Proportionality, the Suffering of the Innocents in Lebanon, and Israel's Need to Destroy Hezbollah

[What I present here is a prayerful rumination and no program. More and more in my life, I find that I can pray about things much more effectively than I can offer solutions.

[I'm sure that people I respect of every opinion will find reason for taking offense at what I say here. So be it. I'm just asking God to reveal the truth to us all.]

Even if we don't agree with the poltical critque found in Robert Fisk's Independent column about the war being waged in Lebanon right now, he provides some sense of the agony being endured by the innocent Lebanese. Fisk, as you'll see if you read the whole thing, has been living in and reporting from Lebanon for thirty years.

I was particularly struck by a conversation he reported having with an Israeli woman:

I am back on the sea coast when my mobile phone rings. It is an Israeli woman calling me from the United States, the author of a fine novel about the Palestinians. "Robert, please take care," she says. "I am so, so sorry about what is being done to the Lebanese. It is unforgivable. I pray for the Lebanese people, and the Palestinians, and the Israelis." I thank her for her thoughtfulness and the graceful, generous way she condemned this slaughter.

Civilian casualties, of course, result in part from trying to wage war on stateless enemies that blend in with a country whose government is either too weak (Lebanon) or too unprincipled (the Taliban regime in Afghanistan) to disgorge or destroy them. Hezbollah must be dealt with as surely as Bin Laden and his henchmen must be dealt with.

But how many innocents must die in the meantime?

How might their suffering be minimized?

How might the international community support and encourage the innocent?

How might the infrastructure of a nation infested with thuggery and terrorism be protected so that the innocent can build their fragile nation?

No matter what our position on this current war--or on any war--the first question I posed must haunt us: How many innocents must die?

I know that it haunts me, even as I think that those who are raising the question of proportionality about the current conflict are mostly getting it wrong.

I accept this tenet of proportionality. No nation should seek war and when war starts, its response should be proportionate to the attack precipitating that response.

But determining proportionality must surely entail more than toting up how many were killed or how much damage was done in the initial attack, as some--including Fisk--suggest. Certainly proportionality must entail understanding the level of threat intimated by the attack. The initial attacks by Hezbollah on Israel indicated an exponential growth in the group's capacity and will to menace the innocents of another country, those living in Israel.

A humanitarian crisis that will haunt the world for a long time to come is unfolding in Lebanon right now. The world community will have to respond.

In an imperfect world in which we are often given imperfect choices, I don't see how Israel can avoid waging war on Hezbollah.

But I wonder--prayerfully and with admittedly limited knowledge--whether the innocents in Lebanon can not be spared more of the suffering which has been their lot for so long.

I'm praying that terrorists will be stopped. I'm praying that the innocents will not suffer any more. I'm praying that these two prayers, seemingly mutually exclusive at this moment, will both prove acceptable to God.

(HT: Rambling Hal)