"Disproportionate"

An adorable little girl, in pigtails, holding a crayon in her hand, relative in the background with camera in hand. Given those few details you might imagine her sitting at a kitchen table in front of a coloring book. It reminded me a little of the glee with which Juliet and I once took to drawing on the walls of our old home, before new wallpaper was put up. A brief relaxation of the cardinal rule regarding where crayon artistry can be appropriately applied. But instead of a coloring book, or even bare plaster, this girl's writing on a missile, that's about to be dispatched to Lebanon. This photograph absorbed me for 5 minutes when I turned the newspaper page. The photograph offers a contrast of aggression and innocence, and a sad commentary on the flaring, and hard to understand, situation in Lebanon and Israel. Hard to understand for those of us who haven't grown up with arch enemies, who haven't been raised generation after generation to despise another race, religion, or nationality. Or whose first close experience with real visceral terrorism occurred only 5 years ago.
The one word I hear in every report on the current situation in Israel and Lebanon is "disproportionate." 24 Israeli soldiers, 17 civilians, compared to 384 Lebanese, mostly civilian. It's hard to understand why there isn't resounding disapproval from our leaders. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post points out, "Bush and Rice have staked their Middle East policy on a single incontrovertible idea -- that terrorism is bad -- and it has led them to the mistaken notion that Israel can achieve long-term security by creating a kind of scorched-earth buffer zone in southern Lebanon." Which hits at the crux of a dilemma: if Hezbollah are terrorists, but Israel is wantonly killing civilians, who's right? Robinson concludes, "The next time you hear someone praise the simplicity of George W. Bush's worldview, keep in mind that what you don't know can indeed hurt you."