Liberal Punditry I: George Packer and the Search for a ‘Clean’ War

Writing in The Atlantic, George Packer lectures Israelis to avoid reacting “stupidly” to the war that Hamas (backed by Iran) is waging against them. More than a thousand Israelis (including women, children, and babies) have been killed, and an unknown number of Israelis have been taken hostage. Hamas is unquestionably the aggressor here. Israel is striking back with devastating air strikes and now a ground incursion that will inevitably lead to deadly and dangerous urban warfare. Acknowledging Israel’s justifiable outrage, shock, grief, and rage, Packer cautions Israeli leaders that “Democratic countries like ours don’t kill civilians — so don’t.” Israel, apparently, must fight a “clean” war so as not to “squander” its “moment of global legitimacy.”

Packer is critical of Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant who told Israeli troops, “I have released all the restraints” and ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, including cutting-off power, food, water, and fuel. Packer laments that Israeli air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians, which, he writes, will only “inflame Palestinian grievances in the West Bank.” “[O]verwhelming military force,” Packer explains, cannot “solve an immensely complex historical and political problem.” (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: Israel Reaps What Jimmy Carter Sowed)

Packer also slips into moral equivalence when he writes: “America should have its friend Israel’s back while conveying unpleasant truths to its face. After Saturday it’s clear that two things, apparent contradictions, have to be accepted at the same time: A group that seeks Israel’s destruction must be destroyed, and Israel’s cruel treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories only helps that group’s cause.” What is needed, Packer writes, is a “profound change from both sides.” In other words, both Israelis and Palestinians are at fault. What is needed, Packer concludes, is the emergence of an Israeli government (not the current one) that will have the ability and will to end Israel’s control of the “occupied territories,” and a less corrupt, less sclerotic Palestinian government that will finally accept the existence of the Jewish state.

The dream — for that is what it is — of a two-state solution in what was formerly known as Palestine, it seems, will never die. And the dream — for that is what it is — of democratic powers fighting successful “clean” wars — will also never die. Israel’s use of overwhelming military force to defeat the aggressors in this war, according to Packer, is “stupid” because there will be significant civilian casualties. Democracies, he says, don’t deliberately inflict civilian casualties. That statement by Packer is not “stupid” but it is ahistorical. (READ MORE: Israel at War)

Packer’s lecture reminded me of Malcom Gladwell’s recent book, The Bomber Mafia, which assessed America’s approach to the bombing of Japan near the end of the Second World War. Gladwell distinguishes the approach to war of U.S. Gen. Haywood Hansell, who believed that daylight precision bombing of Japan could limit civilian casualties, “narrow the scope of war,” and make war “cleaner,” with that of his successor Gen. Curtis LeMay who understood that Gen. William T. Sherman was right when he said, “War is cruelty; you cannot refine it.” Gladwell acknowledges that LeMay “won the war,” but he writes that it is “Hansell’s memory … that moves us.” Because Hansell wanted to wage war “morally.”

LeMay understood, as James Scott points out in his book Black Snow, that war has to be waged with unsentimental realism — and that realism accepts the inevitability of civilian casualties in war. LeMay and his civilian superiors combined that realism with an approach that placed greater value on the lives of our soldiers than the lives of the enemy’s soldiers and civilians in enemy territories. That is precisely what Israel’s government is doing in launching massive air strikes in Gaza. Such strikes will kill Hamas terrorists and civilians in Gaza. And such strikes will save the lives of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

War is a dirty business. Hamas started this war, and is now reaping the whirlwind, just as Japan did in World War II. George Packer doesn’t want that to happen. He wants Israel to defeat and destroy Hamas terrorists without harming civilians in Gaza. Lecturing Israelis on their “immorality” and “stupidity” makes him feel better about himself. He doesn’t want to acknowledge that Curtis LeMay was right when he said: “War is very simple. You’ve got to kill people, and when you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.”

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