No moral Equivalence!

Yeah, and it is my understanding that the Shiite
south in Lebanon is composed of mainly very poor peasants. These people have nowhere to go, so when they leave they become homeless, completely without resources, other than what Hezbollah is providing in shelters.

Shorter Dershowitz:
for all rules, Israel is always the exception.
for most of the others, America can claim exception too-as long as it conforms to what Israel wants.

for all the rest of those brown people out there.....not so much.

Why bother? Kill them all and let God sort them out.

The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit.

By what legal authority can the army of one state order the civilians of another sovereign state out of their homes?

Moreover, this is a doctrine that, if adopted, would have some rather uncomfortable outcomes in the future. Imagine Lebanese or Syrian forces, say, turning the tables and saying "the Syrian army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of northern Israel that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit." Would Prof. Dershowitz support their right to do so?

This is pretty disgusting. It implies (judging by your summary) that it's o.k. to kill people for having the wrong thoughts (they sympathize with Hezbollah), or pre-emptively (they might take up arms with Hezbollah at some point in the future).

It's appalling to see a serious person trying so hard to come up with lawyerly justifications for the old kill-'em-all approach.

This is very clever. Alan Dershowitz, after all, is nothing if not very clever.

I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from you since you're a liberal. When George W Bush told the people of New Orleans Hurricane Katrina was coming, you and other liberals tried to deflect the fact that it was the New Orleaners fault for not leaving after Bush told them to. Now you're trying to deflect the fact it's the Lebanese fault for not leaving Southern Lebanon after Israel told them to.
Suppose a hurricane or earthquake was coming to your area and you were told that but you refused to leave anyway. Wouldn't it be your fault if you got killed after you were warned? Unfortunately liberals aren't willing to have people accept responsibility for their own actions. First liberals blamed Bush for Katrina. Now you're blaming Israel for the irresponsible actions of the Lebanese people.

Al go away. No one cares for your nonsense.

By that logic, no civilians would remain in Israel following a Hezbollah announcement that "We're comin' to getcha, so clear out!" Especially given (almost) universal conscription in Israel, the vast majority of male citizens would be considered non-active military personnel. Civilians are those who do not bear arms or participate logistically or tactically in offensive operations. American citizens support their military financially and socially and many send letters and gifts at their own expense. That doesn't make then less civilian. Especially not if Dershowitz still qualifies.

DERSHOWITZ: Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit.

Does that mean that civilians in the US are complicit in W's nonsense, and if it's found that he violated international law at some point, it's fair for someone to bomb us all?

"If you don't leave your home to get out of Israel's way, you are a terrorist."

This is the opposite of clever. It's using "new" vocabluary words to reshape the boundaries of morality. Orwell understood this perfectly.

It is, in fact, the way Hezbollah etc. regard all citizens of the "Zionist Entity" - valid targets.

Good luck with that, Alan.

Rules for other people's children, never their own.

Just goes to show that a good lawyer can make anything sound legal and even moral at least to some people.

Dershowitz lost me when he proposed oh so clever idea of torture warrants after 9/11.

By what legal authority can the army of one state order the civilians of another sovereign state out of their homes?

Actually, Israel is behaving more kindly than required. Lebanaon made war on Israel by kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers and by firing missiles. Under the laws of war, as I understand them, Israel could counter-attack military targets. In this case, Lebanon has placed military targets among their civilian population. Lebanon desereves the blame for that, not Israel.

(By the way, this post doestn't distinguish Lebanon from Hezbollah. From Israel's POV that's not required, although in fact, Israel has made efforts to do so.)

Dershowitz is a Judeofascist. He's willing to swallow any atrocity, as long as it's committed by the shitty little country.

Note that if Dershowitz's argument was applied consistently, it would justify any act of terrorism against Israel. After all, every able-bodied adult in Israel is an IDF reserve member. Of course, Dershowitz won't do that. He has one set of rules for Israelis and another set for everyone else.

Truly, we must all agree that the Lebanese who stay behind are nothing more than Little Eichmanns.

uh, I think the vocabulary is already pretty well know.

Dershowitz is saying that these civilians deserve to be killed at their homes and workplaces because they are somehow "complicit" with the regime that is being attacked by a foreign enemy.

The phrase he wants is "Little Eichmanns".

That's what Dershowitz has done--he has taken Ward Churchill's completely fucked view that my friends in the World Trade Center deserved to be killed, and he has applied it to my friends in Lebanon.

Now I hope the right wing will begin a campaign to drum Dershowitz out of his academic position.

Kinda reminds me of days of yore, when the peasantry were trampled underfoot in battles and the knights in armor always had their lives saved, because it was a sin for a commoner to harm the nobility. Dershowitz, however, would be the last person I would trust to decide who was expendable.

When the conclusion is absurd, or worse, it hardly pays to examine the argument. In the present case, among the first people killed were villagers who heeded an Israeli warning to evacuate, and were bombed on the road.

AL: Suppose a hurricane or earthquake was coming to your area and you were told that but you refused to leave anyway. Wouldn't it be your fault if you got killed after you were warned?

They're coming, Al, you crazy dog, you.

When the conclusion is absurd, or worse, it hardly pays to examine the argument. In the present case, among the first people killed were villagers who heeded an Israeli warning to evacuate, and were bombed on the road.Posted by: serial catowner on July 22, 2006 at 4:13 PM | PERMALINK

Touché; Good point.

