This from Arutz Sheva:
Brig.-Gen. Noam Feig, head of naval shipyards, said the Naval Commando 13’s operation in Tyre targeted senior Hizbullah operatives responsible for the launch of long-range rockets, similar to those fired at Hadera on Friday. “The goal of the operation was a commando raid against [those] senior Hizbullah operatives,” he said. “Among other things, they were involved in launching rockets at Hadera Friday. The operation brought closure to all other operations.”
Feig stressed that the heroic operation was deemed necessary to combat the threat of long-term rocket launches into Israel, while minimizing the possibility of Lebanese civilian casualties. “The force, under the command of a Commando 13 commander, was made up of three separate forces. Hizbullah’s pattern of operations, hiding in apartments, endangers the lives of Lebanese civilians and necessitates selective and accurate capabilities,” Feig stated.
[ … ]
“The two soldiers were treated in the field by a medical unit under the command of the unit’s doctor,” explained Feig, “and an operation was performed in the field. The force evacuated under fire to the coast, where a helicopter waited, as planned, to transport them back to Israel at 5 a.m. All in all – fighting and presence in the field – one hour and 45 minutes.”
Remember the Zarqawi bombing run and how U.S. forces found him? Video here. The U.S. used a standoff weapon (JDAM). The U.S. used standoff weapons in order to protect the lives of U.S. troops. Remember also that a child died in the attack on Zarqawi.
I want to make a several brief observations and then follow up with a view towards rethinking just war theory.
- The U.S. did not repudiate the actions involved in killing Zarqawi because an innocent was killed.
- The U.S. military leadership chose by their tactics to side with the protection of U.S. troops rather than the protection of possible innocents.
- The Israeli military leadership chose to side with the protection of possible innocents in the vicnity of the enemy.
- Yet Israel is challenged every day in the media for the killing of innocents in the vicinity of the enemy.
I prefer to think within the paradigm of “good wars” rather than “just war.” We need to relinquish this quaint but highly outdated notion of wars as soldiers lining up opposed to each other on a field of battle where innocents are either looking on or completely absent from the vicinity. Certainly this idea prevailed — for good reason — throughout the First and Second Worlds Wars, the Korean War and even to some degree the war in Vietnam (as well as the first Gulf War). Today there is such an absence of moral underpinnings in war that the innocent is scattered amongst the warrior. The warrior puts himself in the vicinity of non-combatants by choice in order to cause collateral damage, thus playing to political sensibilities as we see in the media the continual drumbeat of this country or that country “intentionally targeting civilians.”
When “warriors” do this, they are no longer protecting anyone, and are thus not worthy to be called or considered warriors. They are terrorists. The scene now becomes a hazy chaos of terrorists rather than warriors, combatants mixed with non-combatants, murky situations where non-combatants are actively aiding the combatants, and impossible stipulations such as the prevention of all civilian deaths — juxtaposed with the moral duty of a country to protect the safety of its citizens. Stated simply, the paradigm of soldiers lining up in a field of battle (where a just war may be ascertained based on simple questions like “who is the aggressor?” or “what fixed boundary was violated by some outsider?”) is a paradigm whose time has come and gone.
In the case of the U.S. leadership choosing to use a JDAM to take out Zarqawi rather than bring additional risk to the lives of U.S. troops, I would not have had it any other way. If keeping a child among the enemy stops your armies from fighting because they might kill the child, it is the enemy who is at fault rather than your armies, and it is a tactic that will cause you to lose the war. To fail to war against aggressors because of potential collateral damage would be to fail your own people and thus to bring them additional risk and perhaps worse.
It is a matter of keeping in front of you the reason we are at war and who warrants the protection of U.S. troops. What is most important? The protection of U.S. citizens or the protection of potential non-combatants? Remember that this is a salient question for our troops at war right now. It goes to every part of their existence, from targeting munitions to “room-clearing” and “stacks.” If a fire team has to delineate between friend or foe upon entering a room, the fire team will likely die due to the time delay and opportunity for the enemy to engage our troops. This is no theoretical matter to our troops. Those who want to protect against the possibility of the deaths of any non-combatants must take this into consideration. Not only would such a policy mean many more U.S. deaths, it would probably mean the end of combat capability and the loss of the war. No army can fight a war under these conditions.
In the case of Israel, it seems to me that they went above and beyond the call of duty to protect innocents. It is further than the U.S. went when we killed Zarqawi, and it is further than I would have gone had I been in charge.
As it is, a battlefield operation had to be performed on an Israeli soldier because Israel was concerned collateral damage. Tell that to the mother of the IDF soldier who had the operation and ask her about priorities.
