FOR HOMICIDE?

More killing, please! (SPENGLER, 6/12/03, Asia Times)

"I think people are sick of [killing]," said President George W Bush of the Israeli-Palestinian war. The contrary may be true. People may want the killing to continue for quite some time, as the Palestinian radical organizations suggest. A recurring theme in the history of war is that most of the killing typically occurs long after rational calculation would call for the surrender of the losing side.

Think of the Japanese after Okinawa, the Germans after the Battle of the Bulge, or the final phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Thirty Years War, or the Hundred Years War. Across epochs and cultures, blood has flown in proportion inverse to the hope of victory. Perhaps what the Middle East requires in order to achieve a peace settlement is not less killing, but more.

Mut der Verzweiflung, as the Germans call it, courage borne of desperation, arises not from the delusion that victory is possible, but rather from the conviction that death is preferable to surrender. Wars of this sort end long after one side has been defeated, namely when enough of the diehards have been killed.

The possibility that this is true--and it seems more likely than not--is why Israel and America should simply impose a state on the Palestinian leadership. One would hope that the shock of sudden "victory" in their years long campaign might dissipate some of the homi-suicidal fury that has been cultivated. But, if not, if much more killing is required, Israel's moral and legal position is greatly strengthened if it is slaughtering enemy combatants from a coequal state than if it takes exactly the same actions against a citizenry from which it withholds civil rights, even if justified in doing so. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2003 10:16 AM