Friday, June 9, 2006
Neo-neocon comments on Alan Dershowitz's statement addressing the double-standard toward targeted assassinations the world has shown with regard to the death of Zarqawi. I think she makes some good points that certainly figure in, but perhaps understates the pure chauvinism involved in the double-standard. If Hamas were related to the IRA, for instance, no doubt the British attitude would have been different than the one Dershowitz quotes, but as long Hamas sticks to killing Jews and keeps the rest of their program (blowing up American diplomats and encouraging suicide bombers in Iraq) at a level quiet enough to be ignored in the Western press (and the Western press seems able to ignore quite a damn lot), they enjoy a level of protection they don't warrant.
neo-neocon: Targeted assassinations and Zarqawi: he's really most sincerely dead
So I believe something additional is involved here, and that is the fact that Zarqawi was a terrorist whom even extreme leftists and Hamas apologists have had trouble wrapping their minds around. He resembled nothing more than the bogeyman, a figure of horrific brutality more appropriate to the nightmares of childhood...
Readers will be perversely entertained by the first comment.
"... was a terrorist whom even extreme leftists and Hamas apologists have had trouble wrapping their minds around."
Yes. But he was killing Iraqis and Jordanians and Shiites. He had not gotten round to Jews which would have balanced the "international community"'s reaction.
I also noticed the ranting racist who showed up just after the first commentor. What say we give them clubs and put them in a small room. Then shoot the winner.
Sometimes the worst threat to your cause are the extremists who say they support it.