Failed Assumptions

I woke up feeling pretty good today which I found strange because the world seems to be taking the express train to hell. A quick inventory didn't blunt my mood either despite the fact that I have a good friend stuck in Beirut right now as well my usual assortment of compatriots in Iraq, Afghanistan and other fabulous vacation spots around the world. Just in the last week we, as world citizens, have had to deal with a tragic bombing in Mumbai, North Korea and Iran's complete defiance of the international community and the Hezbollah-Israel conflict. I've heard a lot of different commentary but all of it seems based on assumptions I would not necessarily agree with.

The first and most egregious assumption I want to challenge is that violence solves nothing. Violence of the the lethal sort is the ultima ratio. A dead man's interests have no weight. When we in the civilized world are shocked by genocides, ethnic cleansings or raw barbarity, we show our naivete. Where violence as a tactic hasn't worked, it's because it wasn't used as thoroughly as required. No, the idea that violence solves nothing has been drilled into our collective consciousness by people who have only experienced violence as the victim. It may be wrong. It may be immoral but there is no doubting its effectiveness. We should not be surprised when those who do not share our morals or those whose morality is only written in their minds and not in their hearts resort to it.

"War is a spectacular expression of everyday life."
-Krishnamurti

Once we are indoctrinated into the anti-violence cult, it is only a short step to "War doesn't solve anything." Now this attitude isn't just foolish but dangerous. According to the ancient Greeks, wars were started for 3 reasons: fear, honor and interests. Or any combination of the above. It is just intellectual laziness to make immorality the only casus belli of this day and age. A State's reasons for engaging in open warfare only has to make sense to itself. Take for example the shame and humiliation felt by many Muslim men in the middle east. Their shame finds its roots in the practices of their own culture and religion. Our very existence humiliates them. What are we to do? Kill ourselves to be polite? Their hatred of Western culture is simply sour grapes. They haven't achieved anywhere near as much so they label our achievements wrong and evil. But this very juvenile reason is enough to mobilize Muslim youth to blow themselves up. It isn't immorality that makes them do so. It is fear, honor and interestes. It also is a history of "might equals right" going back to Mohammed.

War, in fact, has solved every major issue in how we live our lives. The Persian wars of ancient Greece protected democracy from being smothered in the cradle by a despotic Asian hegemon. The 30 Years War ended in the Treaty of Westphalia which gave us the modern nation-state system. WWII gave the US one of two dominant positions in the world. The Cold War ended the reign of the Communist system in national government among major players on the world scene. (China, for all intents and purposes, is no longer a communist country.) While it's certainly true that not every war has decided a major issue, it's equally true that war has decided all the primary principles of every culture directly or indirectly.

So it follows that if both violence and war accomplish nothing, then it must right to avoid violence at all costs. But this can't be true. I learned this when I was 10 years old. My father was giving my mom a pretty good beating and I went in to stop him. Being 10, I was ineffective and caught a beating myself for my trouble. He apologized the next day and promised it would never happen again but it did. I learned a valuable lesson early. Talk wasn't going to stop my dad. Only violence could. The most reliable way to ensure my mom's safety was to be more capable of violence than my father. If the ability were mine then, I could have protected my mother. Would it have been moral to refrain from violence then?

The obvious rebuttal to my experience would be to say I could have called the cops. That's true but what is throwing my father in jail but violence? Law and order works because there is the threat of violence. Comply or we will make you. That's what's lacking on the international scene- the enforcement branch. Any group or State can sign whatever document it wants and there's no statuatory cost for breaking their word. We can't even agree on a rule set. Look at the current conflict in Lebanon. Not even the G8 can come together on a course of action. They issue a proclamation stating that is the conflict is Hizbollah's fault. Is the G8 going to mete out a punishment? One more severe than the Israelis are doing? Whose lesson will Hizbollah better learn?

