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Ike’s Genocide
I watched part of a tiresome interview of the always excellent Douglas Murray in which the interviewer continued to use hackneyed, intellectually lazy “genocide” to describe the Israeli war of survival against Hamas. I wondered why any network would hire a journalist too dim to realize when they are being made to look foolish by a much smarter interviewee and then remembered it is now the hiring norm in the industry .
It also occurred to me that if “genocide” applies whenever civilian casualties accrue, then General Dwight Eisenhower was a genocidal monster. The D-Day invasion at Normandy was preceded by many thousands of tons of bombs dropped and intense naval shelling. The landings and airborne drops turned into a large scale desperate battle over the entire peninsula lasting for weeks. An estimated 20,000 French civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands injured and most made homeless. Ike had to know this was a likely outcome.
None of the citizens of Normandy voted for Nazi occupation. None of them thought it the righteous will of God if and when Allied troops were killed. None of them applauded grade-school plays about killing Allied soldiers or becoming martyrs while doing so. French civilian victims of D-Day have a far stronger claim to “genocide” victimhood than Gazans. (Charles de Gaulle once quipped that France could probably survive another German occupation but not another American liberation.)
The defeat of the Nazis was a moral necessity. Efforts to minimize the costs of victory in a war of necessity must be made but with the realization that there is no way to allocate the costs of achieving victory proportionately and equitably. The Israelis have an unambiguous right to prosecute this war. That civilian Gazans have been killed and their lives disrupted was a foreseeable and unavoidable outcome that the hostage-takers and terrorist planners could have minimized at any time with their surrender. Even ignoring the sheer evil of Oct 7, their indifference to the well-being of their own people is far more culpable than than the inevitable costs of the Israeli response.
I miss the old American left with its intellectual heft and moral perspective. Its vomitous replacement is bad for the human race. “Genocide” is too important a word to be routinely misused by morons.
Published in General
Wow. I can’t believe how poorly some people understand warfare.
A seige is not “genocide.” The laws of war do not require them to not conduct a seige. This hasn’t even been a full seige as the Israelis have been encouraging civilians to leave.
Tell me, Gerry, how to you think the Israelis should conduct this war that they didn’t start? I’m not the biggest fan of Israel, but I at least recognize that this war was thrust on them by some of the most barbaric behavior we have seen since the rape of Nanking. No matter what you think of them, if the perpetrators of these crimes were to surrender, this whole ordeal would be over by now.
I believe you’re referring to waterboarding as torture. When I read that reporters have submitted to waterboarding so they could report on it, and that members of our armed forces are also given the opportunity to voluntarily submit to it as a part of training for being a prisoner, it conveys to me that it does not harm someone to the point that they are disfigured, or otherwise changed for a lifetime.
I have no moral scruples with using waterboarding as an interrogation technique, especially since it potentially could save the lives of both members of the military we send into harm’s way, and civilians too.
As for Yoo, he was giving a legal opinion. I don’t know if it included actual advocacy of the technique or not. Either way, I have no problem defending it.
In any case, I don’t think he advocated any interrogation technique that disfigured a person, unlike what the Russians recently did to the terrorists that killed 137 civilians.
I don’t advocate the United States do that, but if we caught some terrorists that did something similar, I wouldn’t preclude waterboarding to gain time sensitive information about their organization that could save lives in the end. I wouldn’t use it as a form of punishment, and I wouldn’t have any information gained used in any trial.
This is what is known in the trade as “focusing on the facts.”
I’ll blame the bourbon for not being sure what this comment means, but I guess I’m more concerned about what Israel is actually doing than what people are saying about it.
My position — subject to change if given sufficient evidence — is that Israel is justified, post 07Oct23, in its goal of destroying Hamas, and that the Palestinians are significantly culpable for having supported Hamas and supported Hamas’ genocidal mission.
I’m skeptical that Israel is “starving Gaza.” My impression is that the Palestinians make practical assistance almost impossible. The Palestinians seem to me to be a thoroughly wrecked people, raised under a corrupt and hateful regime and committed to its support. I feel sorry for them, for their hateful and blighted history, but don’t consider their plight to trump Israel’s right to prevent a repeat of October 7th.
