Punishing our friends because our enemies are beyond our reach

Via Ry, Andrew Sullivan discusses the Goldstone Report on Israel's Gaza incursion. Goldstone writes:

In Gaza, I was surprised and shocked by the destruction and misery there. I had not expected it. I did not anticipate that the IDF would have targeted civilians and civilian objects. I did not anticipate seeing the vast destruction of the economic infrastructure of Gaza including its agricultural lands, industrial factories, water supply and sanitation works. These are not military targets. I have not heard or read any government justification for this destruction.

Sullivan adds:

The laws of war are the laws of war...The notion of collective punishment, of deterrence by civilian attrition and suffering, is as repugnant as assuming that every prisoner seized in the chaos of war is "the worst of the worst" and torturing them.

[Obeying the laws of war] is not easy against a ruthless, asymmetric enemy, whose war crimes are a first rather than a last resort. But it is necessary. It is necessary.

I'm trying to think of a wittier, more intellectual response than "This is fugging retarded." I'm failing (although "Someone call the Waaaaaaaambulance" was a strong contender).

So, this is fugging retarded.

So attacking civilian targets is a "war crime?" In that case, we've committed massive war crimes in every war we've fought, since we bombed cities in Germany, Japan, North Korea, etc. And all someone has to do in order to make the enemy a war criminal is to put every missile launcher right between a hospital and a school. Which is, in practice, what modern urban guerrilla forces always do.

Apparently, total war (taking out the enemy's infrastructure) is now considered a war crime. Which means that if someone decides to wage total war on you, it's quite likely that you'll face a choice between A) winning, and B) not being a war criminal. This is like saying that if you are in a street fight, and someone fishhooks you, you are not allowed to bite his finger.

And yes, there is a difference between torture and strategic bombing. Torture causes much less suffering than strategic bombing, but it is not necessary to win wars. Hence torture is a "law of war" that we can safely chooseto follow even if our enemy does not.

In any case, here's the upshot. The laws of war should only apply to countries whose opponents obey the laws of war; otherwise, the system is biased in favor of nations that don't care about the laws of war. If we structure our international system to punish only those who choose to operate within the system (i.e. our friends), we're creating a massive incentive for everyone to leave the system. This is one reason Israel takes a lot of flack from human rights organizations; nobody expects their enemies, Arab countries, to respond to human rights criticism at all.

To sum up: flogging only those within our reach to flog, we're just making it clear that "within our reach" is a bad place to be.