avi's adventures

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade; And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. William Ernest Henley.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Am I missing something?


So under the leadership of Olmert and Peretz, Israel invaded Lebanon with the expressed intent of rescuing 2 kidnapped IDF soldiers and pound Hezbollah into submission. As remaining IDF troops evacuate southern Lebanon (pictured), I ask myself, in over a month of fighting, did Israel achieve her goals?

I remember taking a philosophy class at Carleton around the time of the Iraq war outbreak. We discussed the absence of morality in any war, and studied what's called the "7 principles for a just war". You see, back when war was fought in nice geometrical positions, one needed to meet these 7 criteria for the war to be deemed "just". Not moral or immoral, as war is amoral.

In discussing the Iraq war, we used the principle of "expressed declaration". Meaning, if George W. said he invaded Iraq to destroy the WMD's but his true intention was to take all their oil, that would not meet said principle and the war would be deemed unjust. So using this current escalation between Israel and Hezbollah and applying it the the aforementioned principle, we can honestly state that this past violence was unjust. Hezbollah still operates and will remain armed (as we learnt today). Our IDF brethren still remain at the mercy of our enemies. The kicker in this instance is that 90% of the Israeli popualtion (lefties and doves included) were in favour of the war at the start of the conflict, and Peretz and Olmert were as popular as any Israeli politician has ever been. Today, a mere 2 weeks later, Peretz and Olmert's approval ratings have plummeted, and there doesn't seem to be any concrete, tangeable, positive consequences to this recent offensive. It's simply a return to the status quo.

And where are our 3 kidnapped soldiers?