DISPROPORTIONATE? IN WHAT MORAL UNIVERSE?

‘Disproportionate’ in What Moral Universe? by Charles Krauthammer (Wash. Post)
What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?

What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities — every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians — and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?

To hear the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world — governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats — has completely lost its moral bearings.

Who Says War Has to Be Proportional? - Jonathan Chait
The criticism that Israel is using "disproportionate force" is just silly. No country operates on the principle of responding to aggression with no more force than was originally used against it. During World War II, Germany sunk a lot of American ships and declared war on us, and in return we flattened its cities, killed, or captured hundreds of thousands of its solders, and occupied its land. That was hardly a proportionate response. Hizballah places its rockets in homes, knowing that Israel cannot hit back without creating collateral damage. If Israel has to operate under a code of ethics that renders civilian deaths unacceptable, then it automatically loses.

Israel says attacks on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure are an attempt to prevent Hizballah from transporting the captured soldiers to Iran and to prevent Iran and Syria from resupplying Hizballah. Where Israel has bombed civilian areas, it has been in an attempt to strike Hizballah's rockets. (Los Angeles Times)