For the non-navalists among you, Bravo Zulu is swabby-speak for “well done.”
Kingdaddy at Arms and Influence has been offering a series of thoughtful posts on the IDF attacks in Lebanon, focusing on the the related questions of its strategic wisdom and moral defensibility.
From yesterday:
Airstrikes have backfired before, but never as horribly as in Lebanon in the last few weeks. Israel seems to be making the same mistake that the United States did in Vietnam: “Better to send a bullet than a man.” However, the bullet can only destroy. Defeating Hezbollah will require more than just property damage, a body count of guerrilla fighters, and a growing list of civilian casualties. Unfortunately, the Olmert government seems convinced that, having launched a failed strategy, their only choice is to see it to its conclusion.
On July 31 he offered an assessment of Israel’s failed strategy that was a lot more well-informed than most I have seen that are critical of the IDF’s approach to winning the contest with Hezbollah.
And the day before that, he reviewed the arguments on several other blogs about the proportionality of the Israeli response, concluding that in “a lot of this debate is fundamentally misconceived. Moral reasoning depends on a clear understanding of the situation where morality is supposed to apply.”
Moral questions about Israel’s recent conduct, therefore, have to start with some understanding of the nature of the war itself. Unfortunately, these operational details seem to be lost on most of the people involved in this debate. The differences between conventional warfare and counterinsurgency, between conventional warfare and counterterrorism, and between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism are significant. These are three different types of warfare, each posing different strategic and moral challenges. Israeli civilian and military leaders are certainly aware of these differences, after fighting a few conventional wars against Arab armies, countless counterterrorist operations against Palestinian enemies, and a counterinsurgency war (of a distinctly urban character) in Lebanon.
However, the arguments over whether Israel’s attempt to “break the back” of Hezbollah [is morally justified] seem to miss these distinctions altogether.
The result is an even-handed assessment that seems genuinely thoughtful. I don’t mean to say Kingdaddy lacks a point of view. I just mean to say that his writing eschews the usual knee-jerk, hurray for our side and a pox on those other bastards one typically finds in a blogosphere awash in partisanship. That’s always refreshing.
