Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Saul Singer wonders if the moral clarity Bush showed in his controversial June 24th speech (in which he condemned the policies of the Palestinian leadership) might not be fading already:

[…] there is the US response to Israel’s killing of archterrorist Salah Shehadeh, who has been held responsible for the deaths of about 200 Israeli civilians. As is typical in Israel, a debate rages over whether Shehadeh could have been killed with a smaller bomb, or whether there was an intelligence failure. But it is a bit rich for the White House to call the strike ‘heavy handed’ when, according to Sunday’s New York Times, the United States pounded whole Afghan villages at least twice, each time killing dozens of civilians. In each case — one to suppress alleged anti-aircraft fire (which locals claim was a wedding celebration) and the other to destroy an ammunition dump — it is unclear why entire villages had to be strafed from the air. Israel, it is agreed, dropped a single bomb on a single building.

Asked to explain this double standard, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer stated ‘the crucial difference … was [that Israel made] a deliberate attack against a building in which civilians were known to be located.’ Just who does the US think lived in those Afghan villages?

The fact that the White House found itself resorting to such a risible statement is a worrisome sign that Bush’s historic shot of moral clarity is already wearing off. If Bush were consistent with his own speech, he would have expressed sorrow over the loss of civilian life, but placed blame squarely on Shehadeh himself — first for engaging in terrorism and second for cynically hiding behind civilians, knowing that Israel goes to tremendous lengths to avoid killing them. This loss of moral clarity is not just a rhetorical problem; it undermines Israel’s right to self-defense and therefore encourages further terrorism.

Related: Letter from Gotham explores the idea of “accidental murder” as it regards the Gaza attack that killed Hamas military chief Sheikh Shehadeh and several civilians:

If someone is responsible for ‘accidental murder,’ which is the farthest limit of the excusable, then how much more responsible is s/he for causing civilian deaths that were well nigh inevitable, given the circumstances. Now, isn’t that the case with the raid on Gaza?

The Israelis considered that killing civilians was acceptable in the process of killing a lethal enemy. The responsibility for their deaths is ours alone (I say ours out of a sense of solidarity), as in the case of accidental murder.

We just have to live with that. I’ll take it. I’d rather live with that, than allow a Murder Incorporated like Hamas to grow. But first, I must admit it, otherwise, as NZ Bear says, we become lost in the same thicket of circuitous moral evasions as the terrorists.

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