What's a little damage among friends?
SoccerDad asked for a compare and contrast of two articles. On one hand, we have Charles Krauthammer:
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.
And, on the other hand, we have Eugene Robinson:
The one thing that's clear so far is that Rice believes that allowing Israel to decimate Hezbollah and drive what's left of the group out of southern Lebanon is such a valuable step toward her "new" Middle East that it's worth crippling a nascent Arab democracy with hundreds of civilian casualties and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure damage.
The obvious contrast is, of course, that Krauthammer puts the damage in context - Israel is doing the bare minimum damage to achieve their means. Robinson doesn't bother. The telling quote, however, is one that SoccerDad left out from Robinson's article:
Rice's predecessors have all discovered that containment, incrementalism, trust-building and similar unglamorous, snail-paced measures are the worst way to handle the Middle East -- except for all the other conceivable ways.
In fact, Robinson is just plain wrong. Israel has a nice, quiet border with Jordan. A nice, quiet border with Egypt. By and large, a nice, quiet border with Syria. What do those three borders have in common? Oh, yeah - Israel kicked their teeth in. And when they came back for more, Israel did it again. And again. And again.
Now, the territories and Lebanon? That's where Israel has tried those unglamorous measures. And, let's see - attacks across her border. Her citizens killed. Her soldiers abducted.
And now, a lot of us think Israel needs to kick some teeth in. Because in the Middle East, power is respected. Diplomacy isn't.
