Murtha calls for immediate ceasefire in Lebanon

posted at 5:26 pm on August 2, 2006 by Allahpundit
Share on Facebook | regular view

He wants to redeploy the IDF to Poland.

No, what he really wants is to negotiate from a position of maximum weakness:

Referring to the Bush administration’s position, he said: “You know, they say, ‘Well, we want a long-term cease-fire.’ It seems to me you start with a cease-fire, and then you try to work out the details long term. If you don’t, and you continue to have heavy-handed military action — and I support heavy-handed military action because it saves your own troops — but it creates enemies, and that’s the problem we have.”

Mr. Murtha said the fighting risked hardening against Israel the “hearts and minds” of Lebanese civilians within the general population, beyond Israel’s entrenched enemies in the Shiite militia.

Here’s something for Peter Beinart’s next book: how do you fight a war without making enemies? Is it good enough if enemies killed outnumber enemies created, or should we be shooting for a Sheehan-esque zero-tolerance hyperpacifist “no enemies whatsoever” policy? There seems to be a split of opinion on this point among the left, which they really should iron out now that Beinart’s anointed them the saviors of the war on terror. Which isn’t unlike Tony Blair betting the farm on the Palestinians in the Middle East.

As late as August 1945, the entire population of Japan, including children, was being trained for a fight to the death with U.S. troops when the home islands were invaded, their fervor no doubt stoked in part by the battle of … Okinawa.

That’s a lot of enemies. How’d that work out?

Food for thought. I leave you with Mohammed from Iraq the Model calling for more heavy-handedness, not less, and an interview in the Times of London with Ehud Olmert, whose annoyance at questions about civilians and disproportionality finally bubbles over:

[H]ow do you really know that 400 innocent civilians were killed? How do you know who is innocent and who is not? Why? This is not an army. They don’t wear uniforms that distinguish them from other civilians. We didn’t attack any of the Christian quarters of Beirut. We didn’t attack any of the Christian residential areas in any part of Lebanon. We attacked only those areas where they had the Katyusha launchers, where they had the missile launchers, where they had the command positions of Hezbollah, where they had the storage houses, the logistic centres and so on and so forth.

So the fact that people were killed there who were not dressed in uniforms doesn’t mean that they were innocent civilians. There were Hezbollah people, they are the terrorists. Did you ever see terrorists dressed with military uniforms like we have in our army? No.

Blowback

You must be logged in to post a comment.