Oh but Skybird, what about Just War!
Don't even kid me. Just war was once a concept that had a meaning and a purpose. Today it no longer has a meaning, nor serves the intended purpose: to prevent European Christians from murdering each other to death thus letting Europe become easier prey for Islam. That is all there, was, to it.
A just war is incompatible with an asymmetric war, because asymmetry forsees one of the sides not playing by the same rules of just war. It is a misconception to believe you must show mercy for those who would not return the mercy. Don't capture, let this soldier go free and return to his land. Wrong. He will return to the army of the enemy by his own choice or by force and fight against you another day because that is his sole purpose in life, or the purpose of his sultan.
The call for just war is aiming at the wrong target. You must teach it to the Hizbollah so that they can practice it and agree to the terms with you. Otherwise they have their own ideas about how to wage war, inspired by their Quran. Jewish moral versus Islamic moral do not match, they're incompatible, thus, a Christian appeal for just war is an attempt to sign a non-aggression pact with a wild lion. After he eats the Jew, he'll turn at you and attempt to bring down 10 of your airplanes.
How can you talk of peace with their militants if they will not settle for anything other than unconditional extermination? It reminds me of the infantile Rudolf Hess. Sure there were those British who wanted to sign peace, but most didn't, and the British didn't accept anything but unconditional surrender in the end. I wonder if the people demanding peace and cease-fires already know when the Hizbollah will strike again. Because I know there can't be peace. If only the Hizbollah cared to inform their western allies so that they could inform the rest of us, I might miss my bus, but people in the region will die.
"Accuse them of what you practice, insult them of what you are" - I think this old subversive rule resumes well our just war advocates. Accuse Israel of state-terrorism, accuse Israel of using human-shields, accuse Israel of not caring for human life - it was Hassan Nasrallah who told the Arabs of Haifa to leave this city "so that we don't have to spill your blood, which is our blood." Despite appearing to put different weights on Israeli and Arab lives, this peaceful gentleman is a liar ("Lie, lie always"; "Lie into the truth") because he has no problem killing Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims in Iraq.
It's not a just war, it's an asymmetric war. The basic principle behind such a war is granting one side unconditional right to every crime and brutality and disarming the other by moral paralizing demands. Of course, this only proves the moral superiority of one side. If the accused wasn't morally sensible, conscious, it would be impossible to inhibit him appealing to his ethical duties. And if the accuser also had the same duties in the plane of his own conducts, he would feel equally restrained and there would've been no asymmetry at all. It's exactly the fact of releasing one side from the moral obligations of the other that gives the asymmetrical combatant the strategic advantage of his position. To the success of this stratagem, it is essential that the accusing speach always comes from the guilty to the innocent, by the criminal against the victim. Their collaborators don't realize it, but the more vehement and morally indignant an accusation, the greater a proof of their crimes it is. An example, while in the western media the Israelis are condemned as monsters, the Muslim world rejoices with the Hizbollah:
http://pmw.org.il/bulletins_Aug2006.htm#b020806
They know of our moral obligations while they also know that their only moral duty is the blatant glorification of their own crimes which are what gives them their victory in the asymmetric war.
Have you seen the Muslim & Friends protests that occured all over the world? Was the German TV kind enough to show you their posters such as "Europe is the Cancer, Islam is the cure" (from a protest in London) or "Kill those who insult Islam" or did they choose to ignore it because the first poster would disrupt the fragile moral equivalence construction?