RAGGED THOTS: When The Cure Is As Deadly As The Disease

Sunday, July 30, 2006

When The Cure Is As Deadly As The Disease

Interesting thing about being in China (Shanghai, for a couple of days -- heading to Beijing this evening): one can access big sites like The New York Times (following a face-to-face meeting a couple of years ago between Times editors and the Chinese ago, as I understand) and the Drudge Report -- but not anything with a "blogspot.com" address, including your friendly neighborhood "Thots."

This means that I can see my blog template at blogger.com; I can write, edit and post -- I just can't see the final product.

So it goes.

Anyway, I do need to register a mild disagreement with my co-blogger Mark English's post downblow (which, I can't link to (since his article is right here on Ragged Thots) - -which, as we said has issues of it own.

Mark writes:

Every member of Hezbollah must be killed. Hezbollah must be held responsible for the death of every civilian.
Members of terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, and those who harbor them are scum of the earth. They are a disease; a cancer. They do not deserve to live. They do not deserve our sympathy. They must be eliminated. This is how we must fight this war.

Well, first, "we," i.e., the United States of America isn't at war with the Hezbollah -- Israel is. Killing "every member of Hezbollah" may be desirable. Unfortunately, it's not practical. If it were, the Israelis -- who know something about fighting terrorism -- would have done so by now.

More importantly, Sunday's Qana tragedy shows the downside of the "terrorism is cancer" metaphor.

As Josh Marshall notes:

I don't see how we can argue, at this point at least, that Hizbullah as a movement doesn't seem strengthened by all this. Hopefully there's some way out of this in which the underlying problem here can be solved -- Lebanon's lack of control over the belligerent militia controlling its southern border. But it's hard to find the signs promising at this moment. And for Israel, one number tells the irreducible story. 140 rockets fell on northern Israel today. That's the highest count since July 12th when the whole thing started. And in terms of how Israel understands its own security, that's the most damning thing: even using main force, they can't stop the rocket attacks on their civilian areas.

Yes, we can blame Hezbollah for sparking this crisis by attacking Israel and kidnapping IDF soldiers two weeks ago. And yes, that means Hezbollah is ultimately responsible for these deaths.

However, the fact is that the world isn't going to see things that way. Right now, the blame is being placed on Israel for an attack that has killed 60 civilians, more than 35 of them children. Lebanon's leaders prime minister -- whose ascension in the "Cedar Revolution" a year ago was seen as a great example of the wave of democracy moving through the Middle East -- is now charging Israel of committing "massacres."

Terrorism may be a cancer, but it's eradication shouldn't destroy the patient's soul in the process.

Technorati Tags: Middle East, Lebanon, war on terror