Boy I hope the other side doesn't read that and flip the logic to apply to different categories of American civilians. I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue if hijackers sorted out Republicans from their hostages and declared them on the wrong end of their continuum.

I'm generally a fan of looking at things as a continuum rather than in black and white, but this sounds like Dershowitz is doing this to darken the reputations of people he doesn't like and justify their misery, rather than to lighten their reputations and accept their humanity.

Argh. We seem to just keep falling.

It's appalling to see a serious person trying so hard to come up with lawyerly justifications for the old kill-'em-all approach.

Serious person? Who? Dershowitz? Please. He's a wholesale propagandist. Not even an original one, for chrissakes.

Huh... well, I came over here right after seeing what may be the most stomach-turning war photo ever at Billmon's (with a caption that's overly bitter even by my standards), so Dershowitz will have to forgive me for observing that he's one callous bastard at best.

I just got up, went to my bookshelf and removed Mr. Dershowitz' book. The book is now in the trash.

Dershowitz is a fascist. Posted by: jayarbee -WORD

another one of those duel citizen fuckers. just like chertoff. scary huh!

No matter how Dershowitz may want to parse the word "civilians" to serve his world view,
here is what is happening to them (link taken from Juan Cole's website, and I'll echo his warning that the photos are horribly graphic).

So, according to Dershowitz, if a person remains on their property when a foreign power invades, then by definition they support the enemy. How many levels of "what the fuck? here?

Dershowitz gained cred as a civil rights lawyer. That is one reason his opionions keep being pushed. "See, this is the Liberal position".

Shorter Dershowitz:

I'm still for civil rights for humans, but anybody who doesn't support whatever Israel does is not human.

As you idiots drive the Jews and the blacks away from the Democrat party, you continue to wonder: Why can't we get elected?

And the running joke is your need to believe you're smarter than our President.

If you'd like to read a modern version of "Why We Fight", check out soxblog http://www.soxblog.com/ -- his essay, "The urge for a Ceasefire"

Then come back and ask Kevin Drum to put himself back on Dec 8th, 1941 and get his suggestions for the way forward.

Oh wait, we know what he would say. Kevin thinks we should surrender.

I'm sorry, but Dershowitz has a big chip on his shoulder and he is going around saying outrageous things so that, when he does provoke an angry response, he can shout "anti-semite."

To which I respond, even if true, so what?

Surrender to who?

The Israelis have also advised that using a truck to flee may attract attack. Trucks can be used to carry weapons.

So, you can leave, but you can't pack a truck with your family and posessions--and everything that remains will surely be looted, even if you ever return to it. Where are you going to go? What are you going to eat when you get there? How will and where will you purchase the gasoline (that you can no longer pack--see the truck thing) you need to reach the destination?

Hizbullah's rocket attacks against Haifa are unjustifiable outside Dershowitz's frame: it fires against the Israelis whose democracy funds and arms the Tsahal, against the young people (remember, women can serve in the IDF) who make up the armed forces, and the children who will grow up to be of military age.

This is the language and logic of ethnic cleansing, of blind nationalism, of firebombing Dresden and Tokyo. I am the filthier for having dipped into the pool in which Deshowitz swims.

Dershowitz is just a Zionist stooge. Whatever is good for the Jews, goes. Period. War crimes, civilians slaughtered, so what if it's good for the Jews.

I think that Old Al, New Al, and several Fake Als have merged to produce the Al-bot from Hell. The Al entity seems to have hit bottom.

Of course, Dershowitz with his Nazoid causitry worthy of Paul DeMan (talk about radical relativism in the service of absolute power) is doing nothing but burnishing the moral reputation of Hezbollah by comparison ...

Which would be kind of a neat parlor trick if it didn't have such devastating long-term consequences.

Bob

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
--Gandhi

hmmm, I think the Germans tried this line of reasoning in trying to explain why they killed so many Frenchmen during their occupation - they were Resistance sympathisers, not civilians.

Alan Dershowitz should know that it that argument didn't work then, and it won't work now.

UNICEF has a fund for Lebanese kids caught in this hell.

www.unicef.org

Does that mean that civilians in the US are complicit in W's nonsense, and if it's found that he violated international law at some point, it's fair for someone to bomb us all?

alQ and nearly every other terrorist orgainization in the world uses that very logic to justify killing civilians in Western democracies. as they see it, because we voted our leaders in, we are complicit in anything and everything they do. therefore, we cannot be "innocent", we are in fact "combatants".

in other words, that logic justifies 9/11.

Anyone notice that "civilianality" contains "anality" which is a good description of Dershowitz?

Oh wait, we know what he would say. Kevin thinks we should surrender.
Posted by: Norman Rogers on July 22, 2006 at 4:30 PM | PERMALINK

NORM!!

Of course the Nazis argued that all of the Jews they killed in Russia during WW2 were really partisans...

Sorta reminds you of that helicopter door gunner in Full Metal Jacket: "if it runs it's VC, if it stands still it's a well-disciplined VC."

Sieg heil.

Yee ha.

Alan Dershowitz sounds a lot like al Qaeda?

His rationale is very similar to the rationales used by al Queda to get around religious prohibitions against the killing of innocent civilians.

Al-Qaeda, however, disputes the broad prohibition against killing civilians on two grounds. First, it takes issue with the notion that those killed in the September 11 attacks were "innocents" covered by the prophet's prohibitions. Second, al-Qaeda argues that the prohibition is not an absolute one and that there are conditions under which killing civilians becomes permissible. The movement thus takes on both the theological argument proffered against the September 11 attacks and reformist framings of the victims as innocent. The result is a broad set of conditions that provide religious justification for killing civilians in almost every possible circumstance. Only one condition need be met to legitimize an attack against civilians.

