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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 2, 2007 / 14 Iyar, 5767

Rules of Engagement

By Walter Williams


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The March 23 Iranian capture of 15 British Royal Navy sailors should raise a number of questions. The sailors were part of the crew of HMS Cornwall, a state-of-the-art frigate bristling with high-tech surveillance devices and advanced weaponry. The sailors, dispatched in small boats, were boarding and inspecting merchant vessels in Iraqi waters for contraband.


Why weren't the six Iranian patrol boats picked up by radar, and why weren't warning shots fired as they approached the British crafts? Was HMS Cornwall Commander Jeremy Woods incompetent, or was he ordered to stand by and do nothing?


Standard operating procedure for a Royal Navy boarding party is for the mother ship to be in a position of providing covering or warning fire. There is some speculation that, when the sailors were captured, Commodore Nick Lambert, Britain's senior officer in the area, was trying to work out rules of engagement with the Ministry of Defence in London. That strikes me as a hell of a time to be working out rules of engagement.


You say, "What should HMS Cornwall have done?" They should have fired warning shots, and if the Iranians persisted, they should have been blown out of the water. You might say, "That would have endangered the lives of the 15 British sailors!" That's one of the tragedies of war: People get killed.


Britain isn't alone in using questionable rules of engagement. U.S. troops have been in pitched battles with terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan in which terrorists run into a mosque to seek safety. There have been reports that terrorists have used mosques as arms caches. However, U.S. Lt. Col. Christopher Garver unequivocally said that U.S. troops do not enter mosques for the "sole purpose of disrupting insurgent activities."


During the Italian campaign of WWII, U.S. forces found Germans using the historic Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino as an observation post. Our bombers turned the monastery into a heap of rubble. According to the laws of war, if combatants use protected property, such as places of worship and hospitals, as shields or camouflage, they are guilty of violations of the laws of war and are responsible for the protected property. Today's politically correct rules of engagement unnecessarily risk the lives of our fighting men and women and reduce their efficiency.


The capture of the 15 Royal Navy sailors raises another issue. Geneva Convention rules say, "No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties," adding that prisoners of war "are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons . . . especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof, and against insults and public curiosity."


Iran's parading of prisoners before the media and coercing of confessions violate the Geneva Convention, which only requires prisoners to give their name, rank and serial number to a captor. How much of a world outrage was there to Iran's mistreatment of prisoners compared with the allegations of prisoner mistreatment by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib? There was little or none.


The West's survival requires that we wake up and recognize the true character of the enemy we face. We are involved in a clash with a culture that has little regard for the Western values that hold the sanctity of human life dear. Terrorists specifically target civilian populations. It makes no difference to them whether their victims are babies, women or children. In fighting the war on terrorism, the West goes to considerable lengths, often risking the lives of our troops, to avoid civilian casualties. The West has the means, but not the will, to utterly destroy terrorists and countries that give them sanction. I hate to think of what the terrorists might do to give us the will.

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© 2006, Creators Syndicate.

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