AFF's Doublethink

Sonny Bunch — January 5, 2009 at 11:39 pm

Well, I assumed (and you know what happens when you assume) that you also thought the shelling of Israeli territory by Hamas was unacceptable; you just thought an invasion of Gaza wasn’t the best way to stop it. Was I wrong?

(Furthermore, I’m calling shenanigans on your use of Thucydides. I’m far too tired to go searching through my Landmark Thucydides at this point in the night.)

Nolan — January 6, 2009 at 12:32 am

Dismissing a military operation because its supporters are all warmongers who only see narrow military means towards their objective is a pretty tired trope. But most confusing is your simultaneous insinuation that these supporters are some kind of quixotic crusaders. This isn’t Sharansky waging war; it’s the most pragmatic coalition that could possibly exist, including a vast majority of Israelis. So it’s simply not true that that the explicit or implicit goal has ever been “coercing foreign peoples into constituting their governments in a manner desirable to the coercers.” Olmert was on the record today declaring outright that “(Israel) did not set out to eliminate Hamas’ rule in Gaza.” Regime change would be nice, but no one actually thinks this is gonna happen overnight via IDF incursion.

Your call for a specific policy objective is a welcome one, even if retaliatory strikes don’t require one. How about this: Impair Hamas’ rocket-launching capabilities to the point where Hamas’ calculus deems such activity to be disadvantageous to their goals? Not too far-fetched; Israel did that with Hamas’ suicide bombing.

Now let’s hear your long-awaited policy alternative to the current operation.

Daniel Kennelly — January 6, 2009 at 1:01 pm

Incidentally, after Diodotus’ speech, the Athenians settled on decimating the male population of Mytilene, rather than killing all the males.

As for Nolan, I’m not sure what constructive purpose this military action can serve if it’s not to eliminate Hamas’s rule, so I’m surprised to hear that Olmert ruled that out as an objective. I mean, it’s certainly not going to end Qassam rocket attacks. You could simultaneously destroy every existing rocket and production facility today and it wouldn’t take that long for Hamas to build more. They’re not exactly high tech weapons: more like something Mythbusters could put together inside of an hour with enough sheet metal and some fertilizer.

So if they’re not trying to elminate Hamas, then, at best, they’re trying to reduce the number of rocket attacks, which makes even this stalwart Israel supporter begin to call to mind all sorts of proportionality proscriptions.

Aron Paz — January 6, 2009 at 3:57 pm

David may be right that Israel’s actions are just exacerbating and in vain, but is the problem Israel’s and its supporters’ normative considerations? How helpful is a realism that can never tell us what we should do or should aim at achieving? Just because you want leaders to rise above acting on moral impulses does not make them realists, unless they still take persisting normative factors into account (like the fact that human beings act upon and expect their leaders to act upon normative grounds).
For instance, no country can withstand constant bombardment and remain a healthy stable country, even if their leaders are consummate realist rationalists, because their people, if they are a people – a healthy, committed citizenry – are thoroughly moral, normatively motivated, and cannot tolerate a foreign policy that explicitly and consistently labels their irrational concerns for national honor and revenge as unreal and unhelpful. It sounds like Olmert is acting out of domestic concerns (concerns most realists dismiss, but do and SHOULD take precedence in the eyes of the people). That doesn’t mean his goals, actions, or strategy are correct – he seems to be thinking of the Feb elections rather than the long-term stability and peace of the region.
But if you want to take normative considerations out of the equation, then there seems to be no reason the Israelis cannot eradicate Hamas entirely if they have the will, and instilling their own puppet police state after the resulting chaos. Of course the main thing stopping them is their conscience and (the only normative considerations realists seem to recognize) world opinion.
Removing your enemy was once considered hard-nosed realism. Now only the myth of equilibrium seems the legitimate goal of realists. But just because such a goal satisfies no one does not make it free of normative considerations; it simply replaces the old rational goal of self-preservation with the new goal of preserving the world order. Both forms of realism hide the fact that they are committed to peace. A noble, but thoroughly normative goal.
In fact, I doubt Israel intends to remove Hamas or rockets, but, besides some perception of strength among Arabs and Jews, it is not unlikely that they can secure new terms of cease-fire that might force Hamas to enforce it themselves, at least in the short-term.
This action would not be in vain if the Israelis also withdrew from the west bank and allowed the Palestinians there to prosper. You see how such a move that would offend the moral sentiments of so many within Israel might have to be offset with the current display of force and pointless vengeance they are inflicting on Gaza.
I’m skeptical of all this, but do you have a better, more realistic alternative to responding to cease-fire bombardment besides waiting for the world “community” to be outraged over something bigger than rockets? Or for Bibby to take over in Feb? Realists today don’t get outraged much, except by declared war. When you say people aren’t so malleable, I think you forget the old alternative of all-out victory (see Sri Lanka and the Tiger Rebels, or the sequel to Thucydides’ account (Hellenica) where the Athenians surrender, regretting their own sophisticated amoral realism. Things never went back to the way they were).