Victor Davis Hanson Tells It Like it Is

In the National Review. VDH does some truth telling, and it is very good. A few grafs where he explains some recent terminology you have heard in the Lebanese situation:

“Civilians” in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.

“Collateral damage” refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel, because everything there is by intent a target.

“Cycle of Violence” is used to denigrate those who are attacked, but are not supposed to win.

“Deliberate” reflects the accuracy of Israeli bombs hitting their targets; it never refers to Hezbollah rockets that are meant to destroy anything they can.

“Deplore” is usually evoked against Israel by those who themselves have slaughtered noncombatants or allowed them to perish — such as the Russians in Grozny, the Syrians in Hama, or the U.N. in Rwanda and Dafur.

“Disproportionate” means that the Hezbollah aggressors whose primitive rockets can’t kill very many Israeli civilians are losing, while the Israelis’ sophisticated response is deadly against the combatants themselves. See “excessive.”

I think we have come to the end of the road where war is going to resolve any of these problems, however. Not that I am against any and all use of military force, but it just doesn't seem to work very well. I find myself wondering if after all this is done, Israel will be any better off at all.

Hezbollah supporters will be even more determined to fight, and Iran will resupply them in no time flat. Meanwhile, we will all be left with a huge bill and a destroyed land.

One thing I think we have to start doing is what VDH is doing here, start telling the truth. I have noted before how the Arab view of Israel is a history of lying, outrageous lying starting with the Palestinian victimization about losing their land in Israel. We have to win the propaganda war, and the only way to do that is to start telling the truth, and I mean by our President and enforcing it on other diplomats internationally, including Putin, Chirac, etc.

A good start would be Bush disputing the whole idea that the Palestinians have a legitimate beef about owning land in Israel, because they don't. Not any more than the Jews have a legitimate beef about owning land that they were forced out of in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, etc. Or forced out of in Israel itself, after all 2000 years ago it was theirs. My point is that all this arguing about land is bogus, and if it were any other country there would not be a war over it.

Maybe telling the truth is the first antidote to the first casualty of war, the truth.

Update: I just opened Andrew Sullivans site and he has a letter from a reader in Jerusalem that tied into what I was just saying so well it really struck me. "There are times when the truth needs to be shouted from the rooftops; when we need to declare that this is not a two-sided argument. There is a guilty party that has attacked innocent citizens in a sovereign country and has forced their own countrymen to become refugees; orphans and widows. They need to be taken to task for it and they must not be allowed to bring disaster upon the world. Hezbollah is a scourge, and they are being aided, encouraged and armed by Syria and Iran. We need to be sure of this - for the sake of the truth and the world's future."

Comments

[sglover]

Victor Davis Hanson became his own parody years ago.