Condition One: The Norm of Reciprocity
The sources of Islam provide clear prohibitions against killing civilians, but al-Qaeda argues for reciprocal attacks. This is justified with reference to Quran 2, 194: "And one who attacks you, attack him in like manner as he attacked you." Thus, if the enemy uses tactics that are prohibited in Islam, these tactics become legal for the Muslims. Since the document makes the case that America has purposely targeted Muslim civilians, it presses readers to accept the logical conclusion that civilian targeting, as in September 11, is now legal. This point is emphasized with particular reference to the Palestinian struggle:

There currently exists an extermination effort against the Islamic peoples that has America's blessing, not just by virtue of its effective cooperation, but by America's activity. The best witness to this is what is happening with the full knowledge of the world in the Palestinian cities of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and elsewhere. Every day, all can follow the atrocious slaughter going on there with American support that is aimed at children, women and the elderly. Are Muslims not permitted to respond in the same way and kill those among the Americans who are like the Muslims they are killing? Certainly! By Allah, it is truly a right for Muslims.

For al-Qaeda, the evidence points to a clear conclusion:

It is allowed for Muslims to kill protected ones among unbelievers as an act of reciprocity. If the unbelievers have targeted Muslim women, children and elderly, it is permissible for Muslims to respond in kind and kill those similar to those whom the unbelievers killed.

Condition Two: Inability to Distinguish Civilians from Combatants
When attacking an enemy "stronghold" it may be difficult to distinguish combatants from non-combatants, particularly if enemy fighters hide among the general population. The Arabic term the document uses for "stronghold" (hisn) has an interesting semantic range in light of the targets of September 11. It refers to a place that is immune to attack either because it is well fortified or because great height makes it impregnable.25 The connection with the targets is obvious -- what American sites have been more clearly associated with fortification and height than the Pentagon and the World Trade Center? Al-Qaeda argues that so long as the stronghold is a legitimate target and enemy fighters are present, Muslims can attack, even if this means civilian casualties: "It is allowed for Muslims to kill protected ones among the unbelievers in the event of an attack against them in which it is not possible to differentiate the protected ones from the combatants or from the strongholds." So even if one grants the argument that there were innocent civilians in the buildings, which al-Qaeda does not accept, the buildings can still be attacked.

The document cites as evidence a story in which Muslims asked about the offspring and women of unbelievers who stayed behind with the enemy fighters and were killed. The prophet was said to reply, "They are from among them." In this story, the women and children of the enemy preferred to remain with their men rather than flee to safety. Once they made that decision, they ceased to be innocents because they had aligned themselves with the combatants and were now legitimate targets for the Muslim forces. The al-Qaeda document suggests that those in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon should be viewed in the same way. The distinction between combatants and civilians is thereby erased since some of the latter chose to remain in "enemy territory."

Condition Three: Assistance of Civilians in "Deed, Word or Mind"
In Islamic law, the legitimacy of a target in the context of a war is typically determined by the capacity of that target or individual to fight against the Muslims. This includes enemy soldiers and leaders, as well as advisers to the military and the enemy leadership, including civilian advisers. The vast majority of civilians, however, are excluded from target lists because they are not actively engaged in battle, especially women, children and the elderly, whose capacity to fight is considered minimal in most cases.26

Al-Qaeda, however, broadens the definition of active participation to include roles that indirectly assist the enemy:

It is allowed for Muslims to kill protected ones among unbelievers on the condition that the protected ones have assisted in combat, whether in deed, word, mind or any other form of assistance, according to the prophetic command.

This is based upon a story about Duraid Ibn al-Simma, a well-known Arab poet who strongly opposed Muhammad and the message of Islam. According to tradition, he was brought to the battlefield to advise the Hawazin troops about battle procedures in a conflict against the Muslims. As a very old man, he posed no physical threat to the Muslim forces, but the intelligence he provided to the enemy made him a target and led to his death in battle.

But al-Qaeda's use of this story creates an expanded understanding of combat assistance that includes not only direct support through physical participation or advice to war planners, but less direct support as well. From this perspective, the press and journalists are legitimate targets because they are American propaganda tools in the war against al-Qaeda. Academics and intellectuals working on Islam and/or terrorism can be killed because their studies and publications help inform government officials and provide knowledge that can be used against the Muslims. Employees working in businesses that supply the government and/or military can be targeted because they provide equipment and services that support the war or the leaders waging the campaign.

Over at Crooked Timber they point out the parrelells with rationales used by the IRA.
http://crookedtimber.org/2006/07/22/legitimate-targets/

As one more Jew who is ashamed of Israel, one who has worked Bonds for Israel drives and who has donated money to plant trees in Israel in my grandfather's name, I see no reason to support Dershowitz's brand of judeofascism.

In 1941 we were attacked by a military-industrial power intent upon conquest. In 2001 we were attacked by 20 thugs who had been bankrolled by an insane billionaire. They killed 3000 people. That's less than the number of Americans that commit suicide every month. That's 1 per cent of the number of Americans who die every year of the effects of tobacco smoking. And yet people like Norman Rogers are willing to give sell out, for the illusion of safety, the one thing that actually does make us different from other countries. Our Constitution. And make no mistake about it. The president, whose brilliance he is arguing for, is trying to erase the protections the founding fathers wrote into it to protect us from our own government.

