Tag Archives: morality

“I live, you…meh”

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That’s the deal Hamas’ MFWIC Yayha Sinwar is demanding before he’ll agree to a cease fire with Israel. Never mind that all the players but Hamas—Sinwar—have agreed to the latest set of ceasefire terms.

Sinwar emphasizes that the security of his life and well-being must be ensured, according to Egyptian officials.

Sinwar’s life matters; the lives of Palestinians, for whom he pretends to be fighting, don’t in the slightest. Sinwar and the terrorists he leads will go on killing Palestinians or arranging their deaths by using them as shields, using their schools, residences, hospitals, mosques and churches as weapons caches, weapon launch sites, control centers.

This is what Israel is fighting; this is what the Biden-Harris administration is so desperate to protect with its incessant demands for cease fires, withholding weapons from Israel, anti-Israel rhetoric.

Preemption or Not?

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Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, has a piece in The Free Press in which he asks that question regarding Israel’s current situation against the backdrop of Israel’s decision to preempt at the outset of Israel’s 1967 defensive war vs Israel’s 1973 war for survival when it decided to let its enemies strike first.

I suggest the question has a broader historical scope than that. The question of preemption goes at least as far back as St Augustine’s early 5th century assertion that preemption was ipso facto immoral and so unjustified and unjustifiable. The pace of combat and the level of technology of those days gave practical support to the claim: an attacked nation could absorb the first blow and still have the wherewithal to respond and successfully defend itself.

Today is nothing like those days. Combat pacing and the technology in arms, mobility, and cyber make it very nearly suicidal for a nation under irrefutable threat of imminent attack to sit quietly and accept the enemy’s opening set of blows before responding. That opening set may well be fatal, with the attacked nation unable to respond at all. This is especially the case with nuclear weapons, which for instance, Iran is on the verge of achieving.

That makes sitting by today and accepting the enemy’s first strike, whether conventional, possibly coupled with cyber attacks, or nuclear the immoral move, as suicidal as sitting by may well prove to be.

Preemptive war does require strong evidence that the enemy intends to attack and that the enemy is about to do so. In Israel’s case, Hamas leadership has openly announced he intends to continue Hamas’ war of extermination—already underway. Iran’s leadership has announced that it intends to strike massive blows against Israel in response to the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran. Hezbollah’s leadership is prosecuting its own lower-key war of extermination from the north.

In 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol agonized for three weeks before deciding to preempt, and when he did, Israel settled that war in six days with far fewer casualties—friendly and enemy—than would have been the case had he decided Israel should absorb that first blow. This is demonstrated by Prime Minister Golda Meier’s decision to do exactly that in 1973’s war and that war’s costs.

Certainly preemption is more difficult when striking an amorphous network entity like the terrorist entities of Hamas and Hezbollah than it is against formal nation states like Iran. It’s no less important to be done for that, and “more difficult” means “possible.”

Preemption has become the moral imperative for the nation about to be attacked. That applies today for Israel, especially in the case of Iran, where preemption is not only necessary, it may well limit Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s abilities to continue.

What’s He So Terrified Of?

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Secretary of State Anthony Blinken postponed a scheduled trip to the Middle East amid heightened tensions in the area and a possible attack on Israel by Iran. The trip ostensibly was to continue to pressure Israel to agree a ceasefire with the terrorists who began their war to exterminate Israel.

Possible attack by Iran on Israel? What better time for a senior US government official to visit Israel could there be? SecState’s presence in Israel would greatly raise the stakes for Iran as it contemplates, or executes, its own effort to destroy Israel.

Blinken could have used the time in Israel to coordinate with them on defenses against an Iranian attack and against a coordinated set of attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and Iran, as well as moves post attack to finish Hamas and to kinetically punish Hezbollah, Houthis, and Iran.

Instead, Blinken—consistent with the Biden-Harris administration generally—chickened out.

Oh, Yes It Is

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The Wall Street Journal titled one of its Wednesday editorials about Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat governor and putative Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Vice President Tim Walz with this amazingly ignorant subheadline:

His military record isn’t a good reason to oppose his candidacy.

The editors’ rationalization:

Before his political career, Mr Walz rose to the highest enlisted rank of Command Sergeant Major. He retired in May 2005, shortly before the unit was notified in July 2005 that it would be deployed to Iraq. Fox News reports that the Pentagon says Mr Walz put in his retirement request several months earlier, though it’s fair to ask if he was aware of the possible Iraq deployment.
His retirement timing wasn’t ideal, leaving his leadership position when his unit was headed into a war zone.

