Genocide By Any Other Name
Dave Price
While I sympathize with Israel's plight and believe they are generally the wronged party, I have to disagree with Naftali's statement. Not all criticisms of a "disproportionate response" are valid, but while one should be prepared for annihilation in war, that does not mean that annihilation is ever justified, even if done in the name of self-defense.
Willow is right: these kinds of statements are barbaric, irrational, wrong, and counter to the philosophies of tolerance and universal human rights that are the foundation of liberal democracy. Enemies should be defeated, but making friends of those enemies should be our ultimate goal, as our grandfathers did in Germany and Japan and our fathers did in Eastern Europe and Asia.
Anyone calling for genocide by any name under any circumstances should be ashamed. And if you're a Christian, you ought to be doubly ashamed, as Christ teaches us to turn the other cheek, not burn our enemies' cities to the ground with their families inside.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Genocide By Any Other Name
- An Interesting Discussion
- Extremists Among Us
The ultimate goal in World War II was the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.
Christ of course teaches a lot of things, many have, not unreasonably, intrepreted his words to require total pacifism. Others explain those statements apply only in the limited sphere he was talking about.
Sure, but our ultimate aims went beyond the war itself.
Yes, in response to an insult. The context was about a slap on the cheek. By turning the other, you forced him to punch you (at which, physical confrontation was not barred). I.e. deal with you as an equal, not a lesser.
It also demanded that you not return insult for insult, but deal instead with the issue of contention.
Jesus told his disciples that while they used to be able to go about freely, that they would soon need to be able to protect themselves, by violence or it's implied threat, if necessary.
Jesus' later admonition about dieing by the sword is a admonition against violence being the response to *all* situations. Not that it couldn't be used ever.
As to the real point of the post. I generally believe that one should use the minimum amount of force needed to end the threat.
If people have slapped me, I'll turn the other cheek. As no force should be needed if there is in fact no threat to my person.
If they punch me, I'll fight back, but it's certainly not time to shoot him.
If 5 people break into my house at night, I hope the sound of a racking shotgun will convince them to run away.
If so, the threat is over and you stop.
If not, then I may have to shoot one of them. Hopefully, that will convince them to run away.
If so, the threat is over and you stop.
If not, then I'll likely have to shoot another of them. Hopefully, that will convince them to run away.
If not...
If I have to kill all of them to end the threat...well that just sucks, but you do what you must.
But you don't start out by shooting everyone and their friends at first insult.
Secondly, genocide and ethnic cleansing have been commanded by God before (and if we consider the Flood, we coulds say that He has performed them as well), most notably regarding the Canaanites. My understanding is the Israelites were commanded to simply drive out the occupants (which would be ethnic cleansing), but later commanded to completely destroy the Amalekites (which would be genocide). As dangerous as it is to be claiming to do God's work, Jews and Christians (and probably Muslims) can't discount that possibility.
It is certainly true that in World War II, the American military slaughtered countless civilians. Firebombing cities not just in Japan but also Europe, in ways that were more destructive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although, strangely, most people still think of those atomic bombs as being the most destructive military strikes committed by the allied forces in that war, they were not--and by the way, the allies were better known as "the united nations" at that time).
To get back on track: it seems quite clear to me that people who demand that Israel start engaging in wholesale, massive slaughter are most often Americans (including, obviously, American Jews, although they're far from exclusively Jewish) who don't actually have to live in Israel. It also seems eminently obvious that Israel has had the power for decades now to engage in such mass slaughter, and that the Israeli electorate has absolutely no intention of supporting any such action. If they were inclined to support such measures they'd have done so, which is why claims that Israel is a "genocidal" state (common from the unhinged left) is ludicrous.
As such, if anyone cares, I tend to view such rhetoric as simply that: rhetoric. If that were going to happen, it would have happened by now. So I view people who talk like that as pretty much the same as the drunk at a bar who brags that he'll kick the ass of anyone and everyone in the joint who'll take him on--i.e. a little silly at best.
Simply put, nothing short of a devastating strike that kills thousands will cause that kind of anger out of Americans or Israelis. And, God forbid, I don't see that happening any time soon.
I hope that makes Willow feel better, if no one else. %-)
I was gonna point this out but you beat me to it. You're exactly correct. "Turn the other cheek" was a directive about personal and one-one-one incidents.
It was never indended to be used as national wartime policy.
And, it should be mentioned, Yeshua also stated in Luke 22:36:
And He said to them, "But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one.