Clearly Dershowitz hasn't gotten the latest talking points memo that Rush and the rest of the wingnuts are reading from: Americans in Lebanon are just crybabies for asking to be evacuated.

and I'm a Canadian who is ashamed of Canada for towing the American line of no cease-fire now in Lebanon!

I'm pretty ignorant about Middle Eastern affairs, but I thought a huge part of the battle over the Palestinian situation involves the "right of return" - the argument that Palestinians should be able to return to where they (or their parents or grandparents) lived. Almost no one in the U.S. or Israel thinks they ever will be able to return or should be able to return - and I have no opinion as I'm highly ignorant. However, given that historical precedent, I don't think a Lebanese person in Southern Lebanon needs to be complicit with the terrorists to refuse to leave on Israel's orders.

It's fair to insist that the Lebanese and the Lebanese government develop some plan for controlling Hezbollah and keeping it from attacking Israel. It's also fair for Israel to respond to these attacks. The notion that the Lebanese should trust Israel to solve this problem strikes me as giving far too much credit to Israel. Even if they really will give it all back, I probably wouldn't trust them if I were Lebanese.

I have been feeling very bad about recent events in the ME and now I am nauseous. If any writer made the same claim Mr. Dershowitz does but reversed the antagonists, they would be condemned, correctly. I condemn Mr. Dershowitz for his inhumanity. This man is allowed to be the advocate spokesman for lawful torture and dehumanizing human beings without properly being vilified publicly. Lowering the status of human beings and implying they are due 'punishment' is a characteristic of totalitarianism. I am not surprised Mr. Dershowitz advocates it, but I am disgusted by him and his argument.

NofanofWard and Cath 22 nail it. This kind of "thinking" can be used to justify virtually any attacks on civilian populations. Indeed, to this day it is the kind of thinking used by many Americans to justify some of the more dubious tactics of WWII, such as Dresden, Nagasaki, the fireboming of Tokyo, etc. It has been used by the likes of bin Laden to justify not only the WTC attacks, but attacks on all Israelis, as they are all part of the military as he sees it.

Dershowitz has lost both his mind and his soul.

People need to look at the pictures of the victims in Lebanon before latching on to vicious abstractions like this.

Maybe Dershowitz's argument made more sense in the original German . . .

Sounds like the Osama bin Laden Doctrine to me.

This is very clever. Alan Dershowitz, after all, is nothing if not very clever.

I think that you mistyped 'evil'. As in, this is very evil. Alan Dershowitz, after all, is nothing if not very evil.

Oh, no doubt all of those children were complict with the actions of Hezbollah. Dershowitz really has the moral high ground now.

The death of every innocent child creates another ten "terrorists." Eventually Israel will reap what they have sown. And, because of our absurd support for Isreal's actions our children will someday pay the price.

I haven't read the whole thread so i don't know that it has been mentioned yet, that Dershowitz' passion for clarity in these 'security' matters has driven him to seek terms under which torture escapes opprobrium, and under which it is made available in the arsenal of 'defenders' of the (fill in the blank: faith, nation, book, church, state, people), in pursuit of the greater good/higher purpose/doomsday weapon/ultimate truth. He wants rules for mayhem, regulated slaughter, circumspect war crimes.

What these sophistries permit him to do, of course, is to escape the responsibility for any moral and ethical 'complications' (collateral damage) of his acts in the arcana of interpretation.

This is the pinnacle of intellectual dishonesty, but if Dershowitz has distinguished himself, it has been in his willingness to perform in these dangerous altitudes (and attitudes).

Hey Norman.

Bite. Comma. My. Buttocks.

Then draft yourself chickenhawk.

Israel has a conscript army, therefore all Israelis are part of the continuum of 'soldier-ity', therefore all of Israel is a military target. There, done!

Oh, I forgot the 'Israelis don't count' corollary to everything Dershowitz says.

you cannot convince people who are sure that Israel has the right to kill anyone, anywhere if they are threatened. Suggest that Israel is wrong and immediately you are anti-Semitic.

Being anti-Muslim, anti-Arab on the other hand is perfectly all right. A bigot is a bigot and considering the deaths of the innocent in Lebanon all right while mourning the deaths in Israel takes some real corkscrew thinking.

Dershowitz is perfectly consistent with the phrase:

"Excepting the lame and the sick, then, anyone who declines to leave their home despite orders to do so" got what they deserved when Katrina hit.

blaming the victims...its the cult of republicanism's way.
.

they're going to start bombing cambridge in 15 minutes.

Anyone who doesn't leave immediately is a terrorist.

Dershowitz vastly overdraws the point, but it is not without some merit.

Future news story:
"An Israeli bomb struck a home today, killing six people. The victims were a 77% terrorist father, a 72% terrorist mother, a 48% terrorist grandmother, a 64% terrorist teenager, a 37% terrorist preteen, and a 7% terrorist baby."

If this is clever, then W is a genius.

fuck Israel and their murderous violent ways.

there, I said it.
.

Maybe Dershowitz's argument made more sense in the original German . . .

That is clever.

Shorter Dershowitz: If you don't leave when Israel tells you to, you're a terrorist and you're a legitimate military target. If you leave when Israel tells you to (and after Israel destroyed all the roads you needed to follow their orders) - you're a legitimate military target anyway because terrorists use those roads, too.

Sounds like the old "throw her in the water - if she drowns, she's not a witch" standard of justice to me.

