Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, the great Southern general of the American Civil War (1861-1865) had a simple philosophy of war.
To end Union efforts to crush the newly-minted Confederate States of America, he urged, Southerners should quickly make its cost as high as possible.
Confederates, he believed, should take no prisoners. Instead, they should kill every Union soldier they could lay hands on.
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
Jackson’s views on war were shared by not only his fellow Southerners but, ironically, by one of the fiercest enemies of the Confederacy: William Tecumseh Sherman.
Sherman was the Union general who cut a swath of destruction through the South while “marching through Georgia.”
He is credited–or reviled–as the father of “total war,” thus making the suffering of civilians an integral part of any conflict.
In March, 1985, a staff officer told Sherman about Jackson’s opinion on not taking prisoners. Asked for his reaction, Sherman said: “Perhaps he was right.
“It seems cruel, but if there were no quarter given, most men would keep out of war. Rebellions would be few and short.”
William Tecumseh Sherman
Contrast that with the way Israel is now responding to hundreds of unprovoked rocket attacks by the Hamas terrorist group.
Since July 8, the Israeli Air Force has bombarded more than 900 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strp.
Israel claims it’s trying to avoid civilian casualties in the crowded urban landscape. Members of the Israeli military have been telephoning Palestinian residents whose homes have been targeted, warning them to leave.
One resident, Sawsan Kawarea, claimed she received a call from “David,” who said he was with the Israeli military.
“He asked for me by name. He said: ‘You have women and children in the house. Get out. You have five minutes before the rockets come,’” Kawarea said in an interview.
She ran outside with her children. A small rocket hit the house soon afterward. Five minutes later, a larger missile hit, destroying the house.
For years, the Israeli military has delivered such warnings via cellphone calls and small “warning rockets”–usually sent from drones.
The strategy has a nickname: “Roof knocking.”
It’s Israel’s response to longtime criticism for “collateral damage.” That is: Civilians killed while its military takes action in the crowded Palestinian territories.
The policy allows Israel to say: We did our bes to avoid killing civilians.
But in waging Politically Correct warfare to head off criticism, Israel has made a dangerous mistake.
Niccolo Machiavelli, the 15th century Florentine statesmen, carefully studied both war and politics. In his major work, The Discourses, he advises:
…Often individual men, and sometimes a whole city, will act so culpably against the state that as an example to others and for his own security the prince has no other remedy but to destroy it entirely.
Honor consists in being able, and knowing when and how, to chastise evil-doers. And a prince who fails to punish them, so that they shall not be able to do any more harm, will be regarded as either ignorant or cowardly….
Meanwhile, on the Gaza Strip: After a week of Israeli bombing more than 900 Hamas targets, Palestinian medical officials claimed that 186 people had been killed and at least 1,390 wounded.
That works out to about 26 people killed every day.
Contrast those figures with the casualties suffered by a single German city during World War 11 air raids during eight days and seven nights.
Beginning on July 24, 1943, the U.S. Air Force and the British Royal Air Force over several days killed 42,600 civilians and wounded 37,000 in Hamburg and practically destroyed the entire city.
The bombing ignited a firestorm that incinerated more than eight square miles, baking alive many of those who sought safety in cellars and bomb shelters.
Hamburg, Germany, after Allied bombing raids
For the vaunted Israeli Air Force to have killed so few of its enemies after dropping so many bombs testifies to a massive waste of ordinance.
Clearly, the only people making good on these raids are the arms makers supplying the bombs.
If the United States had managed to kill only 26 Germans a day in World War II, America and Nazi Germany would still be at war today.
No wonder Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel.
Machiavelli knew–and often warned–that while it was useful to avoid hatred, it was fatal to be despised. And he also warned that humility toward insolent enemies will only encourage their hatred for you.
An Aesop’s fable well sums up the lesson Israel should have learned long ago:
A snake was stepped on by so many people he prayed to Zeus for help. And Zeus said: “If you’d bitten the first person who stepped on you, the second would have thought twice about it.”
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AGGRESSORS AS VICTIMS: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In History, Military, Social commentary on July 21, 2014 at 11:43 amOn June 22, 1941, three million soldiers of Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht charged into the Soviet Union, destroying or capturing one Red Army after another.
