August 01, 2006

What Islamists Don’t Realize is At Stake in the Israel-Hezbollah War

The Islamists don't realize it, but one of the things this war is about, is the theory that Western nations can win a war while avoiding as many civilian casualties as possible.

The past 10 years have been about testing, and disproving, a different theory. Since the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel has tried out the nonsensical theory that if you give land to the Islamists, they will respond with friendship in return. Experience has now shown that this theory is false. Israel gave away land to Lebanan and to Hamastan, and in return has been made war on.

Now Israel is trying out another theory. This theory is that, given its military superiority, it can fight a war in which its enemy purposely and intentionally kills as many Israeli civilians as possible, while in return, Israel does the reverse. As Charles Krauthammer describes it:

Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead it attacked dual-use infrastructure -- bridges, roads, airport runways -- and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more.

Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed.

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?

Perhaps Israel and the Western world will continue this experiment for ten-plus years, as they did with the Oslo theory.

But Islamists should hope, for their own sake, that the Western nations win against them using this method.

Because if Western nations, such as Israel, using this method, find themselves in danger of destruction, they'll have to go back to war the old-school way, in which each nation kills as many civilians as possible on the opposite side. This would lead to a much faster resolution of such wars; but it would be devastating to the Islamists.