Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians. ~Victor Davis Hanson

Hanson’s article is textbook neocon alarmism, complete with random citations from Col. Lindbergh and Fr. Coughlin included for no other reason than to obliquely hit critics yet again with the charge of anti-Semitism (the message is not subtle: if you criticise the current campaign, you are probably just like Fr. Coughlin).  Elsewhere there are the predictable Chamberlain and Munich references (there always has to be a Munich reference in these things, or else you get fined $50 by the neocon union).  Then there is the trope of moral clarity and moral equivalence: Hanson and friends have the former, because they support the policy in question, and adversaries and critics engage in the latter and are on the brink of “moral insanity” for their alleged lack of discernment.

Frankly, the moral judgement of some supporters of the Israeli campaign has become so warped that I would almost welcome the charge of moral insanity from the likes of Hanson.  People who have no appreciation or understanding of the principle of proportionality in war, the relation of proportionality to justice, or the solemn obligation of every belligerent to safeguard the lives of civilians have no business dishing out lectures in moral sanity.  People who cannot discern the injustice of targeting all of Lebanon for the crimes of Hizbullah have no business accusing anyone else of a lack of moral sense.  Critics of the Israeli campaign can distinguish between the democracy and the terrorists, perhaps better than its supporters, because their criticisms presuppose that the Israeli democracy at some level actually does respect the difference between noncombatants and combatants and that it has the moral sense to refrain from wreaking mayhem on civilian populations.  Israel is being given an amazing benefit of the doubt that the actual results of its campaign (900 dead civilians and one million displaced) are not some of its intended goals, but unhappy accidents–we give them this benefit of the doubt only because we assume that they are indeed far better than the people whom they are fighting and that they do have the will to discern between noncombatant and combatant.  

But perhaps we critics have given the Israeli government too much credit.  Perhaps we should simply treat this according to the law of the jungle and let the most savage man win.  Sadly, the truth is that Hanson would probably still be defending the Israeli campaign even if the IAF were carpet-bombing the entire country from end to end and killing tens of thousands of civilians (unintentionally, of course), because the democracy must be allowed to “defend itself” against terrorists.  Hanson would drearily invoke the same WWII precedents that Podhoretz and Krauthammer have already invoked to justify any excess, which would be appropriate enough, since we are supposedly back in 1938.   

The critics are the ones who cannot tell the difference between the democracy and the terrorists?  No, I’m afraid that it is quite the other way around, as the supporters of the campaign are increasingly incapable of recognising the democracy’s employment of tactics that are scarcely better than terrorism–the use of violence against civilians for political ends– (regardless of what their “intent” may have been) and are unable or unwilling to see that this campaign is doing more to actually undermine the distinction between the democracy and the terrorists than the so-called “moral insanity” of the critics.  No, the critics recognise the difference between the two well enough, and they also recognise that the difference is growing smaller, which is a shame.  Even more shameful is the reflexive support this degradation of Israel’s reputation receives from the “pro-Israel” circles in this country.  Supporters of Israel should consider that further damage to its reputation to be as serious a threat to the integrity and long-term security of Israel as Hizbullah’s rockets.