"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will," Union general William Tecumseh Sherman wrote in an 1864 letter warning the citizens of Atlanta -- which his advancing army had just occupied -- to evacuate. "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."
Over the last two years, Sherman's words come to mind whenever an opponent of Israel and/or supporter of the Palestinians confidently asserts that the violence in Gaza is "not a war" because it is so terrible.
It IS a war, and that's why it's so terrible.
Let us, as we should, acknowledge that the Israeli regime's goal in Gaza is genocide or, at a minimum, the only slightly less odious project of "ethnic cleansing." There's zero room for doubt, given Israeli officials' open public statements, that they want the Palestinian Arabs now living in Gaza either killed off or exiled en masse to make room for Israeli "settlement" of the area.
That's the objective.
War is the means of achieving that objective, and war is a process of killing people.
That many of the dead in all wars, and most of the dead in this one, are civilian non-combatants, doesn't turn those wars into non-wars. It just turns them into worse wars. It's right there in the terminology. The killings of civilian non-combatants aren't just "crimes," they're "war crimes."
One dodge the "this isn't a war, it's [insert term of opprobrium here]" crowd often resorts to is a claimed disproportion in the size and power of the forces involved.
By that criterion, there's never been a war in all of human history. In every war, all sides attempt to bring overwhelming force to bear on opponents they hope won't bring as much. "God," Comte de Bussy-Rabutin observed, "is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small."
That truth applies at both the tactical and strategic levels. In the attacks of October 7, 2023, for example, Hamas attempted to take on a bigger overall opponent in smaller parts through the tactical element of surprise.
To which Israel responded with overwhelming force at all points, because it had the people and weapons to do so. And still does -- the supposed "ceasefire" has barely reduced its tempo of operations and hasn't changed its clear objectives.
Trying to separate war from the genocide and ethnic cleansing that often accompanies it is cheap moralizing for propaganda points.
War, again per Sherman, is all hell.
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