The Patriot Post® · War and Peace

Peace is not simply the absence of hostility. Actions to “keep the peace” that make a dangerous situation more dangerous have the exact opposite effect — they postpone the inevitable. And when that inevitable outcome materializes, it is often far worse than if it had been snuffed out earlier.

The obvious case in point is Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas and now Hezbollah, both terrorist organizations/proxies of Iran and both unapologetically committed to the total annihilation of Israel. Just one year ago, Israeli citizens suffered an unprovoked and unspeakably barbaric attack on their own soil by Hamas intruders, at the cost of more than 1,200 innocent lives, another 250 kidnappings, and innumerable instances of rape and torture.

Israel’s response was immediate and fierce — in effect, a full-on war with Hamas. Because of the high (and largely unavoidable) non-combatant casualties of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF’s) aggressive efforts to root out Hamas elements deeply embedded among Palestinian civilians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the object of much criticism here in the U.S. Some consider him one notch worse than Attila the Hun.

While Netanyahu is moving full speed ahead in defense of his vulnerable nation, his chief ally and benefactor — the USA — keeps trying to hold him back. President Joe Biden’s expressions of support have been markedly unenthusiastic, publicly demanding that Netanyahu do more to prevent further escalation. Even more damaging to Israel’s defense has been Biden’s slow-walking the American supply of weaponry and setting restrictions on its use.

Kamala Harris pointedly snubbed Netanyahu during his July visit to the U.S., choosing not to attend his address to the Senate. As vice president, Harris is the president of that body. Her glaring absence was clearly intended to mollify the pro-Palestinian (and effectively pro-Hamas) elements of her party, with the presidential election just months away.

But Netanyahu is the man in the hot seat, and his IDF achieved some stunning successes in recent weeks, so it strikes me that we might want to go to school on his terrorist-fighting tactics, popular or not.

Israel’s predicament and our sputtering response to it call to mind some sage advice I received from a mentor long ago. For many years after the Three Mile Island accident, I worked for the late Ed Kintner, a retired U.S. Navy Captain and a legendary pioneer of the Navy’s early nuclear program. As a young Naval Officer, Ed had been recruited by then-Captain HG Rickover to take a lead role in the design and construction of the world’s first nuclear submarine. He was a brilliant engineer and a very clear thinker.

Kintner’s favorite maxim, by far, was, “Cut the head off the snake!” I must have heard him say that emphatically a hundred times. Interestingly, he wasn’t speaking about warfighting or foreign policy; he was talking about nuclear engineering. The underlying precept was this: When confronted with a serious nuclear safety vulnerability or a plant control challenge, don’t try to work around it with warning alarms or complex operating procedures — no, get to the heart of the problem. Make it go away. Cut the head off the snake.

For Ed Kintner, that was a universal life principle — and it is perfectly applicable here. Hamas and Hezbollah — two snakes — have been exporting terrorism for decades. So far, periodic cessation of hostilities via ceasefire agreements, pledges of good behavior, and the like have served only to give them the time and space to regroup, grow stronger, and redouble their efforts in their next round of assaults. Through bitter experience, Israel has learned that the only way to protect itself is to proactively disable those terrorist adversaries — to cut off their heads.

That’s exactly what the IDF accomplished in just the past few weeks. Based on remarkably precise intelligence on the locations of secret terrorist headquarters, they unleashed a succession of airstrikes that effectively eliminated layers of Hamas and Hezbollah leadership. They decapitated both organizations. Yes, the decapitated bodies will, probably in short order, grow new heads, and so Israel must finish the job while they are still disabled. We should help.

At the same time, both Biden and Harris continue to place first priority on pursuing a negotiated ceasefire with Hamas and the release of any remaining hostages. That is an entirely unrealistic and counterproductive quest. Yes, we are properly concerned about the war’s civilian victims (disproportionately high because the terrorists intentionally use civilians as shields — Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah’s headquarters was in a bunker built directly under an occupied apartment building), but any reprieve will be temporary at best.

In these circumstances, and with my old boss’s counsel ringing in my ears, I’d argue that the USA should actively support Israel’s actions, and when applicable, we should emulate them. For openers, their tactics should be our template for dealing with the Yemen Houthis (also an Iranian proxy — another snake begging for decapitation), who continue their attacks on commercial shipping and U.S. Navy warships in the Red Sea. Even though long overdue, decisive handling of the Houthi aggressors would send a very important message to potential U.S. adversaries in our increasingly dangerous world.

The Middle East is a mess and has been for decades. I don’t pretend to understand its array of interrelationships and their intricacies, and I surely don’t have a one-size-fits-all fix. But when it comes to dealing with barbaric terrorist states? Cut the head off the snake.