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Tuesday, March 23, 2004Non-baseball: The policy of karmic retribution?Note: This post originally appeared on my political blog. I have archived it here for posterity's sake.
Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin on Sunday. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy: Yassin founded the terrorist organization Hamas and was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis through suicide bombings. Did Yassin deserve to be offed? Of course- the man was a brutal murderer. (Although he fashion with witch he meet his end was the definition of the word "overkill." Seriously, I think a chopper firing three hellfire missiles to take a dude who is confined to a wheelchair is a bit much.) I would have done the deed myself if I had the chance. But does his demise help the Israelis in anyway? I can't see how. The death of one man is not going stop anybody from strapping a bomb to his or her chest. It won't cause an escalation in conflict either (how could it escalate any further?), despite the threats from Palestinians. (This reminds me of a documentary I saw about Islamic extremists awhile back. In it they were interviewing a group of ex-Taliban fighters who were still putting up resistance in Afghanistan (when they weren't sitting on their porch giving interviews), and the question was asked "if being a martyr is your ultimate goal, why aren't you all dead?" The men responded with elaborate stories about how close they had come to killing themselves, but it never seemed to work- Allah had obviously chosen not to let them die at that point in time. Yeah... right. Very few of these people have the balls to put their money where their mouth is.) As far as security is concerned it seems to be a wash. The damage done to Hamas may be substantial, but it is only temporary. Militarily there are no advantages. So if Israel gains nothing militarily with this strike, why do it? I would like to think it was purely karmic retribution, but I doubt it. It's likely that Sharon has some sort of nefarious plot in mind when he does these things. What his ultimate goal is I could not say. Maybe he wants to raise tensions with Hamas and Hezbollah to the point where the US would have no choice but to intervene. Maybe he sees some sort of bargaining chip in all this. Whatever the Israeli's goal is, I'm not sure this is the right way to go about it. These days the media makes the world go round. The media are 100% responsible for the way the (civilized) world perceives you. This is not helping the perception that Israel needs to win support from fair-weather European allies. The karmic retribution thing doesn't go over well in Europe. It ties in with their overwhelming opposition to the death penalty- they don't get that some people just deserve to die. Israel needs to be seen as the good guy- a peaceful, progressive democracy surrounded by a sea of evil. I'm not saying Israel can't defend itself, but these "out of nowhere" attacks are bad for business. How hard would it have been to wait for the next suicide bomber to strike, then take out Yassin? Even if he wasn't directly involved it would be seen as provoked. They just need to be smarter in these things. All this gets me thinking; are we following a doctrine of preemption in this country, or a doctrine of karmic retribution? Either way you slice it we're on the right path. |