I particularly like the logic behind destroying Lebanon's entire infrastructure and its military. "Your military isn't strong enough to control the southern border, so we'll keep attacking it and weakening it further until it's strong enough to do what we want." It's sort of like breaking a piano player's fingers one at a time until your favorite song is played perfectly - it relieves your frustration temporarily but it makes your stated goal impossible to achieve. Of course, it makes much more sense if your REAL goal is to destroy the piano player so that you can take control of the piano...

didn't the US military in Iraq find out that civilians are the easiest targets?

its always the biggest and strongest that act the most full of shit.
.

you cannot convince people who are sure that Israel has the right to kill anyone, anywhere if they are threatened..

Bugs, your word "threatened" is ambiguous. Let's restate your quote that Israel has the right to kill anyone who is trying to wipe out their entire country.

Try this hypothetical question (if you dare):

Suppose a group of missiles were going to be fired from some other country that would kill everyone in the Umited States. Suppose the only way to prevent that slaughter was for you to fire a missile that would kill everyone in that country.

1. Would you fire your missile?

2. Would you feel differently if you knew that the populace of this country were in sympathy with the effort to kill every American?

Theorizing in the comfort of one's plush lawyer's office is one thing.

If I were Alan, I'd be careful with this kind of appalling rationalization of the wholesale slaughter of children.

Hizbollah surely has sleeper cells in the US.

Alan Dershowtiz, the intellectual's Dennis Miller.

"Anyone who runs is VC. Anyone who stays... is well-disciplined VC! Ha-ha! War's he'll, ain't it? Ha!"

-Full Metal Jacket

Alan,
You should really be ashamed of yourself. You just have no humanity at all.

Despite the fact that the Fundies believe this will bring on the Rapture, I think it is more logical that God will decide we are a failed experiment and bring on the asteroid.

shorter Dershowitz: all inhabitants are fair game to an invading army.

...and that's supposed to be a new view? I thought ruthless invaders have been murdering, pilaging, raping, torturing, etc. the inhabitants of their conquests since there were invading armies?

if it walks like a duck...

I do not know what became of the Dershowitz that I once knew. The defender of the oppressed criminal defendant. The one who understood that the power of the state had to be tempered through procedural rules to protect the weak and innocent even though a certain number of the guilty would go free.

I am ashamed of the country I live in. I am ashamed that the country I served in the military and as a lawyer has devolved into this state of affairs.

The very concept that people who are innocent of any crime, living in a sovereign nation become subject to the orders of an invading country and subject to death by refusing or failing to move from their homes is repugnant to the rules of war, common decency and the ways of civilized people.

Suppose a group of missiles were going to be fired from some other country that would kill everyone in the Umited States. Suppose the only way to prevent that slaughter was for you to fire a missile that would kill everyone in that country.

I have a better question: Suppose I pull a straw man out of my ass....

Dershowitz was one of O. J. Simpson's defense attorneys. Any more questions?

Dershowitz just legitimaized Usama's attack on 9/11.

I've heard this sort of "reasoning" before. Anyone else recall the excuses for the disaster that was the Gulf Coast after Katrina?

Remember all the really bright commentators telling us that those who didn't leave in advance of the storm got pretty much what they deserved?

I also heard that the problem wasn't the Feds shitty response, but "black culture." I'm sure I'll soon hear Dershowitz proclaiming the problem is not Israel's bombing the shit out of a neighboring country without even the slightest shred of international support (except from the Neo-Cons, of course). No, the problem will be Lebanon's culture of violence, or something similar.

I despise Republicans.

Oh, WTF!

If Osama told us to leave lower Manhattan, and we hadn't, would that make those victims 'complict?'

Sorry, he's overreaching here for a way to lessen the downside to Israel. And it's painfully obvious!

I have a better question: Suppose I pull a straw man out of my ass

Let's see why that's a straw man, lichen.

Is Hezbollah committed to Israel's destruction?
-- They say they are.
-- They have acquired thousands of missiles and aimed them at Israel.
-- They attacked Israel without provocation.

The evidence shows that Hezbollah is indeed working to achieve the destruction of Israel.

So, isn't Israel entitled to defend itself?

here comes ex-liberal with his head up his ass.

You might read this:

Indiscriminate attacks are those which are not directed at a specific military objective or those which use a method of attack that cannot be directed at or limited to a specific military objective. (Protocol I, Art. 51, Sec. 4)

This includes area bombardment, where a number of clearly separated military objectives are treated as a single military objective, and where there is a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects. (Protocol I, Art. 51, Sec. 5a)

This also includes attacks where the expected incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects is excessive to the military advantage anticipated. (Protocol I, Art. 51, Sec. 5b)

Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. (Protocol I, Art. 51, Sec. 4)

Combatants must distinguish between civilian and military objects and attack only military targets. (Protocol I, Art. 48)

If it becomes apparent that an objective in an attack is not a military one, or if that attack could cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects, then the attack must be called off. (Protocol I, Art. 57)

So, if by defending yourself you mean kill civilians, the answer is no.

11% of the elected Lebanese Parliament is Hezbollah. Hezbollah has more support in Lebanon than the Liberal Democrats have in the UK. Elimininating Hezbollah means eliminating 750,000 people in Lebanon. The Shia in Lebanon are 1.3 million. What does Israel mean when they say they want to eliminate Hezbollah?

Wow, it's 'I had to destroy the village to save it' all over again.

And we're not even providing safety for the Americans in the area.

