IDF Troops Enter Gaza

Yep, we've hit the ground phase, even though any kind of end-game is still as opaque as ever.

I can't see how this ends well. The bombings were inflammatory enough, but any sort of ground incursion is going to create casualties on both sides, which will only harden their resolve to "win". (Whatever that is supposed to entail.)

"Or What?"

That was my reaction upon reading the ultimate end of Charles Krauthammer's latest apologia for blowing up brown peopleAy-rabs.

And no, I'm not referring to this bit:

The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There’s only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel’s very existence.

My reactions to this were "of course Israel is still in military control, you ninny, they determine who gets to stay and leave" and "It figures that this kind of empathy-free ass wouldn't understand that Gazans might care about settlers occupying the West Bank".

And no, it wasn't this bit either:

Since its raison d’etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.

My reaction was "this is nonsense", like suggesting that the only possibilities in Northern Ireland were the eradication of the IRA or the end of Britain. As much as they're a source of tension and terror, and as much as they're ridiculously counter-productive for getting anything useful accomplished, Gaza's rockets pose no existential threat to Israel. They simply don't. And nor does Hamas. They don't have the power.

No, "Or What" was my reaction to this:

Israel’s only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza withdrawal. The unpardonable error of its architect, Ariel Sharon, was not the withdrawal itself but the failure to immediately establish a deterrence regime under which no violence would be tolerated after the removal of any and all Israeli presence. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire, implicitly acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.

Hamas’ rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire (during which the rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave Israel a rare opportunity to establish the norm it should have insisted upon three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping, no acts of war. As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring cease-fire.

Yep, this is it! "Or what?" So what happens if another rocket gets launched from Gaza after all this punishing fire? Trying to take away the supply of the damned stupid things is nearly impossible; they're small, portable, and easily smuggled into the country.

Does Israel come back in again? Whoops, there's your occupation back, Chuck! Now they don't need rockets to blow up Israelis!

Or maybe do they just keep on bombing everything flat? Well, that'll sure help the cause of peace!

This is the problem with asshats like Krauthammer. Since they have no idea how human beings think, they have no idea how human beings react or behave. So they come up with these grand statements about how "they'll stop, or else", assume that they would do so in that circumstance, and never consider either how people really react and what might happen when their carefully-dreamed-up fantasies fall apart! Chuck can't even learn from history: if he could, then he'd have realized that it has never, ever worked like this, and thus is very unlikely to ever work! And what happens when it doesn't?

"No violence will be tolerated?" Or what?

(Unless, of course, the "or what" is dumping them all in Jordan, the Transfer That Dare Not Speak Its Name. And I'm sure that would go well.)

Cole's End Game

Juan Cole made a good point on all this. What's the end-game here?

What I can't understand is the end game here. The Israelis have pledged to continue their siege of the civilians of Gaza, and have threatened to resume assassinating Hamas political leaders, along with the bombardment. The campaign of brutal assassinations launched by Ariel Sharon earlier in this decade were, Sharon, promised us, guaranteed to wipe out Hamas altogether. Do the Israelis expect the population at some point to turn against Hamas, blaming it for the blockade and the bombardment? But by destroying what was left of the Gaza middle class, surely they a throwing people into the arms of Hamas. The US experience of bombing North Vietnam and mining Haiphong Harbor, etc., was that it only stiffened Hanoi's resolve. The massive Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 did not achieve any significant objectives. In fact, Hezbollah was politically strengthened; it now sits in the Lebanese cabinet and has been recognized as a formal national guard for the south of the country. Its stock of rockets has been replenished. There is a UN buffer now, but in the past such buffers have been removed when hostilities threaten.

If the Gaza population doesn't turn on Hamas, and Israeli measures don't destroy the organization (which they helped create and fund back in the late 1980s when they wanted a foil to the secular PLO), then what? They'll just go on half-starving Gaza's children for decades? Malnourished children have diminished IQ and poor impulse control. That would make them ideal suicide bombers. Plus, sooner or later there will start to be effective boycotts of Israel in Europe and elsewhere over these war crimes. The Israeli economy would be vulnerable to such moves.

Of course, there are only 1.5 million Gazans, and they increasingly are being forced to live in Haiti-like conditions, so in the short term the Israelis can do whatever they want to them. But I can't see this ending well for the Israelis in the long term. Very few insurgencies end because one side achieves a complete military victory (I think it is about 20%). But by refusing to negotiate with Hamas, Israel and the United States leave only a military option on the table. The military option isn't going to resolve the problem by itself. Gaza is a labyrinth. Those Qassam rockets are easy to make. There is so much money sloshing around the Middle East and so many sympathetic Muslims that Gaza will be kept just barely afloat economically, making Hamas hard to dislodge. And the Israeli blockade of Gaza is so distasteful to the world that eventually there is likely to be a painful price to pay for it by the Israelis.

