Does anyone care what David Miliband says?

This may sound a frivolous question but I would like to know the answer. After all, he is making statements and calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

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Marshmallow power

Having learnt absolutely nothing from its experience of the Lebanon war of 2006 – where it pushed for a premature cease-fire thus letting Hezbollah off the hook after it murderous rampage – the EU is repeating exactly the same mistakes.

Wedded to its idea of soft (as marshmellow) power, again its is leading the ranks of appeasers, calling for Israeli "restraint" and putting its efforts into brokering a rapid cease-fire. However, as did Hezbolla manipulate world opinion over its staging of the Qana "rescue", Hamas is proving adept at the same tricks, no doubt paving the way for a cease-fire at a time of its own choice, aided and abetted by the gullible "international community", with the EU in the forefront.

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The new deal

Reviewing the breast-beating in the "liberal" media over the Israeli strikes on Gaza, it occurs that the UK government – and military – should understand completely what the Israelis are trying to do.

In this, there is a singular parallel between the situation in which the British found themselves in Iraq in 2005-6, where their base near al Amarah called Camp Abu Naji was subject to incessant rocket and mortar attack.

Starved of resources, the British Army had little option to endure, occasionally launching punitive raids into the city, in the hope of taking out some of the insurgents and affording them slight relief from the daily bombardment.

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Well said sir,

As most of this abundantly clear wisdom has been around for some thousands of years, it is a mystery to me why we haven't yet twigged it.
In the event that we are aware of it, then fielding a team that couldn't wipe the skin off a rice pudding, let alone a bunch of murderous ragheads is nothing short of stupid. It used to be said that the British punch above their weight...problem is that we no longer have any weight above which to punch.
It is no insult to the wo/men who kitlessly & bravely serve, that they should, as of now, confine themselves to doing that at which they excel...providing tattoo circuses for the masses.

How many fighters are there in Gaza (a confined and not very large area)? 10.000 , 20.000?
That would be division size. Compare that to the situation in Iraq in which the US gained significant success.

Very well put sir , I had thought that we had a shining example of your strategy i.e. Japan + atom bombs = end of hostilities , so if we translate
Islam + X = end of hostilities , what is our X to be .
IMO one removes ones enemy's capacity to make war via accurate intelligence and truly overwhelming firepower , true one gets collateral damage , but we suffered collateral damage in Coventry , London and Dresden . My grand father had a saying , " If you do not want to get bitten , do not poke the tiger. " , I believe that may apply here .

Talk to the French about collateral damage when we bombed Caen in 1944, simply to pave the way for the 2nd Army. French deaths were in the tens of thousands, yet this was thought militarily justifiable. Not least of the arguments was that, for every month the was was prolonged, thousands more would die. In those terms, collateral damage - i.e, killing "innocent" civilians - is the least worst option, on the basis that to allow the Gaza conflict to drag on for more and more years is to condemn probably hundreds of thousands to death. Those who glibly call for "restraint" and for yet another cease fire should ponder on whether their misguided humanitarianism - if that is what it is - will lead to immeasurably more deaths than allowing hthe Israelis their head and sorting the problem once and for all.

Erm, I think that's what's called a mental leap, THE DOC, which of course can be used to justify absolutely anything whatsoever.

This lefty BBC bed-wetter "proportionate response" nonsense is complete junk. It's the same old junk that underlies the law's approach to what is "appropriate force" for a victim to use against an attacker or would-be attacker.

But it's not the philosophy here that's wrong. It isn't — the philosophy is right. What's wrong here is the illiterate implementation. This illiteracy is combined with another regular chatterati cripple-head infliction—innumeracy. The combined result is total junk.

The bed-wetters just don't know what proportionate means or how to apply it.

X is minding his own business when Y, unprovoked, attacks X by, say, punching him. The victim X is now allowed only a "proportionate" response. Fine. But what could that be? Proportionate to what?

Well, clearly it's the response that needs to be proportionate to the stimulus. In this case, X's reaction should be 'proportionate' to the punch inflicted. But proportionate in what way?

Fortunately there's no need for a great debate here. Indeed there is no need for any debate at all — Y has already answered the question.

Whatever applies to X applies a fortiori to Y, as he started it. So we take as the basis for "proportionate" the instance supplied by Y himself, namely that which corresponds to a zero stimulus and a non-zero response.

The only way X can do justice on that basis is to respond with infinite force. Anything less and the man is being charitable.

So ... snipped. You know why! Mod.

What matters is the clinical, rational thinking. Allied casualties alone in an invasion of Japan were estimated to be a million, with as many if not more Japanese. The balance of opinion was that the A-bombs would save many more lives than they destroyed. The decision was not taken lightly and purely in those terms, it was almost certainly the right one. Similarly, if the balance of closely argued and intelligent opinion on the options suggests a high rate of casualties for a short period will lead to an overall saving of life, hard though it may be to take, the decision should be to go with the course of action which saves the most lives. There is nothing in that sort of calculation which "justifies absolutely anything".

