In 1946, Irgun terrorists dynamited the King David Hotel in pre-state British Palestine. The horrific carnage that claimed nearly 100 lives would one day be described this way:
“In that split second after 12:37, 13 of those who had been alive at 12:36 disappeared without a trace. The clothes, bracelets, cufflinks, and wallets which might have identified them exploded into dust and smoke. Others were turned to charcoal, melted into chairs and desks or exploded into countless fragments. The face of a Jewish typist was ripped from her skull, blown out of a window, and smeared onto the pavement below. Miraculously it was recognizable, a two-foot-long distorted death mask topped with tufts of hair.”
The fact that it would take some time for such a gruesome account to be widely disseminated is no accident. Amidst conflict and war, the full picture arrives later—by design.
And so it is today where once again, the Mideast is on fire.
But I’m afraid Fox News viewers are in no mood for the gory details, especially if they’re a result of what now appears to be an inadvertent strike on a girls school in Iran due to “target misidentification” by U.S. forces.
Of course, this is different from the tactics of the other combatants in the region where civilian casualties are deliberate and reaching unprecedented levels. The policy of the United States is not to target innocents.
Which is why the War Department should be candid about its mistakes and stop equivocating about the strike(s) killing 175 people—including the school children of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — by suggesting it was self-sabotage by Tehran.
Instead, remind the world that this was a tragic mistake and we long ago moved on from a ‘victor’s justice’ approach to the rules of war. One that once prompted a blunt but brutally honest Curtis Lemay to opine, “if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.”
Indeed, 81 years ago, 100,000 inhabitants of Tokyo were incinerated on a single night as a result of a firebombing campaign, the single most destructive air attack in human history. Gen. LeMay was unapologetic, having been witness to a string of grotesque Japanese atrocities, not to mention an understandable desire to end WWII as quickly as possible.
This was true ‘shock and awe,’ and it culminated in nuclear mushrooms over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Given what such unfathomable destructive power was capable of, the post-war era saw Western leaders move decisively against the disproportionality of targeting innocent civilians.
A ‘just war’ demands it.
Nevertheless, the truth of any war is such that it can rarely be told. So far, almost 800,000 people have been displaced by war in Iran and Lebanon. This on top of millions of refugees from existing conflicts in the region. Many will die; many will go to Europe; many will come here.
For the public to buy in, the unintended consequences of war must be hidden. Usually by those pounding the war drums the loudest. As decorated Gulf War vet Col. Douglas MacGregor said the other day, “Everybody’s impulse at the top is to lie.”
As we briefly noted last week in Jason’s Newsletter, history is replete with it.
Jason Lewis is a former Minnesota Congressman and broadcast veteran. Prior to serving in the 115th Congress, Lewis hosted a talk radio program for over 25 years and has authored two books, Power Divided is Power Checked (2010) and Party Animal (2022). This article has been republished from the author’s Substack, which can be viewed here.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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