So it's clear that "avoid violence at all costs" is a dullard's pursuit. So how does one then justify the way of the world with the original inaccurate assumption so indelibly etched into our brains from years of brainwashing? Rather than challenge the original assumption which the vast majority of people are loath to do, we create a doctrine called proportionality. No one who has been in more than 3 real fights can make sense of this foolish thinking. As with anything based on a false premise, it is doomed to be wrong but its danger is that it is seductive. For the moderately educated with no experience in violence, it seems right. But it is not.

One of the basic laws of the jungle is that the person who starts the fight doesn't get to say when it ends unless he ends it (by winning) or has taken enough punishment that the other party is satisfied. To deny the validity of this truth is to give every advantage to the party initiating the violence. Why wouldn't I resort to violence if I could retreat without significant damage? If I win, I will get what I wanted. If I lose, I won't lose much. This describes our current relationships with Hizbollah and Hamas. And to make this worse, we are inconsistent with application. Al Qaeda we eradicate. To everybody else, we issue strong statements and eventually appease. The only thing that has ever worked with Hizbollah is what the Soviets did in Beirut in 1985 when four members of their embassy were kidnapped. The KGB kidnapped someone of their own and sent back pieces until the hostages were released. (1 was killed) Such a response was indeed proportional. The Soviets had more than enough firepower to level every Hizbollah stronghold. But such responses are unavailable to Americans making the idea of proportionality a sham. Prpoportionality cannot be a guiding principle when it loses out to a schoolgirl's morality.

I know the realpolitik arguments for it too. Proportionality gives you someplace to go and room to escalate. I suppose this thinking is fine if you don't actually want to solve the problem. Again, the doctrine of proportionality has led us to our current predicament in the world. Make no mistake, we are in this conflict with the fundamentalist Muslim world because they find us weak. At their core, they are cowards. Look at how they treat their women. Weakness only emboldens a coward. In fact, it is the only thing that does. They attack American interests all over the world, taking American lives seemingly at will and respond by destroying a few insignificant building durings specific hours of the day to minimize casualties. What is to us proportional is to them pathetic. In making ourselves feel better we endanger countless more lives in the future.

Iraq was predictable and not for the reasons most Democrats think. The problem started with President Reagan and his lack of a meaningful response to the death of 241 Marines. President Bush made a attempt to change the status quo with the first Gulf War but failed to win any real changes. President Clinton was more concerned with Europe than he ever was the Middle East. During the last 20 years, our enemy has been probing our defenses, looking for our threshold, seeing how far they can push us before we push back. Eventually, they were going to push us to far and we would tire of it. Whether you agree with it or not, the OIF 1 and 2 are part of the Administration's attempt to deal with transnational terrorism at its roots. No, not poverty, inequality or anything like it. The root cause of transnational terrorism is state sponsorship. It is the sine qua non of Islamic terror.

Look, fighting sucks even if you win. From mano a mano to open warfare, you can't get into a fight without suffering some damage yourself. There is always a price to pay. Now I may have to fight someone but if I do, I'm going to make sure I never have to do it again. What that means depends on the person I'm fighting. If it's just some drunk guy looking for a brawl, it's obviously not going to take much to dissuade him from making the same mistake twice. But if it's a guy who been hired to kill me, well, he may take a little more convincing.

What does Hizbollah want from Israel except its complete destruction? Hizbollah is not an existential problem for Israel but they're enough to be more than a serious nuisance. But why should Israel have to bear that nuisance over and over again? If foreign agents of another country snuck into the US and kidnapped 2 soldiers, there would be hell to pay. Israel's response is proportional. They could have leveled Beirut. Instead they are hitting specific targets. The Lebanese government has more than a little culpability here. A democracy they may be but more a eunuch than a man. The country's balls are held by Hizbollah. Russia and China both have their own financial reasons in calling for Israeli restraint. France, well is France and their anti-Semitism runs deep. We are Israel's only ally and we should act like one. Nations will watch us right now and by our actions decide whether or not they wish to align with us in the future. A country, like a man, is only as good as his word. I'm glad Israel has finally come to conclusion that negotiation with these people is impossible. Hizbollah must cease to exist. They must be eradicated. And if we pressure Israel to discontinue the job that it must do, then we wil be at least partially responsible for the lives Hizbollah will take in the future.