Lebanon: Rules of Engagement

[Don Corleone]

There is the principle of proportionate violence. In Palestine, Israel was firing more than 10x the number of shells as they had been receiving. We all know what's been happening with Lebanon.

If Hezbollah had fired 20 rockets into civilian areas (military targets don't count), Israel would be justified in sending back a similar number, perhaps even up to 2x or 3x. The Lebanese themselves were expecting that kind of response, so even they would not have complained had the Israelis retaliated thus and inflicted civilian casualties. But Israel, as is their wont, overdid it exponentially. If they wanted to take their gloves off, they should have declared war on Lebanon before going in.

Now this I understand. Too many barrages, too many places hit that weren't confirmed to be Hezbollah occupied at the time of the launch, yes, I agree. I got the impression from Duke John's post that his position is "Well, since Israeal seems to miss and hit the wrong targets, no more firing artillery into Lebanon". That I don't understand. Proportionality of response is an important consideration.

I'd be really interested in Redleg's opinion, as an artilleryman, why he thinks there's such an excessively high amount of collateral damage in Israel's actions over the past few weeks (and yes, I know a lot of what they're doing is air strikes as well). But honestly, do you think it's that the Israelis are being sloppy/lazy... i.e. "Well, we have an intelligence report from a week ago that Hezbollah might be in that building, go ahead and fire a few rounds at it". Do you think it's intentional? Or is it the nature of what they're doing just leads to a lot of collateral damage?