Iraq acquires stealth/extremely long range missile technology so that they can bomb anywhere in the world accurately and at will. They send an e-mail to Alan Dershowitz saying that they are about to drop a 500lb warhead on his house because after all his country illegally invaded Iraq and he supported it openly. He doesn't evacuate and gets blown to pieces and it is his own fault. Sounds reasonable to me.

Mr. Dershowitz, being the kool lawyer that he is has pled everyone in south lebannon guilty to the death sentence.

People have brought up Katrina already. I can't help but see the parallel between Dershowitz and those asses on the right who called Katrina victims 'lazy' and 'stupid' for not leaving when ordered to do so. Substitute 'complicit' or 'sympathetic,' and he's no better than Glen Beck.

Mr. Dershowitz, being the kool lawyer that he is has pled everyone in south lebannon guilty to the death sentence.

ex-liberal:

What makes you think it wasn't provoked?

Bob

What no one here seems to be addressing is Mr. D's seemingly self-evident point:

"These differences and others are conflated within the increasingly meaningless word "civilian" — a word that carried great significance when uniformed armies fought other uniformed armies on battlefields far from civilian population centers. Today this same word equates the truly innocent with guilty accessories to terrorism."

The world has changed, the nature of war has changed. There are no longer civilian populations in many situations...war will now entail killing populations for their politics, pure and simple as is now happening in the Horn of Africa, (and may all us liberals wish Ethiopia well against the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia).

If ideas, (such as Hezbollah), can be seen as an infection within a population, then that population will be exterminated to contain the contagion.

This may be unhappy to say, and Dershowitz may twist and turn, but eventually this is where his thoughts end up.

So I’ll ask again, when rational politics are excluded, as I see the situation with Hezbollah and all its members, then what solution do you propose?

It is fine and fun to bitch and whine against Israel, but in a practical sense, what solutions do the writers and posters here at Political Animal have to solve the problem of Hezbollah?

War in it’s terrible pre-modern era is one solution.

I am sincerely curious if anyone here has a better one?

With what I have seen posted so far here, Liberals don't have a chance to save the world from itself...which must be our goal. Liberalism, without some positive thought behind it, will continue to relegated to the sidelines of history, instead of the forefront where it belongs.

Best Wishes,

Traveller

If Dershowitz wants to think of it in terms of complicity, then he better stop pointing fingers because everytime he does, he's got at least three fingers pointing right back at him. In a democracy, the government literally derives its authority from the people, meaning that we are directly complicit (you could even say "actively participating") in whatever our country does. When our soldiers kill civilians in Iraq, it is as if we did it ourselves. In fact, citizens of democracies are much more complicit than the typical Lebanese civilian who has no direct control over what Hezbollah does. [Of course, lately it seems we have no control over what Bush does, either. So maybe that is Dershowitz's out.]

Tim --
Your bold-faced section is a misquote of the Geneva Conventions. Section 2b of Article 57 actually says,

an attack shall be canceled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or is subject to special protection or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-proto.htm

If you go to the link and read all of Article 57, you will see that Israel is complying. E.g., Israel could fire weapons indiscriminately (which is what Hezbollsh has been doing) but instead they are making an effort to find the real terrorists and spare civilians.

By the way, today's news reports that Israeli soldiers had found a mosque in Maroun al-Ras [Lebanon] that contained stockpiles of weapons, including rockets. Two conclusions:

1. Israel is taking the trouble and additional risk to determine where the enemy weapons are.

2. It's Hezbollah who has chosen to put their weapons where they put civilians at risk.

Alan Dershowitz makes me sick to my heart. He should be a liberal. Instead he is an advocate of torture, bombing, and god knows what else.

I do not know what became of the Dershowitz that I once knew.

Like so many other people, 9/11 drove him nuts.

(I'm not including the Bush administration in that group - they were nuts well before 9/11.)

Essentially the same concept has been used by white folks for scores of years to justify - or "justify" their treatment of black folks:

"Well, even if he didn't commit this crime, he was gonna commit some other one, so it's good the imprison/kill him."

If Hezbollah has all these missiles why don't they use them? Are we being decieved again and told what a formidable military power they are?
We are told how many hundreds of missiles have been fired at Israel but only about 30 people have been killed. Does it make sense?
When soldiers and pilots kill defenseless civilians with tons of bombs and fire missiles at cars and kill women and children the soldiers are reduced to MURDERS. Children strapping bombs arounf their waists and commit suizide are only pathetic. Mr. Dershowitz can twist it any way he wants to, the soldiers are just KILLERS, they are safe in F16s or in tanks or helicopters. Hezbollah has nothing to bring them down.

One word. CHUTZPAH; as the jew snickers at his latest attack of the chutzpah. Wake Up Goyim!

Chutzpah = Clever, Cunning, Guile GONE WILD !!!!!

If Hezbollah has all these missiles why don't they use them?

Renate, Hezbollah has now fired thousands of missiles into Israel, all aimed at civilian targets. The number of Israelis killed is not huge, because the missiles aren't too accurate, and because 20% of Israelis are living in bomb shelters.

cdj, if someone says, "I'm going to kill you", and then he gets a loaded gun, and then he starts shooting at you, you have a right to shoot back at him. Hezbollah said they want to destroy Israel, they acquired thousands of armed missiles, and they began firing those missiles indiscriminatly at Israel. Israel is fighting back, but not with indiscriminant missiles or bombing of their owns. Instead, they are making an effort to attack military targets. It's a tragedy that many innocent Lebanese are caught up in a war.

Ex-liberal,

Do you really believe all the destruction has a military purpose?

