Daniel Greenfield article: Nice
Countries Finish Last

Posted: 01 Jun 2010 09:01 PM PDT

If Israeli soldiers had boarded the Mavi Marmara armed with
assault rifles instead of paintball guns, would the Turkish Islamists on
board have been just as eager to attack them? The odds are against it. In
order to attack soldiers, you have to believe that they won't be able to
turn you into a smear on the deck. And it's not hard to see why they would
have believed that.

Not only did Israeli soldiers come on board armed with
paintball guns, but the Islamists and their left wing allies had every
reason to believe that Israel would retreat again. Because two weeks
earlier, Israel had backed off and allowed Noam Chomsky in after a storm
of left wing protest. That fateful decision made Israel look weak and
easily maneuvered, which helped set the stage for what followed. The
Islamists could reasonably believe that if Israel retreated before one
elderly left wing academic, their accompanying elderly left wingers would
be just as effective.

But the flotilla encounter is a useful model,
not only of Israel's own weak response toward terrorism, but that of the
Western world toward Islam as a whole.

Going in with paintball
guns to stop people who genuinely want you dead, does not deescalate the
situation-- it escalates it. There are after all two kinds of violence.
Violence that occurs as a misunderstanding and can be talked out. And
violence that is the result of people who want to kill thinking they've
got a shot at accomplishing their goal. And there's no better way to
insure violence than to give those kinds of people the idea that this is
their moment.

But Israel has been responding with metaphorical
paintball guns to terrorism for too long now. How many times has Israel
bombed empty buildings or sent tanks on pointless raids with no strategic
objective except to show the flag. How many times has Israel arrested
terrorists, only to let them go as a "confidence building" measure. For
that matter the entire Gaza blockade, in which Israel reacted to the Hamas
takeover of Gaza with a partial blockade (accompanied by large doses of
aid) in order to isolate Hamas. Instead Hamas has used the blockade to
isolate Israel even further. That you see is the problem with paintball
guns. Not only aren't they of much use, but they actually invite further
conflict, and when you finally have to use real guns, more people will die
as a result.

Only consistently leveraging force provides a
deterrent. That is something Israel once understood, but has long ago
forgotten. Instead Israel has inconsistently employed force, which has
naturally led to charges of "disproportionate use of force", because the
government has set a bottom basement value for the use of force, which
means that both its friends and enemies have learned to expect minimal
responses. This means that when we do go to war, we get less support from
our friends who are suddenly shocked by what we're doing, and when we
don't go to war, we give our enemies the idea that they can get away with
anything.

Remember Osama bin Laden's shock as
the scale of the US attack in Afghanistan. Or Hassan Narsallah's at the
Second Lebanon War. Bin Laden had gotten used to being able to carry out
attacks like that on the USS Cole, without expecting anything besides a
few poorly aimed missiles in return. Nasrallah had assumed that Israel's
tolerance of terrorism from Hamas and Fatah meant that it was a soft
target. America and Israel's response to one particular attack, shocked
the Islamic terrorist groups responsible. But that shock also demonstrates
the problem. Terrorists should naturally expect a ruthless response. When
we tolerate terrorism, we create the expectation that they can get away
with anything. Then they cross a red line, we strike back hard, and buy
ourselves some peace. The terrorists begin scaling up their attacks again,
certain this time that we're incapable of fighting back. Until they hit
another red line.

If we consistently deployed force against
terrorism, we wouldn't have this seesaw cycle that the left wing media
routinely dubs the "Cycle of Violence". Instead we react inconsistently,
which fails to function as a deterrent. Our inaction lulls terrorists into
thinking that they have a free pass, which only demonstrates that we don't
have a deterrent. Next to outright inaction, the inconsistent use of force
is destructive to maintaining a stalemate. Because if given two
possibilities with equal amounts of evidence for both, one that you will
strike back with full force and one that you will remain apathetic-- most
motivated enemies will find ways to argue themselves into believing the
latter. And they will attack.

Carrying paintball guns will not win
you love. During the Munich Olympics in 1972, the German police handed out
flowers. The flowers did not stop PLO terrorists from invading the Olympic
Village and murdering Israeli athletes. On the other hand Israel's
response of hunting down and killing those responsible, sent a decisive
message that even murdering its people on foreign soil, among police who
hand our flowers, would not save them from retribution. A year after the
Munich Massacre, the Black September branch of the PLO was shut
down.

But we still keep using paintball guns. For 17 years Israel
has tried to show goodwill toward the PLO formed Palestinian Authority and
even toward Hamas. And the PLO and Hamas unsurprisingly responded with
massacres and atrocities. If you run from a rabid dog, the dog will chase
after you. If you stand and confront the dog, you might have a chance to
beat it off, or shoot it. But if you always run from the dog, the dog will
feel entitled to chase you and try to bite you. And so every time Israel
responded, there was an outcry. But it was Israel that had taught its
enemies that it would not respond to terrorism, only to then sometimes
respond. That sort of inconsistent behavior is extremely confusing to
rabid dogs.

Meanwhile in New York, 9 years after 9/11, we're still going to
allow a mosque to be raised near Ground Zero. Naturally we think this will
convince Muslims to like us. In reality it all but insures more terrorist
attacks. Just as the Taliban didn't make their resurgence, until it was
clear that we wouldn't be willing to hunt them down wherever they are.
Just as Iraq didn't go to hell until we put more priority on
reconstruction, over armed force. That's the problem with trading in
assault rifles for paintball guns. It tempts the people with assault
rifles to try to use them on you.

When dealing with enemies who
want to kill you, one thing is certain-- nice countries finish last.
Totalitarian regimes and homicidal ideologies view "niceness" as an
admission of weakness or guilt. And here's the dirty little secret, often
we tend to view it that way too. Backing down before enemies becomes
learned behavior. The human mind rationalizes it by embracing pacifism and
then finally the enemy's point of view. Inaction in the face of terrorism
becomes Stockholm Syndrome. The more you teach soldiers to carry paintball
guns, the less psychologically able they are to wield real guns in an
actual battle. Because you can't win by giving up. And giving up convinces
your own people that the battle isn't worth fighting anyway.

It's all well and good to be nice, but when confronting enemies who seek to
destroy you-- remember, nice countries finish last.