By Stephen Smoot
In one of the most examined and reported on conflicts between neighboring states, an interested person can find examples of military cruelty meted out. In one instance, soldiers killed a clergyman for not providing intelligence on sabotage. Another instance finds a field commander executing every prisoner who surrenders to his unit.
In a more macro example, other field commanders undertook a strategy of destroying all food production capability, all infrastructure, and systematically demolishing all cities within reach.
The response from one of the top commanders to one of the devastated cities? He said “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.”
These did not come from the area of Russian advance into Ukrainian territory, but from the United States Army fighting against the Confederate States.
Major General William Tecumseh Sherman of the United States Army offered the quote to Atlanta civic leaders after wiping their city from the earth during the Civil War. He later oversaw the total destruction of Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina among countless other cities and towns, as well as all the farmland his soldiers could reach.
American and worldwide Leftists predictably rose in anger at the master stroke executed by Israel against the terrorists of Hezbollah. Like Hamas and too many other groups, their reason to exist lies in the sole mission of erasing the Jewish state and murdering or scattering its inhabitants as the Roman Empire did 2,000 years ago when it renamed Judea “Palestine” as a final insult to the Jewish people it just defeated.
Last week, thousands of pagers exploded in the hands of Hezbollah terrorists and their supporting fellow travelers. This included Iran’s ambassador to Hezbollah host county Lebanon, to the surprise of no one outside the Left.
Hezbollah reverted to past generation technologies to evade the listening capabilities of agencies such as Mossad, MI-6, or the National Security Agency (done from the Mountain State no less!) Israel managed to somehow intercept a shipment of pagers from Taiwan to Iran and introduce surveillance and explosive capabilities.
Some compared the move to James Bond, although it better resembled the capabilities of Raymond Reddington.
Mossad didn’t just kill a handful of terrorists while maiming thousands more. The surveillance capabilities gave Israel an entire new database on Hezbollah, while (if they did this) monitoring regional hospitals, social media posts, and other related sources of information can provide even more vital intelligence.
As they did against the villains of the National Socialist regime who temporarily escaped justice after World War II, Mossad can track down who it wants, when it wants, and arrest the evildoers or simply eliminate them in place.
Israel lives under a constant existential threat. Their strategic situation would resemble that of the state of Maryland if two thirds of the North American continent wished to destroy that slender shaped state and all of its Old Bay loving inhabitants. US and European leaders in comfortable and secure settings need to back off of criticizing Israeli moves such as this because none of them have lived under such a Sword of Damocles.
After all, Israel understands what Sherman said when he explained “we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war,” whether that enemy be a quasi state actor like Hamas or a terrorist group like Hezbollah.
Leftists only see two irredeemable and evil nation-states in the modern history of mankind – National Socialist Germany and the Confederate States of America. The former categorization is fair while the latter certainly is not. In both instances, however, the winning side utilized the strategic and tactical philosophy of Genghis Khan. Destroy the enemy forces. Destroy the enemy’s capability to field its forces. No home front should be recognized, so annihilate everything both civilian and military in your path. Use unconditional surrender as a policy.
Shorten the war.
Therein lay Sherman’s real philosophy of war. He did not love cruelty, but used it as a tool. Sherman believed that the only way to curtail the evils of war lay in making war so terrible that no one would wish to continue, nor would they choose to fight again in the future.
If they had met, Sherman would have found a kindred spirit in the Union’s most worthy and honorable opponent. Confederate General in Chief Robert E. Lee who, after watching his forces move into battle at Chancellorsville, said “it is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
Human nature strives to introduce order into chaos, to try to regulate entropy, even in warfare. War, however, is chaos. It is entropy. When launched, it defies all efforts to restrain or organize it. Sometimes war is necessary. There are even times when the aggressor is the party in the right.
The United States, unfortunately, has a nasty habit of lecturing others on their conduct of war when Americans have won such conflicts – and established good in the world – by using any means necessary to win. That should especially be true for Israel. The state of insecurity in which Israelis permanently reside, Americans have not known since the 18th century.
Hamas and Hezbollah chose this conflict, not Israel. They and their fellow travelers on the Left should not get to dictate through the US or European governments how Israel chooses to defend itself against their efforts to end her.
Another Sherman quote should be the guidestar of the Israeli Defense Force until it grinds Hezbollah and Hamas into dust. He said “War is the remedy our enemies have chosen and I say let us give them all they want.”