Giving the Terrorists' an Upper Hand
31 Jul 2006
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How’s that for a disproportionate response? Despite its disproportion, those two mushroom clouds ended World War II and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Yes, you protest, but thousands of innocent civilians lost their lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. True, but war is a messy business. Contrary to popular opinion, there’s no way to wage war without civilian causalities. In addition, civilian causalities are not always the innocent victims of war that the world makes them out to be. Some times they are implicit in it and an intricate part of it.
Although Hezbollah has launched hundreds of rockets into Israel intentionally targeting Israeli civilians, it is Israel’s defending of itself by specifically targeting Hezbollah terrorists with precision-guided weaponry that is being condemned by the world. Why is Israel condemned rather than Hezbollah? Because Israel’s response is said to be disproportionate. In other words, Israel isn’t warring fairly. It is employing better weaponry, wreaking far more damage in Lebanon than Hezbollah is in Israel, and unavoidably killing more Lebanese civilians than Hezbollah is intentionally killing Israeli civilians.
Where do we get the cockamamie idea that war is suppose to be fair? When someone is attacked, the gloves are off. You have every right to defend yourself to the full extent of your ability. If in the process of defending yourself against some life-threatening attacker you end up hurting him more than he hurts you or killing him instead of him killing you, it’s not your fault but his. He started it and brought it upon himself. You were just defending yourself, which you had every right to do.
Even Jesus taught us not to pick fights before calculating the consequences (Luke 14:31-32). If we know we can’t win, it’s better not to fight. The cost of attacking an adversary stronger than yourself is always far more than you can afford to pay. Yet, in today’s world, terrorists believe that they can attack stronger adversaries and still get off scot-free, thanks to their concealment among civilian populations and the world’s insistence that those attacked by terrorists respond proportionately.
Since no one can shoot back at today’s terrorists without being roundly condemned for shooting civilians behind whom terrorists hide, barbaric terrorists have an upper hand on civilized nations in the war on terror. Never mind that many of these so-called innocent civilians freely offer themselves and their children as human shields for the terrorists’ protection, as well as offer their homes as munitions dumps for the terrorists’ weapons; still, the international community insists that civilized nations respond proportionately to all-out terrorist attacks by refraining from shedding one drop of civilian blood or dislodging one brick from a civilian building.
With the civilized world’s hands tied behind its back by world opinion, the mad mullahs of the Middle East are free to slap us again and again with little fear of the consequences. What’s more, the Muslim world has no hesitancy in harboring terrorists in its midst, believing that we won’t strike at it in order to hit terrorists for fear of worldwide condemnation. Even Israel, which the Muslim world is far less sure about, is little feared thanks to the short leash its American benefactor keeps it on.
Indifferent to world opinion and indiscriminate in waging war, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas brazenly attack Israel. At the same time, the world’s number one terrorist state, Iran, continues its mad dash toward nuclear armament while thumbing its nose at the international community. Convinced that civilized countries lack both the will to fight and the stomach for it, Muslim terrorists are on the march all over the world. With nothing to fear from the international community but empty threats, terrorists are becoming more and more emboldened in their worldwide aspirations.
Until the civilized world breaks itself free from the bonds of world opinion and takes off the gloves of proportionality, terrorist organizations and states will continue to carryout their campaign for world conquest with impunity. However, if we ever wake up and start striking back against the terrorists disproportionally and indiscriminately, terrorists will be far more hesitant to fire that next Katyusha rocket and Muslims will be far more uncomfortable having terrorists as next-door neighbors. If, as the terrorists believe, we have neither the will nor the stomach for such a war, I guess we’ll just have to wait until they’ve destroyed us before we can destroy them. After all, we wouldn’t want the world to think badly of us for disproportionate responses to terrorists’ attacks.
Don Walton
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