Stop Terrorism: Kill Terrorists

That title has been my long-standing policy re terrorism. It was the masthead slogan at my old blog for years on end. It’s simple, easy to put on a business card, and breezily free of Jean-Francois Kerry-esque nuance.

Some people don’t agree, of course. They want to look at root causes or whatever, or make up root causes when the real ones are inconvenient (many if not most al Qaeda terrorists being rich playboys, for instance, which blows a hole in the “poverty causes terrorism” routine).

Some people agree selectively. Ilya Somin (along with Alan Dershowitz, who’s almost always wrong but not in this instance) wonders why:

I don’t often agree with Alan Dershowitz. But he is absolutely right to note the double standards inherent in the near-universal praise for the the recent targeted killing of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi when contrasted with the near-universal condemnation of Israel’s very similar targeting of top Hamas terrorists. Many of the same governments and organizations that now applaud the death of Zarqawi condemned the killing of Hamas’ top leader Sheikh Yassin in 2004.

I think the answer is simple. Liberals tend to let Hamas’ “social services” wing cloud their judgement on its dominant terrorist wing. Al Qaeda has no such wing, and Zarqawi was undoubtedly the most violent face of al Qaeda over the past couple of years. It’s hard to argue for a guy who makes snuff films. It’s easier to argue for a guy–even if he looked like Sauroman and had buckets of blood on his hands–because his minions deliver medicine and other brick-a-brack to moderate their image. I hope al Qaeda never gets into that act, or the Osama Mama will be all over it.

And then there’s who did the killin’. We killed Zarq; the Joooos killed Sauroman. That’s the part Dershowitz is most interested in. And he’s right. Liberals and Europeans tend to dislike it when Jews defend themselves. I’ll leave it to you to decide why that might be.

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