Shouldn't be a Dilemma

Via Michael Totten, a speech by Haim Harari on the War on Terror.

"Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always surrounded by children?"

Yes, to all. If we hesitate, then more blood will be spilled. Our restraint will only, embolden the Islamists and, invite more deadly attacks. We must say yes to these questions to save more lives in the end. That is the cruel arithematic of war.

"All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided."

No, it cannot. All that Harari says is correct. I want to diverge here slightly to talk about Israel. When the Intifada started, or the normal relations continued, Israel said that it would not target political leaders. This meant that Hamas, which is committed to the complete and utter annihilation of Israel, was free to plan murders of Israelis and it's leadership was immune from attack. I, for the life of me, never understood this stupidity. We're not even talking about any of the mentioned dilemmas but targeting gloating genocidal Hamas leaders. Finally in 2003, Israel changed it's policy and started killing Hamas leaders. Of course, the media went nuts but that was expected. I thought it was particularly rich when they cried about the wheelchair bound psycho. Since when does a disability confer some kind of innocence or pity upon a mass murderer? I still think that Israel is too soft. The United States, for example, would never take the kind of assaults that Israel endures every day. We would read about Hamas in history books if it had tried to attack the U.S. the way it constantly attacks Israel. My point is that the dilemmas do exist but that the West is much softer than that. Leaders of western countries worry about killing leaders of neo-Nazi groups. We have to be a lot tougher now to avoid passing on these dilemmas to future generations. I also think that we'll save more lives by being harsh today. We really need someone in the mold of Sherman or Patton to get the job done.