I am unapologetically pro-Israel, considering Israel an outpost of liberally democratic civilization in a region characterized by a backward and deeply inferior ideology. (I’m talking about Islam.)
I support Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas, and invite the Palestinian people to reject their hatred and join in Israel’s efforts.
I’ll continue to support Israel’s efforts until I hear a sensible alternative way to achieve the destruction of Hamas.
Yep.
The Japanese were going to starve if the war went on, too.
Note also: Evil people have been condemning Israel for many years for “blockading” Gaza and the West Bank, conveniently forgetting that the walls and armed checkpoints and naval interceptions are all to prevent terrorists from entering Israel and weapons from being shipped into Gaza. Clearly it is immoral for Jews to take effective steps to stop people from killing them.
Etc. Etc. And so forth. (And, BTW, don’t forget, “NAZI.” Or the fact that Murray calls himself a Christian Atheist. And that he’s gay.)
There’s nothing like the militancy of the recently converted, especially when it comes to matters even tangentially related to religion. All nuance, along with any shades of gray, go out the window, and any historical perspective likewise.
When someone like Jerry can show me a meaningful parallel between the decades-old Hamas Covenant and its still-extant statements relative to Israel (under the rubric of Zionism) and the Jews,* and any actual official policy in the State of Israel relative to the so-called Palestinians, I might listen. Until then, sorry, no.
*Pretending that–per the 2017 Covenant–Hamas isn’t interested in eliminating the Jews, ab initio, is equally foolish. All a person has to do is read from the 2017 document that:
to recognize that this is just more specious drivel intended to cement the Hamas connection to their useless idiots and witless sycophants in the West.
As if that’s not clear enough, a bit more from the 2017 Covenant update, that (emphasis mine)
ought to set our minds right, once and for all.
Think they’re not coming after the Europeans next? And then the Euro-derivatives?
Think again.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Traditional, fully orthodox Islam: “First we kill the Jews, then we kill the Christians.”
A while back I read a statistic that I found hard to believe. The claim was that of the ongoing conflicts in the world, Muslims are involved in approximately 90% of them, usually against non-Muslims. Well, I found it hard to believe back then, but I have since revised my opinion.
I have read similar statistics. On reflection such numbers should not be a surprise: Killing or subjugating all non-Muslims is in the Koran, but many of us have been told lies about the supposedly peaceful nature of Islam.
I said torture/maltreatment because some people like to pretend that water boarding isn’t torture. It is, but regardless it is still mistreatment.
Well, it’s a good thing you’re not out there facing an enemy that would rather fight to avoid maltreatment rather than surrender and be better off. It’s very convenient for those not doing the fighting.
This website reports on, and keeps statistics on, Islamic terrorism. It lists 149 attacks just in February of 2024.
I don’t concede that waterboarding is torture. And probably John Yoo doesn’t either. But your’s and others insistence that Yoo advocates torture without adding that the argument is about waterboarding, makes it look like that Yoo advocates for all torture.
It’s a deceptive, dishonest accusation. It’s not honorable.
We treat prisoners quite well, with or without waterboarding. And when we used it, it wasn’t to punish, but to extract information. And after, say, a month there would not be a need to continue interrogations as the information we want is dated.
Even with that, they consider our scruples to be a sign of weakness, which is another reason for them to keep fighting. They think we can be defeated because of those scruples.
Like any enemy combatant if they won’t surrender they should be killed.
They fight because they hate our way of life. And if they capture us, they torture us, probably not bothering with waterboarding. It’s to punish. And they do it because they believe in it.
We’re not winning these people over with love or respect. Only fear. They believe that about us too. For them, it’s about fear.
Remember we only waterboarded four high value Al-Qaeda guys.
So for only a little bit of intel that we frankly didn’t need, we sullied our reputation and we caused our enemy to fight harder rather than surrender. Pitiful trade off.
Absolutely. Kill all of them until they surrender. But once they surrender, it should be three hots and a cot. Because while we kill them, they are able to kill our men too. The more of them that surrender, the better for us.