Or is it just proof to tell the lebanese people how vulnerable and defenseless they are?

Are you one who calls a bunch of cells human life and does not give a damn when you see a headless baby? But by Boltons standars the baby was killed by a man in uniform and that makes it right and oh so moral.

cdj, if someone says, "I'm going to kill you", and then he gets a loaded gun, and then he starts shooting at you, you have a right to shoot back at him.

Yes, but you don't have the right to shoot back at his family and anyone else living in the same house as him.

By the way, it's not advisable to build so many strawmen when the weather is so hot. Could start a fire.

It's a tragedy that many innocent Lebanese are caught up in a war.

And hey, it's a tragedy that so many of my friends and fellow New Yorkers were caught up on 9/11 in the war between Al Qaeda and America. But since we were on the continuum of civilianality, we were all legitimate targets, right?

We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the Middle East: "the continuum of Dershowitzality."

Example: What a complete Dershowitz!

Do you really believe all the destruction has a military purpose? Or is it just proof to tell the lebanese people how vulnerable and defenseless they are?

I believe it has a military purpose. If Israel just wanted to show the Lebanese how defenseless they are, Israel could have used aerial bombing only, which would have avoided Israeli casualties.

Stefan
Yes, but you don't have the right to shoot back at his family and anyone else living in the same house as him.

So what do you do when he grabs a civilian and hides behind her while he shoots? He's picking off your family while hiding behind a civilian? Really, what are the options at that point? Is the Hezbollian now off limits? No shooting back?

Of course not everyone represented to and by the media as a "civilian" is one. That's just common sense but whether or not it justifies anything is another argument altogether.

The forgoing posting and commentary is evidence enough that one's intelligence has to be somewhat lower than average to read Drum's postings.

By now any of you whose iq's are higher than your hat size would have known to read the part Drum leaves out or elides with "[Lengthy distinction then drawn between truly innocent civilians vs. civilians who support or sympathize with terrorist groups.]" to find out that distinctions are made that most could not disagree with. But propaganda is truth, isn't it? That's what the idiocies in the comments above, as well as the usual quality of Drum's reasoning, promise and that is all.

The war is horrible but then all wars are horrible. That is the very reason one should not engage in them, either start them or provoke them.

The war did not start the day the boys were kidnapped and will not end the day the shooting stops.

The situation is very frustrating because there is no clear cut moral judgement to be made on either side (both are engaged in the killing of innocents by intent or accident which means little to the innocent involved, of course) yet no reasonable person can come up with a solution that is fair to both sides since neither will stop until they feel somewhat safe in doing so thus it will go on no matter what you people whine about.

There are situations in this world that cannot be solved by reason or its opposite, force. I know that is hard for the ignorati to grasp but there may be no right or wrong except for the many above who just "know" deep in their gutless bowels that Israel, i.e. Jewdom, is always wrong and, for no understandable reason, wants to capture their worthless souls.

For those of you with your anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic ravings, go f**k yourselves. That's what the state of Israel is saying and with that sentiment I agree heartily.

And hey, it's a tragedy that so many of my friends and fellow New Yorkers were caught up on 9/11 in the war between Al Qaeda and America. But since we were on the continuum of civilianality, we were all legitimate targets, right?

Right, stefan, from their point of view w're all legitimate targets. And, from our POV, we will try to kill them before they kill us. War really is Hell.

Hey, just wait till we start applying that Dershowitz logic to the War On Drugs!

Excepting the lame and the sick, then, anyone who declines to leave their home despite Israeli orders to do so is, ipso facto, complicit with terrorism and presumably fair game once the Israeli invasion gets under way. How they get totted up after the killing is over depends on where they fall on Dershowitz's nebulous "continuum."
...
This is very clever. Alan Dershowitz, after all, is nothing if not very clever. But I wonder how he'd respond to a similarly clever and nuanced definition of the word "terrorist"?

This is more than just clever, it is necessary. There are nuanced definitions of the word "terrorist" -- is the mother of a terrorist a terrorist if she enthusiastically trains her daughter to blow up civilians? A related set of questions comes from WWII: e.g., How culpable were the engineers who drove the trains to Auschwitz? The workers who built the furnaces?

I have to admit, it's usually easy for me to spot the plants but I have a hard time deciding whether ex-liberal is a paid troll who purposely pretends to be dense so he can continue to spout manufactured talking points, or whether he really is that fucking stupid.

If the former, then bravo sir, well done. A job worth every penny they're paying you. If the latter...well, I'm sorry. Life can't have been easy for you with such limited intelligence.

Is the Hezbollian now off limits?

"Hezbollian"? Got tired of calling them "ragheads," did you?

I think I've heard enough about Israel from Jews, evangelical Christians and assorted other Zionists. I just don't respect their opinions.

This is more than just clever, it is necessary. There are nuanced definitions of the word "terrorist" -- is the mother of a terrorist a terrorist if she enthusiastically trains her daughter to blow up civilians?

As long as we're dealing in morally obscene hypotheticals, what about the mother of an American soldier who murders an innocent Iraqi family and rapes and murders their daughter? Is that soldier's mother a rapist and murderer too because of how she raised her son?

Or what about the Israeli mother of an Israeli fighter pilot whose missiles hit a Lebanese apartment building, killing the innocent family living there? Is she a murderer too because she gave birth to a male child who would join the IDF, and therefore a legitimate target for retaliation?

By the way, just so you know "nuanced" is not a synonym for "tortured and twisted."

