Hanson: Insane, Amoral Posturing on Global Jihad

We urge gentle readers to consider classicist Victor Davis Hanson's essay on the disturbing tendency of political figures to equate the actions of Hezbollah and Israel. Hanson compares the excuses made for Islamic terror to the equanimity with which democracies viewed the rise of facism in the 1930s:

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq , the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan . European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet — and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians’ past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist — not an Israeli bomb — might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago .

In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find support do not accept culpability for their actions.

We mourn the death, destruction and privation that Israeli actions have wrought on Lebanon. But we know of no effective alternative. When Hezbollah is lobbing rockets that explode to shoot ball bearings like bullets 100 meters in every direction, killing civilians indiscriminately (Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze, by the way, as illustrated by this poignant picture of an Israeli Druze woman killed by a terrorist rocket), and when they deliberately place their rocket batteries in populated areas and then threaten to kill anyone in the community who tries to evacuate, we know of nothing that can be done except to rout out the monstrous terrorists who perpetuate this madness.

"Collateral damage" understates the human toll of military action. But the alternative is to let the murderers expand and perpetuate their murder, a far deadlier outcome.