April 29, 2024
War is Not Law Enforcement
By Civis Americanus
The Hamas apologists who now infest Ivy League and other campuses either do not know, or willfully choose to ignore, the fact that war is not a law enforcement activity whose purpose is to punish the guilty and spare the innocent. If we look at the history of warfare, their complaints about civilian losses in Gaza are disinformation and dissimulation, with no other identifiable purpose than to protect Hamas from the consequences of its actions. The same goes for the bleating from António Guterres, UNRWA, and the International Court of Justice. They are nothing more than our era’s counterparts of Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, and Lord Haw-Haw.
This does not mean that it is ever acceptable to target genuine noncombatants, and Israel bends over backward to avoid hitting them. Even enemy combatants in most wars, however, are guilty of nothing more than wearing the wrong color uniform. Patriotism, being conscripted, and joining an army because one has no other prospects are not crimes that deserve any punishment, although the end result can be the same fate that countries with capital punishment reserve for only the worst murderers. For every Ted Bundy who is executed for serial murders, or Charles Manson who dies of old age in prison for slaughtering innocent people, thousands of combatants are shot or blown up for no other reason than their service to the wrong (as perceived by the other side) government.
“The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy made this clear during an era in which few people joined armies out of patriotism. An army was instead often the only alternative to debtor’s prison, starvation, or the workhouse, as the poem makes clear.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/war_is_not_law_enforcement.html