Gaza is Mogadishu

After the attack, there has been a strong urge to analogize to a historic event - 9/11, Pearl Harbor, etc. - and then extend the metaphor to create a warning for Israel not to invade so they don’t' make the same mistakes the US did in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Then there are the armchair warriors haranguing the Israelis for invading, saying they should be able to get Hamas without resorting to aerial and artillery bombardment so as to minimize civilian casualties.

Several commentators have already explained why 9/11 isn't a great analogy since the attack was never existential, the equivalent number of deaths in 9/11 would have been closer to 42,000 and the enemy did not share a border. A true equivalent would be if Mexican drug cartels crossed the southern border and murdered 42,00 people in El Paso, McAllen and other border towns before melting back into the Mexican civilian population. Clearly, the 9/11 analogy fails. I'm not sure why anyone brings up Pearl Harbor at all since the only commonality seems to be the sneak attack aspect - except on a military installation. Our dearest NYT idiot Tom Friedman trotted out the militant execution of 160 people at a hotel in Mumbai, India and how the Indian government mostly didn't react. Except that India has a population of 1 billion people, several of the victims weren't Indian and clearly the attack was of an entirely different magnitude and carried out by different actors.

I'm going to offer an alternative analogy - the battle of Mogadishu and the incident captured by Black Hawk Down. And I might argue that the Israelis have learned just the right lesson from that US experience. Just as the armchair strategists are suggesting now, the Americans tried to use targeted Special Ops teams to snatch and/or kill the warlord leader Aidid in Mogadishu. Anyone who has read the book knows how that plan worked out. But would it have EVER worked? I would argue no since the "enemy" was a sprawling warlord group enmeshed in an often-sympathetic populace. The Americans had no real reason to get into Somalia since it posed zero threat and so were never going to apply the amount of force and resources necessary to extinguish the warlord threat there.

But Israel faces the reality of a Mogadishu-like hive of terrorist activity without any real functioning government literally on its border. Israel has learned the west doesn't *really* care about civilian casualties or leveling cities since the West has already allowed Russia to perpetrate all manner of war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine without giving Ukraine the needed weapons to eviscerate Russia. One could argue the only reason the West hasn't provided the needed weaponry is because of the threat of nuclear escalation. This is a valid point but also irrelevant here. Israel does not want to risk giving Hamas further hostages - and military hostages at that - by executing special operations missions. They have warned the civilian populace to move south. Probably some have, likely most have not and almost certainly for a variety of reasons both legitimate and nefarious. In the end, this is the most we should be able to expect. Short of pumping carbon dioxide into the tunnel system below Gaza and just seeing what happens - an ACTUAL war crime - the next most cautious approach would be leveling any shelter and moving block by block.

So many in the West like to believe humanity is civilized and evolved past the barbaric realities of war. We have decided there are war crimes, which implies there must be laws and rules. But war is not Monopoly; you can't make "house rules" and expect everyone to follow them. It isn't even baseball with a rulebook and then "unwritten rules" that might result in a beanball the next inning. The truth is we haven't really evolved much past the days of the Golden Horde riding up to a city and demanding unconditional surrender with the alternative being almost certain annihilation. This is the type of war being waged by Russia. This is the type of war Hamas *would* wage if it had the means. Their very founding documents make it explicit and they wouldn't even give Israel the option to surrender.

In the end, what choice does Israel have? Allow the outrage of war crimes to pass without consequence? Kill every man, woman, and child in Gaza? Give the population of Gaza 7 days to give up the leaders of Hamas and return all hostages unharmed with some sort of carrot/reward attached? That might be the fairest; the population of Gaza could decide if it wants to be controlled under threat of death by Hamas, cast their lots in with them and potentially die with them in the Israeli counter-attacks. Or turn their backs on Hamas and see if an alternative can be worked out.

Nothing is sure. But that has always been true.