel in its strike on Hezbollah and for not advocating a cease-fire. (Let's not even bring up the right wing nut jobs hoping this would hasten the arrival of an apocalypse and return of their savior. Ugh.)

All this violence and death hasn't accomplished anything positive. I don't know what the best kind of self-defense might be but in this case it didn't seem commensurate with the most recent incursions by Hezbollah. Israel's actions seemed clumsy. They seemed to lose some of their usual claimed moral high-ground with the deaths of civilians that included women and children. I'm not sure Israel can say that every strike against Hamas and Hezbollah is always somehow a prevention of genocide when the relatively moderate Arab governments in Lebanon and Palestine (post-Arafat) were not, as nations, embarking on anti-Israeli military campaigns of recent. But that "they want to kill us" mantra seems to be the Israeli government's mandate for causing so many civilian deaths (intentionally or accidentally) in each skirmish. That bothers me but it is not to say Islamic militants are conversely in any position of moral superiority at all. Interesting viewpoints on all of this from a professor Ze'ev Maoz at Tel Aviv University in an HAARETZ.com article: Morality Is Not On Our Side. The comments after are interesting too though predictable in parts. You're right that many military victories have eventually been succeeded by more peaceful regimes, but there rarely seems to be a permanent peace on the planet. I look backwards and see new rivalries emerge, new battles come forth and more lives lost before stability is achieved again through treaty or war. I'm not expecting Japan and Germany to turn against us tomorrow but our peace of 60 years seems so small versus man's recorded history. Call me a skeptic and pessimist? I'm simply continually so appalled by the number of lives lost in unproductive battles such as Israel's recent attack on Hezbollah that I really find it hard to feel sympathy toward one side or the other on some days. I lose sense of overall struggles and many contributing factors. Call me a victim of smaller and smaller news cycles, of which I am professionally a part of.

Over a larger scope of history, I do indeed find the Jews to have primarily been on the bad end of the deal and the absolute venomous hatred of some members of Islam against the nation/tribes of Israel and the Jews (and Gentiles too) is more than obvious. But in 2006, it seems we should have advanced to having far fewer unilateral aggressions between nations when we have attempted to establish world bodies of justice and moderation. (We could write for hours on the failures of those groups and their flaws of course...) We just strike out so brazenly against each other without the cooperation of allies and lives seem needlessly lost... U.S. invading Iraq, Israel's failed strikes against Hezbollah... etc. My personal fatigue at hearing of the losses of life to anger and potentially unwarranted aggression makes it easy to find contempt with any and all violence and military actions beyond that hazy line of self-defense we've discussed. I see nations who mature through trade and foreign influence and seem to leave paths of violence and turmoil and so I wonder how much bloodshed could have been avoided. How many military campaigns weren't necessary and the lives lost greater than would have been lost over time? But that's a lot of speculation and Monday morning QB-ing obviously.

I appreciate your historical examples. It's been a couple decades since any history classes. Honesly, I would love it if somehow there were no Hezbollah or Hamas tomorrow but I'm not certain what the best route to achieve that is. I'm loathe to suggest more war but well aware of the time it will take to achieve peace through education, trade, compromise, foreign mandated co-existence etc....generations I'm sure. So is there a middle ground there? I find our current administration in the U.S. to be deficient in understanding the landscape and peoples of the MidEast that they would do battle with and naively expect to curry favor via victory. So as I now understand you to say, we face many different situations with each country, don't we? You know, I could justify us going into Iraq for purely humanitarian reasons but that wasn't why we went in, it seems. I wonder what we should do with N. Korea.... our 1 million man army versus his 3 million? Wait for a war of attrition to reach fruition? Wait for or encourage change from within there? Hard to say when people are hungry there and at the same time there is the threat of nuke tests. Kim Jung Il is one wacky dude.---

Well, I don't think my views are based on a mistrust of myself in particular with power, I haven't killed anyone with the weapons I own or equipment I operate! :) I simply don't trust the motivations of people like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. There seem to be too many economic benefits for them and their friends as these wars/turmoil persist. I find Bush in particular scary for his attempts to see the world in black and white based upon his faith. I don't think he can even see the subtleties that Cheney and Rumsfeld can see in international situations. I don't really picture myself as a potential warmonger.

