A Sultry Sunday

It appears that the Left was finding its voice on Israel as I wrote the post I put up last evening. A perusal of memeorandum this morning reveals several posts from the Left regarding Israel, but the Right still outweighs the Left by a fifteen to one ratio…my best guess. And, predictably, a lot of the comment on the Left looks like this:

I've noticed some clucking in the right-wing wrongosphere about silence from the major left-wing blogs on the situation in the Middle East. There hasn't been silence, but there has been humility in the face of a fast-moving situation that is difficult to understand. I know I believed awhile back that the foreign policy course Bush pursued was disastrous, but I didn't know how that disaster would unfold. In other words, we may be watching an unfolding new war in its initial stages, or perhaps cooler heads will prevail, but either way I have no special insight on which direction this crisis will roll. I do know that the Friedman's and right-wing pundits who talked of freedom on the march are idiots, and shouldn't be listened to, and those who recognized that Bush's war on terror was always a fraud and based on a disastrous strategy were right.

The “wrongosphere.” It is to laugh…

Other articles on the subject of Israel I found informative and interesting include… British blogger Eric Lee’s post “The Left should be supporting Israel in this war” (that would be the British Left, but applicable none the less to the American Left); Michael J. Totten’s Middle East Journal and several articles in The Jerusalem Post, including this interview with the Major General Eliezer Shkedy, the Israeli Air Force’s Chief of Staff, from which I’ll quote just a small part:

Maybe in the end we'll kill more people because we weren't ruthless enough at the start, because we encouraged them to become bolder? Maybe we're too moral, for our own good and theirs?

That's a very interesting philosophical question, with practical consequences. And yet I'll tell you something...

(Shkedy pauses here for a full 20 seconds.) Ultimately our strength is not solely our military power. That's part of our strength. The strength of the Jewish people in the State of Israel and the Land of Israel is first and foremost our profound moral strength. Everything stems from that.

If we were to lower our standards, not to find a solution that meets the highest ethical standards, that would be a mistake with far more, immense significance for us as a nation and a state and as people than the operational error.

That's the great strength that I believe in. That's how I educate the people [in the IAF], and that's what the air force does. And, still, I'm aware that this is war, with live fire, and things will happen that I don't want to happen. Because to protect your child and my child, that can happen.

That's some answer. But to ask again, though, solely from the moral perspective: we may end up being less moral because in the end we have to...

You always have to look at the overall picture. In accordance with the specific situation, in the context we are talking about with the Kassams, mine is the right answer. In extreme situations, you behave in extreme ways.

Ultimately you have the norms that you live by, the moral standards, and each issue has to be judged on its own basis.

The exchange above was prompted by a discussion about how difficult it is to hit terrorists because of the tactics they use, i.e., hiding among and behind civilians. Israel’s critics, cynics all, for the most part, will pooh-pooh the general’s response as nothing but PR, but I choose to believe what he says. The point has been made often by Israel’s supporters that Israel is a western democracy, and in so being it lives by and under western morals, values, and ethics. The general’s comments are proof.

There’s a tremendous amount of material on the subject at memeorandum; you can pick and choose and read all day, if you so desire.

So. My weird sleeping habits have resurfaced. To make a long story short, I awoke from an extended “nap” around midnite last night. I popped open a beer, stepped outside, lit a ciggie, pulled up one of my camp chairs and just sat…contemplating the quiet, balmy night. And it was balmy, indeed. 72 degrees at midnight. I thought, ever so briefly, about going back inside, grabbing the camera and tripod and heading out of town to take a few night shots away from the city (!) lights. I changed my mind once my eyes became accustomed to the gloom…there was a thin layer of cirrus clouds that more or less (a lot more than less) shot that idea in the ass, to wit: the stars weren’t all that visible. No matter. There will be other, clearer nights this summer. Suffice to say I simply enjoyed the quiet last evening… a lot.

And so it goes…