Israel should destroy the mosques

Randall Parker has an interesting thought in his blog:

While many Jewish neoconservatives dream of overthrowing Arab governments that have firm grips on their people and borders Israel hasn't been attacked by such goverments in decades and the attackers who are Israel's biggest headaches operate in territories over which no government exercises firm sovereign control. Israel's strategic problem is how to cause fragmented territories to come under firm control of elites which can exercise sovereign power over their territories. It is not clear that most Israelis understand this.

It’s actually wrong to say that Hezbollah isn’t being controlled by elites. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah is running the organization, and he is assisted by other elite members of the Shia clergy. Nasrallah especially seems like a pretty bright guy. Maybe it’s the glasses?

Neither the government of Israel nor the left wing media gets the fact that Shiite Islam is the enemy. When the U.S. attacked Iraq, we targeted government buildings for destruction in order to destroy the Iraqi leadership. Without leadership, the army has no orders and is easily conquered. Similarly, Israel needs to target and destroy all the Shiite mosques. The mosques are Hezbollah’s equivalent of government buildings.

Comments

[nobody]

Unless Isreal is willing to fight a total war, HS suggestion is probably not a good idea. Why be at war with the entire religion of Islam instead of a targeted group like Hezbollah? The destruction of these buildings by themselves are symbolic, and serves no military purposes. Hezbollah would simply move to another building.

Two weeks into the military action, and it looks the the Isrealis have lost their edge, this is causing large number of civilian casualties without archiving any serious military objective. If they were serious about attacking, they should gone in and occupied southern Lebanon. This would force Hezbollah to fleet north and the fighting would have be concluded by now.

[Russ]

There are really only two options for Israel.

1) Total war that includes bombing mosques, shifting borders, creating vast demiliterized zones, and forcing ethnic groups to move. Just like they did in 1967 which was a huge success.

2) Taking the moral high ground and declaring a cease fire, build a wall on the Lebanese border, and start developing something to shoot down these rockets in the air. This is basically what every colonial power has done with its colonies only to have the colonies forget their anger within a few years and come hat in hand looking for aid.

Instead, the Israelis constantly play the seemingly very rational game of "We're justified to do X because they do Y, but we won't do Z because that isn't called for, yet" Who can keep track of all these justifications? Certainly not 1 Billion illiterate Muslims. Grow some balls Israel!

[Half Sigma]

"Unless Isreal is willing to fight a total war ..."

Indeed, Israel seems unwilling to fight a total war against Hezbollah, so an eventual ceasefire with a still-armed Hezbollah is the inevitable outcome. Hezbollah will quickly recover because Iran will send them more military equipment, and the Muslims don't fear death so they aren't bothered at all that a few of their fellows died in the combat.

"start developing something to shoot down these rockets in the air"

There isn't any good way to shoot down rockets in the air, they are asymmetric weapons, the best defense against them is a good offense.

[Randall Parker]

Half Sigma,

Nasrallah isn't part of the Lebanese government. If South Lebanon was a separate country then Nasrallah would be its ruler and his actions would become the actions of a sovereign state. That'd make Israel's choices in dealing with him a lot simpler and more effective.

The ability of a non-sovereign entity to wage war means that a state getting attacked does not have a clear state enemy to retaliate against. Therefore deterrence is hard to achieve.

The mosques are not as important as the message that gets delivered in those mosques and in the Muslim schools. Do you think the schools should all be destroyed as well?

The root problem here is not Shiism. It is Islam.

[Russ]

What would it take for the west to have the political willpower to bomb mosques?

Another 9/11? Only with chemical weapons? Nuclear weapons?

What's the tipping point where we really do become the Roman Empire and make practical cruelty our policy.