When you fight fire with fire, someone is bound to get burned, so goes the old adage. Yet it is a tactic still used, especially in warfare. Nearly a month ago now, what is assumed to be, the Israeli government launched a massive intelligence operation against Hezbollah. Causing electronics to combust simultaneously across hundreds of people, 12 people died and thousands more were wounded. This operation was fighting fire with fire, terrorism against terrorists; but at what point is the line crossed, or is it ever drawn?
This question has weighed upon me for a very long time. Even before the Pager Explosions my mind was focused on the idea of what a noble war was. Having family who have fought in conflicts in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, war has been a part of my family’s legacy. Yet, even dating back to the conflict my eldest great uncle fought in, WWII, the price of the war seemed too steep.
Growing up, I have always criticized the use of the Atomic Bomb to end the fight in the Pacific Theatre. I remember flipping through a National Geographic magazine of WWII, morbid curiosity having a tight hold, looking at the devastation left in Japan. The blast shadows forever hold a place in my mind. Eventually, I learned that the bombs were dropped as a show of force, not to destroy military presences. I grew to despise that. Eventually, I came to terms that the war had to be ended, the horrors had to cease, but the cost was so great. The number killed in by the Little Boy and the Big Boy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still unknown, but is estimated to be at nearly 200,000. The use of great and terrible weapons put fear in the heart of the Empire of Japan and closed the curtain on the Pacific Theatre.
Fire fights fire in war, but the innocent get burned, and the proof is in the people who have been burnt to shadows upon Japanese stones. Since then, a line has been drawn in regards to atomic warfare, and its name is mutually assured destruction. The politics of peace for this agreement is nothing more than a worldwide Mexican stand off. Yet the line was drawn then.
Nowadays, it seems countries are causing handheld electronics to explode en masse. Alone, it can be considered a great work of an intelligence operation to disrupt the enemies of a state, but it was not meant to kill. If it was more, than 10 people and two children would have been killed by it. From this it can be gleaned that it was meant to put a phobia of electronics into those who would use them. To brutalize the communications of an enemy and thousands of civilians were injured to make it a reality.
It is easy to judge the morals of war when you haven’t fought in one and have never been around one. But in my peace filled life, safe in the American countryside, being raised on stories of martyrs and those who fight without violence, I wonder if anyone has the valor to draw the line when it comes war and conflict. Not one in written in fear but written with the intention of the burned, when fire is fought with fire.
