An Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah bunker reportedly has killed Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
An Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah bunker reportedly has killed Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. If true, his death would cap an impressive ten-day campaign that began with the simultaneous detonation of Hezbollah pagers, continued to take out senior military leaders, and now has decapitated the organization itself.
Diplomats and human rights activists might hand wring, but what Israel did was not only right and wise, but should also be a lesson for a new generation of U.S. and European policymakers.
There is a tendency among diplomats either to exaggerate the benefits of dialogue or to declare its inevitability. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example, spoke about the need to talk with the Taliban. “The starting premise is you don’t make peace with your friends,” she remarked at a conference in London. “You have to be willing to engage with your enemies….”
She was wrong. Some enemies are so odious, absolute defeat must be the goal. That was the driving belief during World War II, for example, in both the European and Pacific theaters. It was the right decision: Today, both Germany and Japan are reliable defenders of the post-World War II, rules-based liberal order. Imposing terms on Japan did not spark reactionary violence; rather, it gave Japanese a new start. The Japanese themselves showed that they were ready to move on from absolute fealty to the emperor, despite the beliefs of Japanese studies academics at the time.Europe thrived because no diplomat acting with a naïve belief in his own sophistication snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by believing that they should enter into talks with Karl Dönitz, who briefly succeeded Hitler after his suicide.
Other regimes ended with the killing or military ouster of their leader. Uganda rebounded after a Tanzanian invasion drove out brutal dictator Idi Amin, who then spent his retirement years in Saudi Arabia. The Khmer Rouge regime came crashing down after Vietnam invaded and drove Pol Pot into hiding.
Source: https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-forum-observer/nasrallahs-death-should-be-a-lesson-to-the-united-states