The End Game of War

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman famously said that “War is hell.” The full context of his words, delivered to the graduating class at the Michigan Military Academy on June 19, 1879, are as follows...

“I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that someday you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!”

Gen. Sherman also wrote in a letter to R.M. Sawyer in January 1864 that “If they [the Confederate States] want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place… Three years ago, by a little reflection and patience, they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well.”

And in a reply that same year to a southern woman who berated him for his brutal tactics, Sherman said “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”

Time passes and yet, some things never change, war being one of them. Even one of Sherman’s foes, Gen. Robert E. Lee, agreed. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, Lee was quoted as saying, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”

As hellish and as terrible as war was then and is now, I am sure that both Gen. Sherman and Gen. Lee would agree that when it is forced upon you, there is but one recourse: to fight it with all the resources available to you and to do everything in your power to win it as quickly and as decisively as possible.

Fast forward 160 years and travel the 6,400 miles from the battlefields of Virginia to Jerusalem. Israel did not go looking for war, but it found them anyway. In fact, Israel did everything possible to avoid a war including turning over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority in 2005, despite having won that territory in the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel had even agreed to a two-state solution as far back as 1947, but the Palestinians would have no part of it, wanting not just a piece but the whole pie.

Now that Hamas has brought war to the region, Israel has but one choice: to end it on their terms. As I see it, that means employing every means necessary to not only defeat Hamas, but also to completely eradicate it from the face of the earth.

When a person is told by their doctor that they have an aggressive form of cancer, their options are limited. They can allow the cancer to go untreated so it can metastasize and eventually claim their life, or they can seek to eliminate it through radiation, chemotherapy and/or surgery. In such an operation, the surgeon seeks to remove the entire tumor, not just a part of it, and often removes a margin of noncancerous tissue around the tumor just to be safe so it doesn't grow back.

I assume you get where I am going with this medical analogy. Hamas is a cancer and so is Hezbollah, just like Al Qaeda and ISIS before them. They need to be removed from the Middle East by any means necessary and the civilized world must support Israel’s efforts to do so.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal included the following headline, referring to France's president: “Macron Is Latest World Leader to Show Support for Israel, but Adds Note of Caution.” Excusez-moi, Monsieur Macron? What would you say if Hamas had launched a surprise and unprovoked attack on France, beheading French babies, raping French women, and taking French civilians hostage?

Would you listen to international cries for caution and restraint or would you seek not only revenge, but also the complete annihilation of your enemy? Unless you are a coward, monsieur, you would choose the latter course of action… and so must Israel.