Jacques Chirac on Middle East "Fairness"

Chirac says:
"One may well ask if there isn't today a kind of wish to destroy Lebanon -- its infrastructure, its roads, its communications, its energy, its airport. And for what?

"I find honestly -- as all Europeans do -- that the current reactions are totally disproportionate," he said in a live television interview on France's national Bastille Day.

I suppose the "disproportionate" response is due to the fact that Israel has better weapons and better trained soldiers. Chirac thinks that Israel should only respond to the bombing that originates in Lebanon with force no greater than that which the terrorists are able to muster. Anything else just wouldn't be fair to the terrorists.

I'm not sure that the French leader is being hypocritical, because it is quite possible that if the French were being bombed by a lesser power, Jacques Chirac might very well respond only in like manner. That is why France is in the shape it's in.

But to the Israelis it just doesn't make sense to sacrifice its citizens to "fairness" when they have the power to bomb the living crap out of those who mean them harm. Go figure.

The recommendation that the Israelis should act proportionately condemns Israel to a perpetual state of siege by its neighbors. And while that may be good for France, the world economy, and the status quo, it is ridiculous to expect the Israelis to live that way... Because that is no way to live.