Rantingprofs: "There is no point of international law, and no established philosophy regarding the use of force by states that I am aware of that demands that a state use only the amount of force used against her and no more.
If that were the case, we would have been in the wrong in World War II because, when the dust had settled, we had obviously used far, far more force than had been used against us at Pearl Harbor, the initial provocation that got us into the war."
Updated, with more good sense from
Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz:
In the real world, a "proportionate" response to any attack is the level of response required to insure that the attack never occurs again. By that reasonable and honest standard, Israel has responded in a restrained and "proportionate" manner. The "disproportionate" critics really want Israel to respond in an essentially ritualistic manner. They expect Israel to engage in some little response that will serve to have their national honor satisfied and then to just let the violence continue.
On the bright side, the use of "proportionate" and "disproportionate" in anti-Israel rhetoric makes it easy to spot the stupid or dishonest critics.
5 comments:
I'm not sure I ever hear the term "disproportionate force" used except when Israel is responding to an outrageous provocation. Do you?
Clarice, one hears it in Denver about police shootings fairly often.
The moral, ethical, and legal distinctions between a police officer shooting a guy armed with a Pepsi can, and the Israelis' response to mass missle attacks, are left as an exercise for the interested reader.
Interesting, I noticed the word "disproportionate" in our troll's comments yesterday and it set me off too. It's ridiculous.
I wonder who thinks up talking points like the disproportionate response meme. Once they get started, the MSM chorus begins the chant, and it becomes conventional wisdom that cannot be breached without great moral opprobrium.
I doubt that any of our famous battlefield generals and admirals of the skills and accomplishments of Washington, Grant, Lee, Dewey, Jackson, Pershing, Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, MacArthur, Nimitz, Halsey, Schwartzkopf or Franks would have concerned themselves much with proportionality of response.
The neo-McGovernites believe nobody should be defeated because it might hurt their feelings.
Nobody should be humiliated. Nobody should lose face.
It's just not a nice thing to do to your opponent.
Play fair now boys.
Pfeh.
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