Captain Ed observes, about the proportionality canard:
To use a crude analogy, if someone is stupid enought to bring a knife to a gunfight, it doesn’t mean that those holding the guns have a moral obligation to fight with knives instead. Proportionality demands exactly that, and it leads to nothing but longer and more destructive wars.
As I argued before, those who argue for a “proportional” response argue for an ineffective and essentially symbolic response that changes nothing. I find such arguments morally suspect. Given that any military operation will result in some civilian deaths, we should only launch such an operation when we honestly think that doing so will result in a significant positive change.
I can think of few things more vile than advocating for the deaths of innocents for what amounts to a very large and expensive piece of performance art.
[Note: The Captain’s Quarters blog suddenly became unreachable while I was writing this post. The above links may not work.]