Do I fear Iran's leadership more than my own president? For sure. I don't expect our current White House to advocate the mass destruction of all enemies or of a particular people but I do think it is the domain of the leaders of countries like Iran, Syria etc. I generally find religion to be a waste of resources and faith to be completely unreasonable. I fear religious zealots. I fear religious fundamentalists. My mistrust is more for those segments of the human race that have time and again proven themselves capable of hating and engaging in the most horrific acts because of and regardless of their faith, nationality or economic status. People will find justification for the most horrible acts in their faiths alone. I'm not sure that I'm avoiding moral responsibility by allocating everything to gray. It's not that I don't think the more benevolent side obviously won WWII for example. It's simply the older that I get, the more I learn nothing is black and white. It's naive and ignorant to think things are so easily divisible into good and bad. That habit seems to accompany a lack of education or an unwillingness to think... i.e. the Rush Limbaugh and O'Reilly fans and the aforementioned religious zealots. I'm don't think there isn't a comparison of forces that slaughtered Indians and those that slaughtered Jews (or Albanian, or Irish, or Kurds etc.). It seems to stem from the same human well of hatred, racism and bigotry. Do I think current generations are responsible for what their predecessors did before them? Not necessarily. But regardless of scale, scope or success in eradicating another, it comes down to an act of mercillessly killing another human out of hate. That's the commonality I see. Whether you want to kill a million Jews or all Jews, a single tribe of Indians or all Indians, how is one act any less reprehensible or hateful than the other? That's where I'll call a spade a spade. My resistance to see black and white situations is not a fear of responsibility to act. I just don't believe in absolute evils or absolute goods. But that doesn't mean I think everything is smack in the middle ethically and no decisions can be made or justified. I'm glad you see there is morality without religious basis.

I am an atheist and I do think genocide is wrong. It's wrong in very many logical ways, humanitarian ways and philosophical ways. (No need for me to detail that here.) I think it's weak minded for so many to rule every situation as having pure good sides and evil sides merely because of words allegedly inscribed on stone tablets or because of lines in alleged holy books of disputed authorship. Unfortunately, it's that same lack of thinking that is usually the cause of the loss of human life on either side of a battle that I despise. Did that collectively make any more sense? We definitely have some different vantage points but probably agree more than we differ were we able to completely express our thoughts. Who's got the time or space though? :) Thanks for tolerating mine here.

Anonpic: I've already given my views on the issues of civilian casualties in my response above to Feralm where I discuss "perfect weapons", so I won't rehash it hear. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. Civilian casualites are not only regretable, they are truly tragic. But the the simple fact is that Hezbollah purposely made it impossible for Israel to defend itself without harming innocents, and Lebanon itself bears as much responsibility as Israel (though less than Hezbollah) for their deaths and troubles. It permitted an armed political party that it part of its government to unilaterally attack a neighboring country, thereby triggering the Israeli response, and it never even tried to disarm that party as required under UN Resolution 1559 which was passed years ago.

As for Israel, it had a duty to protect its citizens by doing whatever it could to stop the rockets, and Israel took extraordinary and almost unprecented measures to prevent civilian casualties in Lebanon. There were many, many occassions when Israel gave advance notice of its intention to attack a certaincity or area, both by dropping millions of leaflets and by broadcating into Lebanon via radio. It often gave civilians hours, and sometimes days, to evacuate an area before launching massive attacks, thereby telegraphing its plans to the enemy. As war goes, it seems to me that Israel did more than it had to, perhaps more than it even should have for its own good, to prevent civilian casualties. Israel most certainly could have elminated Hesbollah, or rather its current membership. In fact, it is estimated that it killed about a quarter of its fighters and wounded many, many more in just one month of fighting, an that's without really bringing in its ground forces. It was only its fear of civilian casualties and international condemnation that prevented it from launching a much larger attack that would have undoubtedly finished off most of the Hesbollah fighters (not that they would not have later been replaced by others). I respect your disdain for war and death. But the question that you need to ask yourself is what would happen if Isreal could magically defeat all Islamic radicals, versus what would happen if all Islamic radicals could magically defeat Isreal. In the former situation, Israel would very likely live in peace and security with its neighbors. In the later situation, the result would be something else entirely. To see my view, and a counterview, on this see the comments at:

www.flickr.com/photos/anomalous/24543669/

As for our current administration, I think that they understand better than any other in history the landscape of the Middle East and what it will take to redefine it. I think that anyone willing to look through the far Left talking points to the facts will see that this is the case. For instance:

1) The Bush administration is the first to support a two-state solution as a means of resloving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, thereby acknowleding for the first time that the Palestinians have a legitimate claim to some of the disputed land. No other President, not even Clinton, was willing to do that.

2) The Bush administration is the first to state publically, while in office, that the US was wrong tosupport Middle Eastern dictators for so long in exchange for cheap oil. Ignoring Iraq for a moment,the Bush administration has put more pressure than any other in history on Middle Eastern dictators to adopt democratic reforms, and he has enjoyed considerable, if unheralded, success in this respect. Lebanon is now more or less a functioning democracy, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the BA. Saudi Arabia and its neighbors now have elections to fill many local government offices, something that was unheard of before the BA.