Why buy a sword if we're suppose to turn the other cheek?
It's really getting annoying how often people keep quoting the Bible around here to bolster their claims and completely ignore what the text is actually talking about.
It was never indended to be used as national wartime policy.
Yes and no. While Christ doesn't mandate defenselessness, He does say that revenge for the sake of revenge is immoral.
Which is why I say: defeat one's enemies when necessary, then make friends of them.
Or, as He put it: love thy enemy. It is easy to love those who love us; that is no great moral feat. Loving those who hate us is the trick.
Why, to open letters and slice carrots! Why else would you need an object with a point and sharp edges?
Dean, I'm stunned. You've done it. You've come as close as I think anyone ever will to selling me on the war. I'm not sure I quite agree with your logic, for the simple reason that even if the war ends in a strong, healthy, self-governed Iraq (which I pray it does, because whether one is for or against the war everyone should agree the Iraqis deserve nothing less), in my mind it still will have cost far too much in life, resources and international goodwill to be a practical, repeatable solution to terrorism. (We're way too broke to do this again anytime soon without running up the most astronomical national debt in the history of human civilization, and we'd need a draft.)
Still, bravo. That's by far the most ethically sound reasoning for the war I've ever heard.
As for the other issue, I agree with your observation that there is an awful lot of unhelpful armchair foreign policy when it comes to Israel. I tend to think the only people qualified to hold opinions about the Israel-Palestine issue are the Israelis and the Palestinians. I've met many of both, and never heard anyone seriously suggest that a simple carpet-bombing would take care of the problem.
I do feel a little bit better. :) Thanks man.
The Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Jugoslavs, Romanians and Hungarians expelled some 16 million ethnic Germans from their territories -- including lands taken over by Poland east of the Oder-Neisse river system what had been the heart of Germany -- starting as soon as the great Red Army of the USSR rolled into the country in late 1944.
Nobody on the allied side asked for anybody's permission. About half of them fled in fear as the soviet forces approached. Some indeed were murdered during the fighting. The rest were simply put aboard the same kind of railway freight cars used as recently as a few months earlier to transport the european Jews to the nazi death camps. But the destination of the Germans were merely into permanent relocation in western Germany.
In the case of Israel vs the Arabs, I see no possibility whatsoever in peace between them. What's more, I'm glad of that condition, simply because I hate the idea of compromise over a national interest whose right I support. Bush's pitiful mission to Israel, like all the rest going back more than 40 years, will fail; exactly as they should.
In my judgement, and in light of the above, I want the Israelis to manipulate the Gaza situation as a festering wound which will give them sufficient time to slowly annex Judea and Samaria through jewish urban sprawl. At the same time, they can buy out the Arabs still in place in replace them with Israelis over an extended period.
As for Gaza, the fifth war with the Egyptians over the Sinai is only a matter of time, like all the earlier ones. When that happens, I am certain the Israelis will flatten the Egyptian army for a fifth time. Then I want them to simply remove all the Arabs from Gaza, truck them across the Sinai, and dump them in Egypt west of Suez.
As for carpet bombing, I think it as good an idea in 2007 as it was over Hamburg in 1943, all the Ruhr cities and Berlin in 1944, Dresden and all the japanese cities in 1945. Friends are friends; enemies are enemies. The former are to be treated nicely; the latter are to be killed until they offer unconditional surrender.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
My biggest fear since 9/11 has been that a nuke (or some crude version of it) will be detonated in a US city and then we'll respond in kind and kill a lot of innocent civilians. Don't think we are not capable - think of Dresden, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima - and we flatteringly refer to those who did this as "The Greatest Generation." If we can get some sort of civilized societies functioning in the Middle East, maybe we can avoid that fate.
As for astronomical debt, you should look not at absolute numbers, but relative to income (or on a macro level GDP). The US is in pretty good shape today compared to the rest of the world.
Of course, there is the cost of not acting. The economic damage that 9/11 would cause is probably more than what we've spent on Iraq to date. Not to mention the fact that I have hard time putting a price on 25 million people living in freedom - it warms my libertarian heart. If you are talking economic costs, you ought to also factor in how much a free ME (or at least Iraq) would contribute to global economic growth - which benefits us all.
So, if my grandparent's generation is the same generation that firebombed Tokyo to the ground, with it's people inside it, and nuked 2 other Japanese cities, and carpet bombed German cities, in order to win the war, in order to be friends, then they must be 'barbaric, irrational, wrong, and counter to the philosophies of tolerance and universal human rights that are the foundation of liberal democracy'...?