The Fuehrer, ecstatic, had waited decades to launch this invasion: “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
That expectation proved to be false.
But then Hitler made a comment whose truth should still be noted: “At the beginning of each campaign, one pushes a door into a dark, unseen room. One can never know what is hiding inside.”
Adolf Hitler
Such proved to be the case in his campaign to destroy the Soviet Union.
By December 1941, the Wehrmacht had killed 360,000 Soviet soldiers, wounded one million, and captured two million more. Red Army losses totaled around 3.4 million.
In six months, German troops and their allies had advanced 600 miles and occupied more than 500,000 square miles of Soviet territory.
And yet, in the end, Operation Barbarossa—the code name for the invasion—proved Hitler’s fatal mistake.
By the time Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, Germany lay in ruins and the Wehrmacht had suffered 85% of its losses on the dreaded “Eastern front.”
Similarly, the militant group Hamas opened hostilities with Israel on July 7, apparently confident that it could defeat the awesome power of an unleashed Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
In June, 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered. Israeli authorities suspected the culprits were members of Hamas, the terrorist organization that’s long called for Israel’s destruction.
In a desperate search for the missing teens, Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and arrested 500 to 600 others.
Hamas, in turn, began launching rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, which it has controlled since June, 2007. By July 7, 100 rockets had been fired at Israel.
Israeli planes retaliated by attacking 50 targets in Gaza.
On July 8, during a 24-hour period, Hamas fired more than 140 rockets into Israel from Gaza. Saboteurs also tried to infiltrate Israel from the sea, but were intercepted.
A Hamas rocket streaks toward Israel
That same day–July 8, 2014–Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, a full-scale military attack on Gaza.
Hamas then announced that it considered “all Israelis”—including women, children, the elderly and disabled—to be legitimate targets.
On July 8, Hamas—acting as though it were laying down peace terms to an already defeated Israel—issued the following demands:
Only then would Hamas be open to a ceasefire agreement.
Egypt offered a cease-fire proposal. Israel quickly accepted it, temporarily stopping hostilities on July 15. But Hamas claimed that it had not been consulted and rejected the agreement.
Palestinians continued to blithely launch hundreds of rockets at Israel—but went into ecstasies of grief before television cameras when one of their own was killed by Israeli return fire.
The mindset displayed by Hamas reflects that of the Wehrmacht during the titanic battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from August, 1942, to February, 1943.
German soldiers at Stalingrad
This mindset was vividly captured in the diary of Wilhelm Hoffman, one of the 150,000 Germans who died in the battle.
The document reveals how a would-be conqueror can quickly turn from arrogant euphoria in triumph to self-righteous anger and self-pity when faced by unyielding opposition.
July 29, 1942: The company commander says the Russian troops are completely broken, and cannot hold out any longer. To reach the Volga and take Stalingrad is not so difficult for us. The Fuehrer knows where the Russian weak point is. Victory is not far away.
August 10: The Fuehrer’s orders were read out to us. He expects victory of us. We are all convinced that they can’t stop us.
August 12: We are advancing toward Stalingrad along the railway line. Yesterday Russian “katush” [small rocket launchers] and then tanks halted our regiment.
“The Russians are throwing in their last forces,” Captain Werner explained to me. Large-scale help is coming up to us, and the Russians will be beaten.
This morning outstanding soldiers were presented with decorations. Will I really go back to Elsa without a decoration? I believe that for Stalingrad the Fuehrer will decorate even me.
August 27: A continuous cannonade on all sides. We are slowly advancing. Less than 20 miles to go to Stalingrad. In the daytime we can see the smoke of fires, at nighttime the bright glow.
They say that the city is on fire. On the Fuehrer’s orders our Luftwaffe [air force] has sent it up in flames. That’s what the Russians need, to stop them from resisting.
September 5: Our regiment has been ordered to attack Sadovaya station–that’s nearly in Stalingrad. Are the Russians really thinking of holding out in the city itself?
We had no peace all night from the Russian artilery and aeroplanes. Lots of wounded are being brought by. God protect me.
September 8: Two days of non-stop fighting. The Russians are defending themselves with insane stubbornness. Our regiment has lost many men from the “katyushi” [Soviet multiple rocket launchers] which belch out terrible fire.
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