Fighting Terror With Terror
It's a truly dreadful thing when a state finds utility in mandating murder. It's a true horror when a nation finds itself territorially and existentially embattled with no surcease and no apparent opportunity to meaningfully engage in talks leading to a cessation of hostilities. When the situation is state to state, one legal entity to another, opportunities can present themselves since each state is responsible for the well-being of its citizens and to continue hostilities is obviously harmful to each.How does an organized military approach a practical solution whereby it can defeat an elusive urban guerrilla army, a militia well armed and practised and intent on instilling terror in its target population, able to elude capture by the simple expedient of melting into a civilian population which is complicit in its support? Even though that same terror group may have visited atrocities on its own citizenry and still yet receives popular support enabling it to continue attacking a nation's civilians.
A puzzle inside a conundrum. The agonizingly brutal intent of an avowed enemy to destroy as many of a civilian population as they can manage for the purpose of sending the message that the intent is total annihilation and destruction of the state. There is no lack of volunteers to become martyrs to the common cause of destroying the state. The greater population has long been inured to the potential of peace with the perceived enemy.
There have been no efforts spared in training the young to accept their sacred duty in defence of their homeland which the enemy is said to have occupied. It becomes a commonplace for children to receive indoctrination at an early age toward jihad, the engagement in terror activities against the enemy. Children are themselves tutored and given experience in suicide attacks, as are women. There is no middle ground, no thought given to planning for peace.
In ancient Palestine Vespasian and his son Titus fought the rebellious Jews, chafing under Roman rule. A Roman army of over 80,000 soldiers was required to vanquish the Jews beleaguered in Jerusalem, defended by 23,400 Jewish soldiers. The city was under siege until its walls were finally breached and man-to-man combat ensued, two weeks of savagery. And the Jewish army succeeded in driving out the Romans.
Then Titus completely sealed Jerusalem off from the world, building a wall of earth surrounding its stone walls. Captured Jews were crucified on top of the earthen wall, their bodies left to rot; up to 500 Jews daily were so dealt with. Yet the Jews held fast, until the fourth year of the war. When, with battering rams and bridges, the walls were stormed. The starving populace slaughtered. A true scorched-earth revenge.
During the later bar Kochba rebellion against the Romans in 132 a.d., Jews repelled the Roman armies in battle after battle. Fully two years of ruthless, merciless butchery took place; the Jewish defences wavering to the vanishing point. In the year 135 bar Kochba's forces surrendered to the Romans. Bar Kochba tortured, and executed. After which Judean Palestine was off-limits to Jews who were taken to be dispersed and sold into slavery.
We live in modern times and like to think we have the capacity to behave differently, to be rational human beings, to discuss differences and reach, however painful, decisions whereby sacrifices are made on each side to satisfy the needs of others, enabling a just solution to territory and entitlements. Yet the barbarity of the blood-letting under the ages-old influence of tribal vengeance remains the order of the day.
So - what does a country do, when it is pushed against the wall of obliteration? Would it seem reasonable for a country to succumb to the fury of terror militias intent on destroying it and its people on the grounds that this is the civilized manner of response? Or is it reasonable for that country to defend its people by seeking to destroy the major elements of jihadist determination for the purpose of saving itself?
Israel engages in targeted killing of its identified tormentors, those whose expertise leads to the bombings and murders of Israeli citizens. After such attacks, successful in their mission to take militant murderers out of commission, it is the habit of terrorists and their supporters to rally, to fire automatic weapons into the air, for loudspeakers to fill the square with laments, for armed and darkly masked gunmen to rend the air with their fervent promises of revenge.
Will the combatants never tire of blaming, blood-letting, self-impoverishment, sacrifice and martyrdom?
Labels: Israel, Political Realities, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, December 20, 2007
<< Home