Friday, July 21, 2006

Proportionate response and ants in your pants

If your house is invaded by killer ants, proportionate response would say you are entitled to kill the ants in your house. And, perhaps, one additional outside ant for every person killed (to "teach the ants a lesson"). However, this leaves the ants strong and ready to fight and kill another day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

So, over time, the number of deaths by ants in your household is going to continue climbing.

At some point, you might decide that a more sensible approach would be to go after the ant hill.

And that is what Israel is doing in Lebanon.

2 comments:

Paul MacPhail said...

Set the Aardvarks loose. Gotta go and disproportionately respond to some fruitflies.

frappeur said...

I wonder if having Hezbollah use rocket nosecones made of spent nuclear fuel to bombard Israel would be perceived by our media as a proportionate response.

Dirty bombs

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"