Let's hope that Israel is serious and that it's not the usual Kadima half arsed response.

There is a General Election on Feb 10th and Netanyahu is well ahead, he won't mess around.

I have wondered occasionally whether the US could have chosen a fortified island to demonstrate the bomb, and then said "Comments please?". Would the Emperor have faced his 'Coventry' decision and forced the US to prove they would drop it on civilians too?

Great article.

Peace between Israel and Hamas, an Islamic fundamentalist organisation, will never last because of Islamic doctrine of Hudna established by the example of Islam’s Prophet that means that peace is never permanent. The recent breaking of the cease fire by Hamas and the firing of rockets into Israel illustrates the general principle. The Islamic world will not rest until Israel no longer exists. Israel has a right and a duty to defend itself and a negotiated truce with those that mean it irreparable harm will be no guarantee of permanent peace. The media never mentions things like this.

The concept of Hudna : http://www.omdurman.org/hudna.html is briefly outlined in second part of THIS article: http://www.forward.com/articles/7477/ with particular reference to Hamas which relates to the The Treaty of Hudaibiya (628AD) : http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/treaty28.html which Mohammed concluded with the Quraysh.

On a final point we must remember that Hamas is trying to introduce full Sharia law into Gaza: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? ... 9868840606 . That illustrates quite clearly the sort of world view that Hamas represents. Again, apparently no coverage on in the media about the true nature of the initiators of this conflict.

As a last resort our political and media establishement might end up coming out with their usual nonsense about Hamas just being a minority of terrorists (though I doubt they would go so far as to mention the T word). But it must be remembered that Hamas were victorious in the Palestinians elections - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 650788.stm Such an election victory seems to me to imply that the large numbers of ordinary Palestinians do not want peace.

Perhaps the liberal left believes that Israel should just let Hamas take over the whole country and submit to second class citizen status under Sharia Law, after all these 'progressives' seem to want that for us too?

I understand that that possibility or similar was considered. I can't remember why it was rejected. I think it had something to do with tojo possibly choosing to see it as a trick and the fact that the Americans really didn't have enough bombs ready to risk having to repeat it.

In the event, I know they dropped the two they had but presumably they only dropped the second because the nips were still hesitating 3 days later. If that reasoning (my guessing) is correct then the Americans were right not to risk a mere demo — if the bandy legs were still having doubts after Hiroshima then a demo would have been a waste of time and materiel.

I think the topic was covered by Richard Rhodes in his The Making of the Atomic Bomb but it's years since I read it. Great book, BTW.

This disproportionate force rubbish really gets me going, so perhaps Israel could do some proportionate force in reply, set up two artillary pieces, one to the explosive level of the missile fired at Sredot and another to the same level as the missile fired as Askelon (I think I got the name right.)

Set the co-ordinates at random within the range of the missiles targetting respectively Sredot and Askelon, every time a missile is fired into Israel, replyt in kind, there you go proportionate..., is that the sort of proportionate response that would please Sarkozy and those other idiots?

From what I've read there was some talk of a demonstration, but it was a different world.

The propaganda forces used in wartime will cause all attitudes to polarise.

There wasn't enough fissile material for more than two or three bombs, and there was debate about whether the little boy design, which they were certain would go off, should be cannibalised for more fat men, which were much more complicated. The little boy design with a single point of ignition was much more dangerous to the users. They weren't using a tried and tested weapon.

Japan was finished on any rational basis, but after the Kamikaze attacks and the suicides at Okinawa etc., 100s of thousands of allied casualties were anticipated for the invasion of mainland Japan, not to mention huge numbers of Japanese. The US was fed up with Japan after the Pearl Harbour sneak attack and the suicidal defences. I've spoken to a few servicemen who were likely to have been involved in the invasion of Japan and they saw the dropping of the bombs as a divine deliverance

So much money had been spent on Manhattan that it had to be seen to be well spent, so the bombs had to be dropped and seen as decisive.

The Ruskies were talking about taking part in the invasion of Japan and the spoils and eyes were already turning to the post-war world.

No one knew how far the Japanese high-command's grip on information reached, so they might have chosen to ignore a demonstration on a fortified island and carryied on fighting because it was good for the soul. It's hard to say how much say-so the Emperor had as he lead a fairly closetted life.

So, all in all, some namby-pamby demonstration wasn't on the cards.

I believe Curtis Le May's incendiary raids, with a fire storm every time, caused more deaths, and leaflet drops warning of more to come, caused immense panic.
They razed 16 sq miles of Tokyo in a night.

No doubt he'll be along to tell us about it soon.