The simple fact, which Bush recognizes all too well, is that truly democratic countries almost never attack other democracies. In fact, one is hard pressed to find an example of such. Egypt, though not truly democratic, is more so than most in the region, and it has been at peace with Israel for many, many years. If one understands this, and read's Bush's speeches on this subject, then it becomes clear what Bush's objective is in the Middle East. The Iraq war was not a war for oil or empire, as the left so foolishly argues. And it was not even, in its broadest strategic sense, a war about WMD, although that was certainly an important tactical concern and one that had to be resolved one way or the other. Rather, the Iraq war is, as Bush so often states, "the front line in the War on Terror", though this does not mean what the Left thinks/says it means. What Bush means by this phrase (and this becomes clear if one actually listens to his words and reads hisspeaches), is that the War on Terror will ultimately be won by democratizing the Middle East, just like centuries of warfare in Western Europe was ended by the US democratizing it after WWII. Prosperous, democratic, empowered, and free countries generally are not capable of sustaining or tolerating the kind of hatred for other democratic peoples that terrorism requires. It took the US decades to create stable democracies in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc., etc., and democratizing the Middle East, and thereby winning the War on Terror, will unfortunately take just as long. That is not to say that we are necessarily in for decades of actual war, though we might be. As Bush has also noted, the WOT is fought on many fronts--militarily, economically, diplomatically, and politically. Nonetheless, to get things started, it was necessary to establish a Muslim, democratic beachhead in the region, and Iraq is/was the most obvious candidate for immediate democratization: It's populace is highly educated compared to others; it has a significant population of "secular" Muslims (Sunni and Kurds, for example); it's oil reserves make it economically self-sustaining; it is centrally-located(such the democracy is likely to spread over time to its neighbors); and perhaps most importanly, it was lead by an evil dictator with a history of using WMD and attacking its neighbors and who, as a result, was despised throughout the Arab and Persian world, even (and especially) by his own countrymen. THAT is why we invaded and liberated Iraq, and THAT is why staying and stabilizing Iraq is so, so important. If Iraq succeedes as a truly democratic country, this will put ENORMOUS pressure on its non-democratic neighbors, and they realize this. This is why those that do not have close relationships with the Bush family, like Iran and Syria, for example, are actively trying to prevent our success there through discontent among the Shia and trying to instigate a civil war in Iraq and an international war with Israel in the larger region. On the other hand, if we do not succeed in establishing a stable democracy in Iraq, there will literally be hell to pay for reasons I won't bother to outline here. So, Iraq is indeed the frontline in the War on Terror. And I should point out hear that many of the very people that Bush intends to disempower through this campaign of democratization (the dictators of the Middle East) are the very ones that the Left accuses the Bush family of being too chummy with. While its true that the Bush's have been chummy with them in the past, this may be the very reason why Bush has some success in using diplomacy and other non-military means to get them to implement at least some meaningful democratic reforms, with more promised in the future. Just as Nixon was the only one who could go to China, Bush, given his family's relationships with these dictators, may have been the only one who could convince Saudia Arabia and its neighbors to democratize . I share your concern over religious fanaticism and those who judge right and wrong based on what some yahoo wrote in a book centuries ago. But I don't share your concern, and the concern of much of the far Left, that Bush is one of these fanatics. Bush is a METHODIST for goodness sake! (As is Cheney). This is a very normal, mainline, theologically liberal, protestant denomination. Methodists generally do not take a literal view of scripture, they ordain women, they are not apocolyptic, and they are science friendly. In general, they are quite reasonable as far as Christian denominations go. Compare this to Bill Clinton's Southern Baptist denomination which will not ordain women, believes in a literal interpretaton of scripture, and anticipates a real-life battle of Armegeddon followed by a literal Second-Coming of Christ. In addition, Baptists are anti-evolution, anti public schools, anti Disney, anti-gay, etc., etc.,etc. I quite frankly don't know where this idea that Bush is some type of religious freak comes from, but I suspect that this criticism is sometimes disingenuous since the Left never criticized the Baptist Clinton along these lines. By the way, I'm not an atheist because I believe in something greater than the human ego. But I'm not a Christian in the usual sense either. I guess you could say that I'm a gnostic, or a gnostic wanna-be. LOL While you may be right that there is no absolute right or wrong in the world, it seems that we can agree that there are degrees of right and wrong. If murdering another is kinda wrong, then murdering a thousand people must be a thousand times kinda wrong. If we don't recognize this, then we are left in a world where all that matters is one's own self-interest, and in such a world, who can blame Israel (or Hesbollah or anyone else) for acting the way they do? In such a world, there is no reason to be incensed by "innocent" civilians, for example. That's not a world that I want to live in.

Kevbo: Do you expect any success in democritization in the ME, say within the next ten or twenty years? It just seems difficult for it to take hold when so many would seem to prefer theocracies. Despite the brutality of Sadam Hussein, he seemed successful at keeping religious sects at bay. Now each side wants whole pie with the socialist Baath party gone. I also keep hoping there will be greater splits between the militant and political wings of Hamas, Hezbollah etc. That would be progress of a sort. Not nec. A solution but it may be easier to negotiate peace without guns in the room, so to speak.

Anonpic: Whether the democratization effort will succeed or not is another question. If it succeeds, it will take decades, but I think it has a chance. For all intents and purposes, Japan was a centuries-old theocracy that over time was successfully converted, as was Nazi-German (although it was a more recent tone). If we don't succeed in democratizing and economically reforming the Middle East, then we're in for a hundred years or more of continuing terrorist attacks, some of them with WMD.