Via Instapundit comes this absurd claim from The Economist about Palestinian suicide bombings,
Yet Palestine does not fit the September 11th template. For this is terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause: the independent statehood that America itself has taken pains to say it supports. In principle, Mr Bush could solve his riddle by supporting the end but not the violent means by which the Palestinians have chosen to attain it.
No, sorry, it certainly does fit the September 11th template. The cause that motivates terrorists is completely irrelevant. People who would intentionally murder civilians for political purposes are terrorists in the Sept. 11 template regardless of what their cause is.
The Economist thinks that what separates the two is the different political goals, forgetting that what unites them is far more important — the toll of innocents indiscriminately murdered.
Polls out this week show Americans overwhelmingly siding with Israel. I don’t think that has much at all to do with an appreciation of the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but rather a gut instinct reinforced by Sept. 11 that people who walk into hotels and blow themselves up during Passover do not deserve the sort of hearing that The Economist extends to them.
European thinkers seem to think that the best way to address terrorism is to, in essence, listen to what the terrorists are trying to tell us. But, in fact, those who would murder innocent people to get their point across are exactly the sorts of folks whose views do not deserve any sort of hearing at all.
Source:
Sharon’s War. The Economist, April 4, 2002.