Comments on: Ourselves Alone

By: ottovbvs

ottovbvs — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:51:29 +0000

Speaking as someone who was present when the IRA set off a bomb at a housing exhibition in London about 30 years ago, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen any differentiation in terrorist tactics. My wife and two kids were with me btw. My father was also serving with the British army in the middle east when the Stern gang or Irgun blew up the King David’s Hotel and hung three British sergeants they’d taken prisoner which sounds very like the sort of tactics being practised by Hezbollah when they take Israelis prisoner. Terrorism is terrorism period. The US support of it in Ireland was disgraceful but then US political principles have always been heavily leavened with hypocrisy. These comparisons with the past are largely futile. We must deal with the here and now. At the moment the Israelis have killed over 1000 Palestinians about a third of them children in an effort to eradicate Hamas that is clearly doomed to failure. Even the Israelis admit it. The question then arises what does Israel hope to achieve with this war which except for some tactical successes they are clearly losing in the wider strategic sense. Supporters of Israel will deny this but their strategic bankruptcy is well illustrated by the fact they and their mouthpieces in the west are touting a political settlement built around Fatah which has effectively been eliminated as political factor by the Israeli action in Gaza.

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:34:24 +0000

The case of Luis Posada Carriles is particularly relevant. He is accused of organizing the destruction of a Cuban commercial airliner and a series of bombings in Havana. The Venezuelans claim he is responsible for the deaths of over 70 people on that plane (the plane was going back to Cuba from Caracas). However, the Cuban community here treats him like a hero, so in addition to any legal hurdles it is politically impossible to extradite him. If the shoe were on the other foot, we would say that Venezuela was "harboring a known terrorist."

By: elblot

elblot — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:16:02 +0000

Great post. I have read about a similar situation with ant-Castro militants which seems relevant to this discussion. Also, there is that anti-Iranian group that was operating out of Northern Iraq. It is not really the “terrorist” tactics we object to, but rather the goals of those committing the acts. It seems pretty obvious to me when you honestly assess these situations.

By: jetan

jetan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:14:44 +0000

Perhaps I am quibbling, and perhaps I am overstating things, but didn’t Israel start out as, in Douthat’s words, “a stateless, terrorism-prone Jewish group”? Had America wanted to end it rigt there we could have and it probably would have been in our interest to do so as we were already deeply entwined in the Arabian oilfields – so there were other reasons. It seems to me that we have been through this before, and not as a counterfactual. I further seem to recall that there were many prescient Jews who believed that the Zionist dream was more likely to be a nightmare. Even today I suspect that the American-Jewish Community and the Israel Lobby are not as synonymous as they are often portrayed.