Collateral Damage
The White House called Israel’s raid killing terrorist Salah Shehadeh “heavy handed,” and spokesman Ari Fleischer’s logic was tortured in the extreme when he said, “the crucial difference [between Israel’s raid and a U.S. raid in Afghanistan that killed dozens of civilians] …. was [that Israel made] a deliberate attack against a building in which civilians were known to be located.”
The White House called Israel’s raid killing terrorist Salah Shehadeh “heavy handed,” and spokesman Ari Fleischer’s logic was tortured in the extreme when he said, “the crucial difference [between Israel’s raid and a U.S. raid in Afghanistan that killed dozens of civilians] …. was [that Israel made] a deliberate attack against a building in which civilians were known to be located.”
The comparison, whether it is made by Israelis defending themselves, or denied by the White House wishing to distance itself, entirely misses the point – which is that both the U.S. military and the IDF regard civilian casualties as “collateral.” The bad guys regard them as “the point.” That’s why Israel and we are on the same side of the war and on the same side of civilization. We wouldn’t be us if dead civilians didn’t discomfit us, even as we recognize the nature of the cowards who use civilians as shields.
The best way to protect civilians is for aggressive regimes to stop being aggressive – the Palestinians have only to stop launching attacks on buses and restaurants in Israel and no doubt there would be no Israeli attacks in Gaza to risk “collateral damage.” Saddam has only to give up his megalomaniacal plans for missiles and WMD, and no doubt the U.S. would be relieved to shelve its war plans. But since neither is likely, it appears that both the U.S. and Israel will be fighting enemies who have little concern for the lives of their own people. Therefore, the second best way to protect civilians is to remove the dictators and terrorists who hide behind them while they make war on other people.
And there is the nexus between Israel’s war and ours. Human shields are human shields whether cowards live among them hoping for protection, or put them around chemical weapons factories on the assumption that the U.S. won’t strike a facility surrounded by the fifth grade class of the local elementary school.
Would the U.S. take out Saddam’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction) facilities, or his bunker, or him if we knew that he planted women and children around them? What if he publishes photographs of the children? Will we go for the greater good and have heartburn afterward – like Israel does? What if The New York Times carries front-page stories about the mourning parents? How will we justify ourselves if Israel isn’t allowed to justify itself?
As we make our plans, it would be useful for the U.S. to remember that there is little we will see of an Arab dictator’s callousness toward his own people that Israel hasn’t already seen; little our military will face in urban warfare that Israel hasn’t already faced; few mistakes that we will make that Israel hasn’t also made.
Will we be deterred? We hope not. We think not. Israel is not. Neither of us can afford to be.
When the time comes, we will be understood to have been on the right side of civilization and the right side of history. And Israel will be there, too.