Krauthammer Misses Big Point

During a war in which Israel has the chance to destroy Hezbollah once and for all, Charles Krauthammer makes a moral argument that does what Israel did the last time it had a chance to annihilate a terrorist organization (i.e., the PLO): pull back instead of going for the kill. Let's see why he did this.

Krauthammer starts out doing a halfway decent John Lewis.

When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a cinder, and turned the Japanese home islands to rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right -- legal and moral -- to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.

The one complaint I have with the above is his tossing in of "legal". If this is a nod to the United Nations, it is undeserved. Regardless, a nation constrained by any variety of international law from defending itself would have every moral and practical reason to disobey that law. Our Founding Fathers, to take another example form American history, were breaking the law after all when they rebelled against England.

But why? Why does a nation have a moral obligation to defend itself? This goes straight to the heart of the matter. What does a proper government do when fighting a war? It defends the lives of its citizens. That is, it is protecting their lives and liberty. When its citizens are under attack from another country, it has no obligation whatsoever to the citizens of the attacking country, as Don Watkins so ably pointed out.

But this premise [i.e., the notion that civilians on both sides are equally innocent] is false. Force has been initiated -- by the civilian's nation. [Hezbollah has been allowed to effectively run part of Lebanon and participates in its government. It counts here. --ed] The civilian, then, must bear responsibility for that fact, either by helping to fight his government, fleeing the country, or recognizing the innocent nation's right to defend itself, even if it costs him his life. This follows directly from the nature of rights.

Clearly, neither Israel nor Krauthammer, in lending his support to Israel, fully grasps this point.

In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.

But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty.

...

Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life? [my italics]

Note that not long after Krauthammer decries the Hezbollah tactic of essentially using its host country as a massive human shield that he praises -- even as he notes its disastrous consequences -- Israel's self-sacrificial practice of warning people in areas it is about to attack! If Israel has the moral obligation -- and it does -- to do what it must to defend itself, its failure to do so in this context is hardly praiseworthy and has no place in a war, particularly against an opponent like Hezbollah.

This failure on Krauthammer's part thus causes him to accept the fundamental argument for "proportionality" based on altruism and favored by Just War Theory -- that civilians on both sides are a concern to a government defending its citizens in a war. Furthermore, this failure causes him to fail to make a further crucial point: The very existence of Hezbollah's "propaganda tool" (of hiding behind civilians to provoke their deaths by Israeli acts of self-defense) is a direct result of this very idea.

Whatever Israel must do to defend itself is moral. All results -- including deaths of civilians -- are Hezbollah's fault even if the bombs or bullets are fired by Israel. Such carnage is no "proof" of Israeli brutality. It is in fact further evidence that Hezbollah must be destroyed.

The converse is also true. It is not moral for any Israeli blood (except of any traitors) to be shed as a result of the actions by its government in this war. Quite to the contrary, it is just as immoral as if Hezbollah itself did the killing.

-- CAV