A friend of mine asked if Israel was justified in targeting Hezbollah rocket launching sites, even if it meant a probability of civilian casualties.   I think targeting Hezbollah without worry is the right answer. Sickening, no? War is that way.

Turn the tables for a moment and think about an attack with different actors. Let's say that the Cuban ex-pats in Miami have about 10,000 rockets and start a campaign launching missiles at the (in)Fidel. Not really targeting anything, just launching them into the air with nary a care. The ex-pats have a long grievance with Cuba because Castro stole their land, their money, their art and they have no rights to return to the island under any circumstances.

After repeated warnings, Castro uses his Soviet supplied tracking equipment to determine the source of the missiles and launches a counterattack that levels the dozen apartment towers where the parking lots had been used as launch pads and the parking garages as weapons storage depots. Among the missing (presumed dead) are the 2000 women and children that were believed to have lived in the complexes.

George Galloway pounds the airwaves shouting “Death to the Americans” as he points out that the Geneva conventions assign the guilt for the deaths of the civilians to those who used the civilians as a shield for their military activities. Various EU ministers accuse Bush of being a war criminal for aiding and abetting an illegal and immoral war against Cuba.

If Cuban ex-pats were allowed to make repeated attacks on Cuba from the United States and the various government actors and the local citizens did nothing to stop them, I think at a minimum Cuba would be justified in targeting the source of these attacks without regard for collateral damage. Given the actors, I have no doubt the world’s leftists would excuse Cuba if they leveled all of Miami as a result…and they (the leftists) would have a rational argument.

I obviously have used an extreme example to make a point. I am not as convinced if you change the actors to drug lords launching an attack from a ghetto in Mexico on San Diego. With the resources to more directly target the adversary I think comes a responsibility to use them. In this case, I think Israel had a responsibility to not level Beirut, but certainly had the right to take out military targets even if it meant civilians were likely to be killed in the process.