After all, the editors nattered,

But if he had been deemed essential to the operation, the Guard could have declined to approve it.

Yes, Walz was well aware of his unit’s pending deployment to an active combat zone; it was under a Warning Order to prepare for that deployment when Walz put in his “retirement” papers. Walz’ timing “wasn’t ideal” for his unit, but it was well-timed to get him out of serving a dangerous assignment.

Associated with Walz’ abandonment of his unit, he had signed up and begun taking courses for a promotion to Command Sergeant Major. He was provisionally promoted to that rank on his commitment to the course. Taking the course also carried with it a commitment to serve for two more years at that rank and in a position commensurate with that rank. Failure to honor the commitment, or to complete the course, carried with it a consequence that he would be demoted/returned to his lower rank of Master Sergeant—which Walz also knew; he had to sign paperwork acknowledging that.

Walz quit his unit while it was under orders to prepare for a combat zone deployment; he was reduced in rank, and he was allowed to retire. Yet his Web page still claims he was a Command Sergeant Major when he retired. That’s a straight-up lie. When he put in his papers, reneging on that two-year commitment, he was reduced in rank to his prior, permanent rank of Master Sergeant. His service as a Command Sergeant Major was only provisional, and contingent on his honoring his commitment. The editors disingenuously claim there’s no doubt he had reached the higher position while active. No: he achieved that rank only provisionally, lost it on his reneging on his commitment, and was discharged at the lower, permanent rank.

Walz has also been lying about his having served “in war.” That may have been a deceptive boast, though a minor one, scribbled the editors. The closest Walz came to serving “in war” was during our fighting in Afghanistan—he had a six-month tour 2,500 miles behind the lines in the comfortable offices of the base in Italy to which he’d been assigned. Again, no: a lie of that magnitude is no mere minor deceptive boast—it’s a despicable lie that cheapens and insults the service of so many who have actually served in war and especially those who’ve been wounded, maimed, mentally scarred during that service.

Then there’s that editorial foolishness that the Guard could have retained him had he been essential. Men whose lives are on the line deserve a leader who’s committed to them and to the mission to which their unit—and supposedly Walz—are assigned. The Guard correctly assessed Walz’ lack of commitment to his duties, correctly recognized that Walz considered his personal political career more important than the lives of the men and women whom he would be been leading in a combat zone. The Guard was correct to release this…NCO…who would have been worse than merely a Beetle Bailey with senior sergeant chevrons. Beetle Bailey at least was an honest shirker, come to that.

The United States deserves a Vice President who is committed to us citizens and who has the courage and morality to keep that commitment when things get tough, whether for our nation or for the Vice President personally. That’s not who Walz is.

Lies of the Press

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These are lies of the Left, too, as Leftist as the press industry has gone. In their editorial regarding former President and current Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s interview at the National Association of Black Journalists, the editors summarized some claims embedded in the NABJ‘s opening question, posed by Rachel Scott of ABC News:

“You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals…saying they were not born in the United States”; told “four Congresswomen of color…to go back to where they came from”; and “attacked black journalists”

I heard that part of the interview in its entirety; the quoted parts are incomplete, but contain enough to identify the dishonesties in Scott’s question.

Not born here: the only rival Trump said anything of the sort about was then-Presidential candidate and then-President Barack Obama (D), and it’s obvious he was using an already long-extant conspiracy theory to troll Obama and the credulous press, not making a serious argument.

[F]our Congresswomen of color…to go back to where they came from: what Rose dishonestly excluded from her claim was the context: the four Congresswomen were objecting to Trump’s characterization of the African nations of their heritage by insisting that those nations had much to teach us—and Trump—about how to do things. What Rose further excluded from her question was that Trump was not telling those Congresswomen to go back where they came from; he was telling them to go to their old nations, learn those lessons they claimed their nations had for us, and then come back and educate the rest of us.

Attacking black journalists? This is the intrinsic racism of Scott, the NABJ, and the American press at large. Trump attacks the press and nearly all journalists without regard to race or ethnicity. That includes black journalists, but it does not single them out to the exclusion of other groups of journalists.

It’s…unfortunate…that the WSJ‘s editors chose not to call out Scott for her lies about what Trump had said.