The New York Times today discusses proportional use of force in the Israeli-Islamist conflict. I'm not going to comment on the Times' take on the debate. Instead, I'd like to look at idea of proportional response as a whole.
War is a brutal endeavor. There is no debate that is should be avoided in so much as it is possible. When war comes, though, proportionality is folly. War is not about only hurting the other guy as bad as they hurt you. It is about winning so they cannot hurt you again. In most cases, that means you have to put a bigger hurt on the other guy than they put on you, especially if your enemy is particularly fanatical about their cause. If you are going to worry about proportional force during war, you may as well lay down your guns and let your enemy shed your nation's blood and get it out of the way.
Another aspect that supporters of proportional force like to advocate is avoiding civilians. Again, avoiding hitting civilians is a good Western moral of warfare. Just the same, if you rule out or severely limit your military's ability to hit targets in civilian areas, then you guarantee that your enemies will take refuge in civilian areas. In fact, the recent Western fear of inflicting civilian deaths during war time may actually put more civilians at risk as the unsavory enemy uses them more and more as shields from Western military strength.
Discussion of proportional force is weasel talk from defeatists. Our enemies and the enemies of Israel do not care one bit about using proportional force. If we do, then at best we will accomplish a very bloody stalemate, and at worse we will ensure our eventual defeat.
Additional
Yeah, what he said.
Further Info
What they are saying, too.
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