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The Sense of Proportion
The Corner on National Review Online — Tuesday, December 30, 2008 [image] The Sense of Proportion [Ramesh Ponnuru] Over at my Washington Post discussion group, I respond to claims that Israeli military action has been excessive: The traditional just-war standard is that military action should be "proportionate" in that it causes fewer harms than it seeks to prevent. That's a sane and sound moral standard. It does not mean that military means must inflict only as much pain as the enemy has inflicted. My comment can be taken as an implicit response, as well, to supporters of Israel who have suggested that the just-war tradition should be at least partially abandoned. These supporters err, I think, in agreeing with many of their foes on what proportionality means. 12/30 03:17 PM

Happy Hour Links
Weekly Standard Blog — ... Ramesh Ponnuru bats down the newfangled (and nonsensical) proportionality standard promoted by many critics of Israeli military action. ...

BRILLIANT SATIRE FROM VDH: WHAT "PROGRESSIVES" MIGHT ASK ISRAEL TO DO TO "EVEN THE PLAYING FIELD" AND MAKE THEIR COUNTER-ATTACK "PROPORTIONATE"...
THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS — PURE GENIUS: Some Moderate Proposals [Victor Davis Hanson] 1) Request that 50% of Israel's air-to-ground missiles be duds to ensure greater proportionality. 2) Allow Hamas another 1,000 free rocket launches to see if they can catch up with the body count. 3) Have Israeli soldiers congregate in border barracks so that Hamas's random rockets have a better chance of killing military personnel, to ensure it can claim at least a few military targets. 4) Redefine "holocaust" to refer to deaths of terrorists in numbers under 400 to give greater credence to Hamas's current claims. 5) In the interest of fairness, allow Hamas to establish both the date that war is supposed to begin and the date when it must end. 6) ...

Comforting the Comfortable
The Next Right — Via @jayrosen, this item from the Washington Post's White House Columnist Dan Froomkin seems like a good example of a rot in journalism.   After eight years, we’ve gotten used to having a president whose credibility is shot, whose policy apparatus is utterly politicized, and whose decision-making process is completely opaque. So what do we do with President Obama? Do we treat him with the same skepticism with which we learned to approach Bush? If not, how do we hold him accountable? These are some of the issues I’m wrestling with as I prepare to make the transition from Bush to Obama – and I’d welcome your input.  I'm not sure I understand why this is even a question.  Indeed, it would seem to me that it ...

Washington Post Journalist: Gee, Should We Be As Skeptical With Obama As Were With Bush?
Say Anything — You’d think that, for journalists actually interested in objective and factual journalism - those who think that the 1st amendment guarantees freedom of the press for the express purpose of keeping all political leaders on their toes, this wouldn’t even be a question. But for Dan Froomkin, the Washington Post’s White House columnist, it’s apparently a challenge: After eight years, we’ve gotten used to having a president whose credibility is shot, whose policy apparatus is utterly politicized, and whose decision-making process is completely opaque. So what do we do with President Obama? Do we treat him with the same skepticism with which we learned to approach Bush? If not, how do we hold him accountable? These are some of the issues I’m wrestling ...