July 25, 2006
THE UNANSWERABLE ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF THE ISRAELI RESPONSE
Hezbollah Says Israeli Response a Surprise (Scheherezade Faramarzi, AP, 7/25/06)
"The truth is _ let me say this clearly _ we didn't even expect (this) response.... that (Israel) would exploit this operation for this big war against us," said Komati.Never has the immorality of a proportional response been made so clear. Posted by David Cohen at July 25, 2006 4:44 PMHe said Hezbollah had expected "the usual, limited response" from Israel to the July 12 cross-border raid, in which three Israelis were killed.
Hezbollah thought that Israel couldn't take the full response necessary, because of external diplomatic pressures, and so thought that they wouldn't do much of anything, i.e. they assumed that Israel would decide that doing a little bit was worse than doing nothing at all. Obviously Hezbollah was wrong in their calculations. Time will tell if Israel has been as well...
Posted by: b at July 25, 2006 4:58 PMEnough is enough.
Posted by: erp at July 25, 2006 5:02 PMOf course this is half-meaures. As I said, Israel decided that doing a "little bit" was NOT in fact worse than doing nothing. The list of people killed because we didn't do Syria along with Iraq in 2003 just keeps growing...
Posted by: b at July 25, 2006 5:26 PMHalf-measures can still be deterrents as long as they're not "proportional."
Posted by: pj at July 25, 2006 5:48 PMPJ & OJ: that's part of the problem - it's not even any where NEAR "half". They're playing at 2 on an amp that goes up to 11.
Posted by: John Resnick at July 25, 2006 6:50 PMIsrael's response is exactly what Hezbollah's would have been had the situation been reversed. Thus it is proportional.
Posted by: Bartman at July 26, 2006 12:31 PMHezbollah can't respond the same way, which is one of the main reasons it's so silly to overreact as Israel has.
Posted by: oj at July 27, 2006 12:27 AM