Am I missing something here? Please explain how WWII was acceptable from your perspective?
To which I respond by asking you to please run that calculation again -- only this time, include the eventual costs of a full-scale world-wide armed conflict similar to WWI and WWII.
That's not a gotcha. It's the argument I find most compelling. We've already tried waiting until it was more than obvious that we would have to expend millions of lives and incalculable amounts of resources, both far better spent on civil growth and improvement, to either violently stop this kind of radical aggressive tyranny or submit to it -- twice.
In your example of the intruders in your home, I must disagree. I would immediately cock the shotgun and start firing. I would shoot each and every one of them even if they were teenagers. If they were jumping out of the window, I might let them retreat. Not because they don't deserve to die, but because I don't want them on my front lawn with a blast mark in the back, that might not stand up well in court. The only hesitation I would make would be to make sure it's not my own kid sneaking back in after sneaking out for the night. The reason I would handle the situation this way is that I will assume they're armed, are a quick draw, and might already have a weapon in their hand that I didn't see (because it's dark). I will approach the situation like this because I believe it makes my chances of survival greater, and that's ALL that matters to me. Their wellbeing is not MY concern. The minute they decided to break into my home, THEY committed a form of suicide. I would probably be shaken up for a little while, and would then get a full night of sleep knowing I survived a life and death confrontation where I was outnumbered. I have thought of how I would handle life and death situations like this long ago, and decided upon my choice of action. That way I will avoid hesitation should any of those situations (unfortunately) come true. I will also look forward to the deterrent value this event will provide. I believe if they were successful in their invasion, it would encourage others to consider acting that way. But if others knew it cost them their lives, they might consider flipping hamburgers instead.
Dean: I do not advocate genocide unless it's the best option AND the enemy deserves it. Morality is of no use to me if I lose a war and am dead. To illustrate a point that probably only Kevin will understand, I'll cite an important event in history: During the Dominion war, a Federation officer named Sisko tricked the Romulans into joining the war on our side, by murdering one of their diplomats and leaving evidence that would implicate the enemy. The Romulins fell for it, joined the war, and the enemy was defeated. This was an EXCELLENT choice that I would of been proud to perform because 1) our survival depended upon it (the Dominion was to wipe out earth's population), and 2) the Romulans deserved it, they were bastards, 3) the Romulans were hoping for the defeat/eradication of the Klingons and Federation, and 4) the Klingons would certainly approve because as our other ally in the war they despised the Romulans as much as we did.
Arnold: We are in agreement.
Paul S: Excellent response.
Willow: Ideals are nice and wonderful, but they're also a thin veneer which will easily peel off when the environment becomes different. Humans are animals, and when it comes to difficult situations that are life or death, ideals will rarely influence our decisions much. Our DNA will influence it much more. We are the most violent part of the animal kingdom. Humans are the only animal that will fight to the death when there's an escape route. If it wasn't for our violent and cunning nature, we probably would not of survived and prospered to the point of overpopulating this earth. This is how God made us, I embrace His wisdom :-), I read history, I understand human nature, and I accept what I am - human. If you want me to feel sorry for hamas supporting Palestinians, then you need to get them to not embrace genocide against Israel. Until that occurs, they are nothing more than rats. And if rats invade my home, bite on my family members, and spread disease, I eradicate them. I don't capture them an release them, I take their lives, and that of their children if I can find them. They have no rights because they are rats. If the hamas supporting Palestineans want to be provided human rights, they need to provide them to Israel. It's a 2 way street.
As for the Japanese, I'm not so certain if we could of known their intentions early on, but I believe they deserved to be nuked, and I only wish we would of developed the weapons sooner.
He hardly did things alone, and thus at least the acknowledgement of the cultural aspects which caused and/or contributed to the events in question should be included in any analysis, since determining the causes of and contributing factors to such events should be one of our foremost priorities in discussing them.
As far as your scripture goes, please spare us. The grand tradition of Abrahamic religion is rooted in the events of the old testament-- littered as it is with zero-sum conflicts and godly intervention. I understand fully that this was simply the way of the world at the time, yet I don't hear a lot of sympathy for the Roman way of conquest, and at least they brought a measure of trans-tribal civilization and a healthy appreciation of Greek literature to the picture.
You bet your ass we are in agreement. There is nothing as deadly unmistakable as the sound of a 12-guage shotgun being racked into bettery inside a closed room. The only thing wrong with shotguns, however, is that they undoubtedly tear the hell out of your drywall.