There is this fantasy that continually arises in the minds of western military planners, for whatever reason: that foreign pressure—including foreign military pressure—will so demoralize a native population that they will turn on their own government, destroy them, and embrace the outside aggressors.

But that never happens. Ever. I can't think of a single conflict in modern history where that has been the case. Hell, outside of maybe Herodotus I can't think of a single ancient conflict that worked that way. To believe that the Gazans will act this way defies belief.

And yes, I'm sure that's what all the anti-Hamas rhetoric is supposed to do. But it won't work. The world isn't listening. You cannot dictate people's reactions to your own use of force. You can influence them, and guide them, and hope for the best, but you cannot dictate them. Police can't do it, militaries can't do it, and you'd better believe that the State of Israel can't do it.

I think the smarter people know that, which is why I presume that the architects of this are interested more in rhetorical cover that will justify the pre-existing prejudices of domestic constintuencies. But let's not pretend it's a military strategem. It's not.

Then again, western governments haven't been thinking much about end-games for a while now, have they? Ignorance or cynical excuse-building. Your choice, I suppose.

Would You Give the Electric Chair for Spitting on the Sidewalk?

No, of course you wouldn't. That'd be ridiculous. It's entire out of proportion to both the crime and what is necessary. It'd probably deter spitting, but you'd see it as monstrous.

And, by the same token, would you kill a whole family if someone within it committed a crime? Or maybe a whole village? A whole town? No, of course you wouldn't. Not only are you still disproportionately punishing, but now you're engaged in collective punishment as well.

So why, exactly, is Whatzisname approvingly quoting some guy who says that disproportionate collective punishment is a-okay? Does this mean that we should firebomb Osaka for some bad sushi? Maybe wipe out the Chinese because your pet died a while back? Should Americans be put to the sword because of Abu Gharib?

There are good reasons why collective disproportionate response is almost universally seen as ethically unacceptable. I do still think that Hamas was unutterably stupid for engaging in their brinksmanship. I also still cannot and will not endorse this nonsense, especially from an-increasingly-deserving-of-scare-quotes "liberal". Being a liberal takes more than a party membership.

Especially one who can't figure out that saying this:

Although Hamas won the Palestinian elections, it took Gaza by force, in the process hurling rival Fatah members down to their death from high-rises and shooting others in the knees with the declared aim of maiming them. Some democracy.

In any case, Israel in fact “recognizes,” de facto, Hamas’ rule in Gaza, which is precisely why it is justified in attacking the Hamas-ruled Strip, recognizing that it is indeed being governed by a terror entity. Israel did not launch the operation because Hamas is in power there – rather, it did so because Hamas is a terrorist organization that has deliberately targeted civilians with thousands of rockets over the past 8 years.

Do either of these men seriously understand what they're doing by acknowledging that governments can be so easily labelled "terror entities?"

(Nobody tell Noam Chomsky; he'd die laughing!)

Sure, they're probably just being intellectually dishonest. They're only focusing on the civilian mortality numbers, and deliberately avoiding the civilian casualty numbers, which are catastrophic. They're playing that ridiculous game of insisting that the other guy's choices excuse your own. And whatzisname is pulling that stupid trick of whining about the term 'militant' to try to distract from real issues.

But it's also possible they actually believe this stuff. And I, for one, wouldn't want either Israeli or Canadian leaders advised by men who think that decimation is a policy.

Gazans Fire Rockets at Israel

...Israel drops big bombs on Gaza. About 200 people died when Israel launched air strikes against pretty much every Hamas security installation in Gaza, with about 270 wounded.

The Gazan response? More rockets.

There seems to be no plan here. The Israelis should know by now that air strikes of this sort never deter attacks by whatever fraction of Hamas decides they want to prove how anti-Israeli they are to their comrades. To the extent that they simply destroy capability they may have some utility, but we're talking tiny, almost man-portable rockets here, not ICBMs. You're never going to destroy the capability of using those.

And, naturally, the rocket attacks are completely pointless. An Israeli tragically died recently and a number have been wounded, but they're simply not going to do any significant or lasting damage. At best they might have driven Israelis away from the border, but this has been going on for YEARS. At this point those Israelis that are left within rocket distance are those who are not going to be frightened into leaving their homes.

So we have a failure of credibility and deterrence all around. Israel will not get what it wants, and Hamas (or whatever fraction of them still thinks this is worthwhile) will not get what they want. The only thing either will get is a higher body count.

Edit: Okay, the other thing they'll get is propaganda points for their various talking-head proxies, which seems sometimes to be the only damned thing they care about in the first place. Expect Israeli representatives to go on and on about the "need for security" and "show of strength" and that sort of thing, carefully ignoring the question of how, exactly, this is supposed to deter anybody. Expect Palestinians to focus on the body count and the blockade and suchlike, while delicately tiptoeing around the fact that it was, yes, serial rocket attacks into Israel that provided Israel the reason/justification/excuse in the first place.

And expect both to be whining like children about "who started it."