Supply and Demand in the Terrorist World
It takes two sides to set a "price", one who will not sell for less and one who will not buy for more. The response by Israel was so predictable that it is incredible that the Lebanese would even pretend to be shocked. For the history of conflict in the middle east, Israel has always had to exact a heavier toll than is taken on them. Being smaller, they cannot afford to exchange equal blows. The level of retaliation is thus measured not proportionate to the initial attack but in terms of what price Israel must extract to keep such events from happening in the future. The ugly truth is that Hezbollah knew that Israel would respond like this. The Lebanese should ask themselves what purpose Hezbollah serves to them. What is the best way to preserve their own interest? To get Israel to not retaliate so hard or to get Hezbollah to stop?
If someone pokes a beehive and then runs away allowing the bees to sting children, who is to blame? Should we talk about how the bees' response was disproportionate to having their hive being poked? Or should we punish the person who knew what would have happened.
Israel kills 500 people for every 1 of theirs because that is the price Terrorists have set. By attacking a check point, kidnapping Israelis, Hezbollah has basically said that all that is worth thousands of Lebanese casualties. Israel will now attempt to raise that price so that it will be too expensive. My worry is that for Hezbollah, led by Iran and Syria, that the destruction of the entire state of Lebanon would not bother them in the least bit. For one, Lebanon's success shows how pathetic and backward their own countries are. In essence, this event serves many purposes for Iran and Syria, not least of all is distracting the attention of their population to how free states can provide better for their populations than totalitarian regimes.
posted by Geoffrey Armone @ 9:02 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Geoffrey Armone, I didn't think I would live to read such blatant inhumanity as that lurking in your pseudo-rationalist rant! There perhaps has been no such cold calculus of the economy of death since Hitler was last in power. And I never thought, for the sake of all my Jewish friends, that I would ever be this tempted to wish that he had finished the job. Like I said in an earlier comment, you'd think a people who had faced such oppression historically would have more mercy, but I guess it is like the victims of sexual abuse: some just grow up to be the worst kind of abusers, because they know where it hurts, and worse still, they feel justified in doing it.
This is not self-defense; this is viscious aggression. To justify such sheer atrocity as self-defense is beyond ludicrous; your audacity to do so with a weak metaphor is simply shameless. You people really need to find something better and more innovative than that tired beehive argument. What, do you all get the same manual for your comments? No, as I said to some other idiot like you who used the same old haggard metaphor, your beehive allegory doesn't work. In that equation, there's the human, and there's the insect. Even if you blamed the human, you would still feel no hesitation to crush the insects, spray them, do whatever it is to get rid of them. They're simply a mindless nuissance. This isn't the case here; as much as one might be compelled to think of Israelis as insects they are unfortunately not. The equation here is way more grave, and simplistic allegories as this are a naive way of treating it. There is such a thing as the appropriateness of the reaction to the action, and Israel's reaction is neither appropriate, proprtionate nor justified. It is ruthless, inhumane and barbaric. It is, simply put, terroristic in the truest sense of the word. Israelis are not bees; they are accountable human beings, and we should hold them accountable.
What I'd wish to know, speaking of trite economic arguments, is how much you get paid to sell your soul to write such pandering? How do you sleep at night? Because I am having a hard time doing it, and I have a clean conscious. Look at what the price is:
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As I think was clear in my post, I don't argue that this response is disproportionate with the initial attack. However, that's not the point. Just as in our own civil society, we set punishments not only in proportion to the crime but also as a deterent. When dealing with Hezbollah, the price that has to be exacted is very high, not because of the inhumanity of the Israelis but due to the relentness atrocities of Arab Terrorists. If the Israelis attack in proportion, this has been shown historically to only encourage Hezbollah. Only heavy handed behavior makes them think twice.
It's clear to me and most rational people that Israel is saying to Lebanon and the UN that this is the price to be paid for allowing Hezbollah to operate in Lebanon with impunity.
And it's because of the Holocaust that the Jews are like this. They've learned that to try to negotiate and appease with someone who avows your destruction is suicide by small steps. With Hezbollah's owners openly pursuing nuclear weapons, what choice does Israel have except to cut to the chase and get this over with here and now. To wait until Iran gets nuclear weapons is akin to putting a gun in your mouth.
So take note, Iran is showing the international community that she has no problem dealing "disproportionately" with radical muslims if the international community won't do anything. Either Hezbollah leaves or Iran gets it next.
I don't like it, but I fully understand where this is going.
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