Axis Kast wrote:Sending commando teams would most likely result in a situation straight out of Mogadishu, October 1993. The imperative of then extracting those men would result in all the kinds of indiscriminate, high-casualty contingencies -- air strikes, armored incursions, and more -- that the Israelis are right now at least making some effort to avoid.
If they were making an effort to avoid civilian casualties,
they wouldn't be dropping 2,000 bombs on apartment buildings. Yes, using commandos would result in more Israeli casualties, but it would also result in far fewer civilian casualties. Soldiers are the ones who signed up to be in the line of fire; civilians did not.
Gaza is already awash with weapons. Like improvised explosive devices, unguided rockets are a simple technology, easily built with everyday materials. Even if the Israeli military were more successful in choking off smugglers, HAMAS would still have plenty of munitions.
Los Angeles is awash with weapons too. The LAPD still somehow manages to avoid obliterating certain neighborhoods.
Kanastrous wrote:I think it's an absolutely calculated judgment, not a 'poor' one, at all. I don't think 'punishment' is either the right word, or the right concept, any more than the Geneva Accords describe it as 'punishment' if civilians unfortunate enough to live next door to, say the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories circa 1945 suffer from that target being bombed.
Fine, change "punished" to "killed". They're dead either way, and they don't deserve to die.
The power is entirely in each individual HAMAS' operatives hands: don't want to endanger your family? Then stay away from them, so long as you're hot. If you know that you won't succeed in hiding behind them, why drag them into it?
So everyone should assume that Israel will indiscriminately kill the families of targets if they happen to be in the neighborhood? Do you not see that you're making my point for me?
I suspect that the answer is 'no.' Let's see: you have to locate Mister HAMAS, and move on him fast enough that he won't be long-gone by the time you arrive. You have to successfully move your commandos into position, undetected and - in a dense urban area saturated with small arms - without taking a lot of ground fire. You have to find your way around inside an unfamiliar building for which - being in the Gaza Strip - you probably lack any sort of floor plan or blueprints useful in pulling the arrest/hit off. Of course, you have to posit that this raid will come off without harming any bystanders, since the whole idea of commandos-vs-bombs, is to avoid such losses.
No, you moron, I posited that the collateral deaths from such a raid will be
lower, not
zero. I can't believe I actually have to explain that an aerial assault with gigantic bombs carries a far greater maximum damage potential than a bunch of guys with guns.
And, let's suppose that - miraculously - you do succeed in arresting him, casualty free, back to Israel clean as a whistle. Now what? Lacking a death penalty, the only thing you now have is a hero, a symbol, a living martyr, one more person against whose release your opponents now have reason to try and kidnap more of your people, in the hopes of forcing an exchange.
Of
course killing the guy with a bomb is easier. That's not the point.
There's something both unfair and unreasonable, in expecting that people subjected to prolonged attack whose purpose is indiscriminate killing, will plan around zero civilian losses when they eventually decide to go after the people orchestrating the attacks.
In other words, because there were rockets coming from the Gaza Strip (which killed and injured exactly zero people), civilians in that region (who can't exactly just pick up and head west) should expect that their homes will be destroyed in retaliation. This is a despicable argument.
Well, please be smart. Outline this 'proportionate' response, taking into account the limitations imposed by the available equipment and environment. If you have a more effective, more proportionate response for Israel to choose, please don't keep it to yourself.
Uh, didn't I just do that? Commando raids, the things that every police force in the world seems to have no qualms about.
When your only tool is a sledgehammer, all problems start to look like thumbtacks. I think that's the Middle-East version, of the saying.
So Israel doesn't have people with guns? They don't have commandos? All they have is 2,000-pound bombs? They've got one of the most well-equipped militaries in the world. They're not hurting for options; they just refuse to endanger the lives of their soldiers to protect Palestinian civilians.
You make it sound so incredibly easy. Why hasn't this politically-safe, comparatively international-condemnation-free, equipment-and-munitions-frugal approach been implemented, if it's really so simple as you appear to believe?
Stop strawmandering, you little shit. I never said it was easy. I said it was preferable because it stands to kill far fewer civilians. As to why it hasn't been implemented, it's transparently obvious that Israel considers Palestinian lives to be worthless, so they just take the easy route and bomb targets indiscriminately.