In praise of disproportionate response...

Proportionate response.

It's a modern buzzword.

The idea is, if you are attacked, you must respond in kind. So, if someone invades your territory, and kills or kidnaps a couple of citizens, you must limit your response to killing or kidnapping two or three of their citizens, even if you possess overwhelming military superiority . Otherwise, your response would be disproportionate. Which is evil.

More evilthan the original act of aggression; that is explainable, excusable, inevitable really, caused by legitimate grievance against the West (all grievances against the West are legitimate). So, when the "bad guys" bring down the World Trade Centre towers, our PM of the day, Jean Chretien, says, "well, what did you expect?", or words to that effect. In other words, when attacked, we are to blame. When we respond, we are to blame. In short, we are always to blame, and attacks against us are always justified.

The problem with the disproportionate response doctrine is it doesn't work. The west thinks in terms of right and wrong. The Arab/Muslim mind thinks in terms of strong and weak. By making a "proportionate" response, you maintain the illusion that it's an evenly matched contest; you give the aggressor a continued hope of winning.

A good example of this is the Gulf War, Original Edition™. The allies limited their advance to the original UN Charter: they drove Iraq out of Kuwait, but stopped short of Baghdad. Right vs. wrong at work -- right to boot them out, wrong to invade their country and depose their ruler.

Wrong.

Saddam did not conclude that the west was reasonable, or compassionate by this act of generousity on our part; he concluded that we were weak (it would not have occurred to him that we might be strong but stupid).

No wonder he played the UN for years, weaving and bobbing around UN Inspection teams.

At the start of Gulf War, Redux™ Saddam thought he could win. Emboldened by Bill Clinton's cut-and-run in Somalia, he expected the West to fold as soon as the first photos of troops with bandaids reached the hometown newspapers.

Western media outlets certainly were willing to prove Saddam right. I remember the CBC starting their "things-are-getting-bogged-down-is-it-going-to-be-a-quagmire coverage just days before Saddam's troops crumpled and the allies marched unapposed into Badhdad.

Probably the best example of the effectiveness of a "disproportionate response" (as horrendous as this is) was the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. It hurts me to say this because I feel deeply for the Japanese people and their suffering. But the dropping of the two bombs quickly and efficiently drove out from their minds thoughts that they could win, and replaced them with the deep conviction that they could not win. Peace soon followed.

That peace has been a lasting peace. And, rather than breeding resentment and further cycles of violence, the Japanese are our friends today.

If the proportionate response people had had their way back then, the Allies would have sent in wave after wave of troops; the war would have dragged on, and many more Allied lives would have been lost. Worse than this, even assuming that the Allies would have eventually won, an "honorable loss" may have left the Japanese thinking "maybe we can win the next one" (as happened with Germany in the Great War, followed by WWII.

"Maybe we can win the next one". Killer words.

What is needed in the face of aggression and evil is a disproportionate response. One that allows two thoughts to take hold of the aggressor's mind: a) our aggression triggers a costly response, and b) we cannot possibly win this.

In the present conflict in the Middle East, Israel should not give undue heed to the "appropriate response" crowd. Not to say that they should just carpet bomb the Islamic agressors, but they should feel to take a military response that they believe will achieve their objectives as soon as possible, with the fewest possible casualties. They need to drive home the following thought into the minds of the Islamic atackers "we cannot win this."

"We cannot win this".

The thought that brings peace to a generation.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.