A related set of questions comes from WWII: e.g., How culpable were the engineers who drove the trains to Auschwitz? The workers who built the furnaces?

How culpable are the American factory workers who built the missile that blows up the truckload of refugees?

Israel's version of Land for Peace:
Kill them all, Occupy their land, and Celebrate the peace.

Sounds more like the Israeli version of "The Final Solution."

Dershowitz gave up his citizenship in the reality-based world when he proposed torture warrants.

How culpable are the American factory workers who built the missile that blows up the truckload of refugees?

and the citizens who voted for the politicians who approved the sale ?

The ones who are left in the south are indeed the people who are too sick or too old to flee. However, before all the leaflets were dropped on the south of Lebanon, massive raids took out all of the roads and bridges.
Some villages are unreachable and thus ofcourse cannot evacuate.
I wonder if Dershowitz would feel the same way if it was his family stuck in a southern village.
By the way, i am trying to document the Israeli aggression from an insider's view here http://codedemigod.com/blog

Stefan
"Hezbollian"? Got tired of calling them "ragheads," did you?

You're avoiding the question. How do you deal with people who use innocent women and children as shields?

So what do you do when he grabs a civilian and hides behind her while he shoots? He's picking off your family while hiding behind a civilian? Really, what are the options at that point? Is the Hezbollian now off limits? No shooting back?

You have a choice to make: do you feel that your life and that of your family is worth more than the life of another innocent person? You may, in the heat of the moment, decide to shoot that innocent in order to get at the person hiding behind them, but you also have at that point committed murder. You may have felt you had to do it, but in the eyes of the law, it's a crime, and you should give yourself up to the law and accept its judgment and penalty. While the law allows you to protect yourself, it does not allow you to sacrifice others to protect yourself.

That, of course, is what a responsible and law-abiding person, a person who cared about morality and justice, would do. Someone who didn't care about any of those things would just shoot the innocent person, rationalize it, and accept no responsibility. You have to decide for yourself which of the two you are.

Same as Dershwhoreitz, Noah Feldman in the NYT.

It is a kill all the vermin movement. Part of the democracy we are bringing to the middle east, it turns out.

The "point" that people like Al don't get is that there are people who can't leave - the elderly, children, the sick, crippled, those who have no car or radio and can't hear or heed the warnings. Those will be the people who suffer in Lebanon, just as they did in New Orleans. Of course, he probably doesn't care about them anyway.

Everything is very simple and clear-cut when you are healthy, wealthy and white, isn't it???

Dershowitz isn't the only example I've noticed where people who typically would be revolted by such one-sided carnage by one nation against another nation have fashioned all sorts of rationalizations to make themselves accept something like the IDF's assault on Lebanon. We're probably all subject to ethical blind spots when the basic principles we think we adhere to prove to be inconvenient in specific situations. If all else fails, we can cast our dilemma in terms of an "accept it or perish" choice, which then makes the choice clear, no? I'm always impressed at how fiercely we'll fight to defend our shaping of the dilemma, even the choice is much less clear than we imagine.

How do you deal with people who use innocent women and children as shields?

Dershowitz makes it clear that they can't be innocent if they allow themselves to be used as sheilds.

Hell is not big enough for all the Rethuglicans and NeoCons. Maybe they can be held in Gitmo until the expansion project is finished.

Yes, Dershowitz is very clever, and we all know he's also very... Irish! Isn't he.

Ex-liberal, eh? Why don't I believe that?

"Suppose a group of missiles were going to be fired from some other country that would kill everyone in the Umited States. Suppose the only way to prevent that slaughter was for you to fire a missile that would kill everyone in that country.

1. Would you fire your missile?

2. Would you feel differently if you knew that the populace of this country were in sympathy with the effort to kill every American?"

Posted by: ex-liberal

What utter bullshit. We faced that very threat for over 40 years and never fired the missiles. Israel has over 200 nuclear weapons and it has the ability to deliver them accurately. Iran has neither. And if they did, they wouldn't use them for the same reason that the Soviets didn't. Israel and the United States would carpet bomb them with nukes, and are in fact just spoiling for the chance to do it.

Ex-liberal...I can't believe I'm wasting my time even commenting on this, but Hezbollah does not have the ability to kill every single person in Israel and not everyone in Lebanon wants all Israeli's dead. THAT is why it was a strawman argument.

Red State Mike. The situation you described is known as a hostage situation. Bank robbers do this all the time. Do you think we should just blow up the whole bank, hostages be damned?

Last I heard, no police force in the country thought it was justified to kill a citizen being used as a human shield by a mad shooter, and if that ever did become the norm in this country, I'd leave for a place that still had its head on straight.

How long would Mr. Dershowitz last on the waterboard before he agrees that he has been complicit in terrorism?

It's cool, nylund. I know I'm not going to change the fool's mind, but I enjoy recreational typing.

Nylund
Red State Mike. The situation you described is known as a hostage situation. Bank robbers do this all the time. Do you think we should just blow up the whole bank, hostages be damned?

Last I heard, no police force in the country thought it was justified to kill a citizen being used as a human shield by a mad shooter, and if that ever did become the norm in this country, I'd leave for a place that still had its head on straight.

OK, so what should Israel do about Hezbollah, who purposely place their weapons and positions in and around civilians? Does Israel therefore not respond?

anonovich, that was complete claptrap (moaning about poor innocents, simultaneously justifying their slaughter) and since you're just one measly, lying fool it should just be dismissed without comment. Unfortunately, the bloodthirsty "deciders" of the world agree with you.