As for what we did to the Japanese in World War II. I have read and re-read the true epic story of the defense of Wake Island at the beginning of the war by a vastly outnumbered and brave defense battalion of United States Marines. After fighting for more than two weeks against impossible odds, the Japanese captured the island.
On the ship bring many of the captured US military personnel to a prison in Shanghai, China, the Japanese guards singled out a small group of marines and sailors from among the sailors. They blindfolded them, took them up to the main deck, then murdered them with samurai swords, tossing the bodies into the sea. A year later, they machine-gunned to death more than a hundred american civilian naval contractor personnel whom they had captured on the island.
Would I have burned their cities to the ground, when we got the power to do so? Without hesitation and without apology.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Willow, I understand the visceral response to the war: it's ugly, it's brutal, it's deadly.... it seems it must be wrong. How could anything so ghastly not be wrong?
But the alternative was worse. Beyond the cold numbers, which show pretty clearly that more people would have died had we not liberated Iraq, there was the human rights situation. The rape rooms, the maiming, the torture with acid and car batteries, the total lack of free press, the sham elections where Saddam got 99.98% of the vote, the starving of women and children to elicit sympathy and support for ending sanctions while the regime collected fancy cars and built palaces and raped any woman that caught their eye...
Repeatable? No. Saddam was a unique situation: he had repeatedly violated Westphalian norms by trying to seize territory, something very few countries do anymore, which served as the catalyst for world support for the initial military action in 1991. He had used WMD. He was refusing to cooperate (remember, Saddam could have prevented the war by cooperating fully). It's not likely to ever be repeated.
But after a few generations, people will forget, and human nature will take over. Especially if dictators are in control.
And it WILL happen again.
And hopefully somebody else will do something about it. But probably not.
Hopefully America will step up to the plate, again, and destroy the evil, again, so a few more generations can have a good life, until it's time to repeat the process. Such is humanity. If an advanced alien civilization visited us, I'd expect them to write us off as pathetic and unworthy of their time.
Even before Iraq, NO NATION in history of this world had liberated more people than America. If I was ever to wear the uniform, I'd consider it the highest honor. I tinker with worthless Microsoft products every day, and in the end my efforts don't change the world. But those Americans in uniform are helping to write history, and I salute them. I don't know where you live Willow, but if it's in America, your good life is (indirectly) provided by the blood of those that wear the uniform. If you think you're morally superior because you are opposed to war, then I'll just shake my head and laugh at your ignorance. Perhaps I'll summarize my thoughts towards you with 2 simple words like Naftali did.
Well, a few generations of not invading anyone would be nice, and if present trends are any indication in a few generations the world will not only be almost exclusively liberal democracies, they will generally be very wealthy by today's standards and unlikely to war.
That is my reason, too. Marc Danziger and I have had long conversations about this.
For the first few days after 9/11, I was genuinely worried we would all but destroy Afghanistan. I live a very liberal city, and the bloodthirsty calls for total war frightened me.
I stopped worrying about it -- for now -- after about two weeks because I could see that the U.S. government was being sensible about it.
And I believe full credit for that has to go to President Bush. If he were half the demagogue his critics claim him to be, on 9/12 he could've declared all-out war on the Muslim world, and I swear the country would've followed him willingly. In fact, I fully expected the country to demand all-out war so loudly that no one could stop it. But instead, he resolutely drew the line: these people are enemies, and the people who harbor and support them are enemies, but people who happen to nominally share their religion but do not share their goals are not.
President Bush will never get credit for this. Those who hate him from the left will always believe he's on a crusade against Islam, despite the evidence. Those who hate him from the right will always believe he's not going far enough. But I have always seen that as his most critical and most correct decision in the whole war on terror.
True, our grandfathers made up with Germany and Japan.
Also true that before they made up, they first beat the hell out of them to the point of total devastation, sending them almost into oblivion, with a couple of nukes for desert... Afterwards they reached out to them...
This is the only way to make a lasting peace with a mortal enemy - not by compromise or the signing of worthless pieces of paper (like the Oslo accord) but by totally and mercilessly defeating and destroying him first.
The Palestinians (and as a matter of fact, the Arab world) view compromise and "reaching out" as weaknesses, to be further exploited upon. Agreements mean nothing to them, even if struck amongst themselves. If you don't believe, study the last 100 years of history of the Middle East.
And you have yet to reply.
Please explain how my grandparents generation are not as evil as I am.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.