The Chicken or the Egg?

And so, who is at fault for starting the latest chapter in the Great Conflagration of modern history, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Everybody Else? Assessing blame entails weighing opinion of who wronged whom, who stole whose sheep, who killed whose neighbor with little definitive answer.

Intelligent people, however, can assess the nature of war and its relationship to government and those opposed to that government. Let us look to a work that influenced our foundation in the United States, Englishman John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, chapter 3: "I should have the right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey... And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war war with him."

Locke's work defines the two rival forces as adhering to reason or not. Let us use that criteria for assessing blame. Hezbollah is a stateless enemy, an organization, elected by no one, whose confessed purpose is to destroy the government and people of Israel. The Israeli government, a fairly elected democratic government, has the stated purpose to protect its citizens. Hezbollah touts the doctrine of "force and violence", and in Locke's definition, therefore, it subscribes to the law of the jungle, the unreasonable kingdom where the stronger animal consumes the weaker. Israel, by contrast, has the stated aim of destroying Hezbollah in order to protect its citizens. A government not willing to do so would be disfunctional and corrupt. But the Israeli government does not have an expressed policy of destroying other internationally recognized nations. If it did, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Egypt would cease to be. Thus, since the Israeli government was elected by people in their employment of reason, the law of the jungle cannot be applied to judge Israel's aggression in the latest conflict. Finally, Hezbollah's attempt to destroy Israel is an effort to subjugate the Jews to the absolute power of the terrorist organization. Israel has no choice but to respond.

Charles Krauthammer condemns the moral righteousness of those lambasting the Israelis for their "disproportionate" response (see Link below). He argues that, true, the Israelis have killed civilians, but their military has tried to minimize these losses while fighting a regime that employs Lebanese civilians as human shields. Hezbollah lobs missiles into the centers of Israeli cities. Could the lines be more distinct?

Everybody Else sits back from their isolated democracies and sternly warns the Israelis to cease their unfair military campaign. These democracies, however, do not live in the fear of a neighbor's expressed wish to obliterate it from the face of the Earth. Should we take a moment to remember the Cold War, with the Soviet Bear licking its chops to devour all of Western Europe? Should we not remember that military support from the United States prevented enslavement of the Western Europeans to the horrors of totalitarianism? Israel and the United States have the single choice to persevere. To do any less would be uncivilized.