InstaPundit writes, or rather, as is Glenn's wont, mostly quotes:
READER TOM BROSZ EMAILS:Anybody notice how many people are, almost simultaneously, berating George Bush for not taking out bin Laden, and berating Sharon for taking out Ahmed Yassin?Yes, I have.
Good to know, good to know.
Now explain the comparison.
No, really:
In land with little hope, Hamas seen as rare benefactorFrom its beginnings in 1987, Hamas has been at the forefront of the campaign of suicide bombings in Israel that has killed hundreds. But among the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, the group is seen as one that nurtures lives with its food and educational and health-care projects.
Hamas' leaders have advocated a holy war against Israel and promised martyrdom for those who die in the struggle against it. Many Palestinians, though, see the group's Islamic foundations as principled and devout.
Dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, Hamas has refused to cooperate with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and denounced its off-and-on negotiations with Israelis. Yet among many Gazans, Hamas is regarded as a disciplined alternative to Arafat's corruption-tainted group and the best hope for achieving statehood.
"From the start, Hamas has devoted itself to the heart of our suffering," Masri said in the family living area furnished with little more than a plastic mat, a wardrobe and seven cheap foam mattresses. "They are not corrupt. They are true to our people."
I'd try to head off anyone thinking of accusing me of supporting Hamas, or being in favor of suicide bombings, but, again, they're insane. They cannot be reasoned with.
And my point, of course, is that I've not heard of al Qaeda doing any sorts of charitable good works on the side. Even if you do consider these to be part of Hamas' evil campaign to do evil and win hearts and minds to the cause of, um, evil (it's so hard to write like the warbloggers, I actually have a vocabulary. . .), the fact remains that they are doing something other than committing acts of terrorism. Does al Qaeda?
Yes, children, I know what Glenn and Tom were getting at. What I'm doing is challenging the presupposition underlying their question. Think you can possibly restrict yourselves to discussing that?
You raise an interesting point, and now I want to rush off to all my colleagues in Middle Eastern studies and bug them for a few minutes . . . but, for what it's worth:
The crossover between charity and 'freedom fighting,' terrorism, militia activity, and all the more militant aspects of Islamic fundamentalist movements is really very common. The Muslim Bortherhood, for example, which has lots of ties to militant activity, is also the sole functioning social service network in Egypt. It's very hard to explain to poor Egyptians that the Muslim Brotherhood is evil, given that their main memory of the organization was the tents and sandwiches they provided to the homeless (and NO ONE ELSE PROVIDED, not the government, not even much from the Red Crescent, if I recall correctly) after that major earthquake in the early 90s.
I do not know if Al Qaida participates or once participated in similar charitable activities (they may have, in Afghanistan, for example, and our press/politicians may have completley ignored that fact in the face of more pressing issues), but I can say I was not at all surprised to find that Al Qaida was/is funded through various muslim charitable organizations. The connections are commonplace.
What bothers me here is the clash of mindset: we Westerners tend to see a huge disparity between the two sorts of activity. Charity is good and militancy is evil. We completely fail to even TRY to make sense out of the connection: both are looked at as ways of protecting the 'umma and advancing its needs. I'm not all in favor of suicide bombers, either, but the childish need to proclaim 'US GOOD! THEM BAD!' obscures a lot of informaton that could help us to negotiate the cultural barriers a hell of a lot better than we have.
Garrity, I considered, and rejected, mentioning the Black Panthers in the entry, since they also did the whole Good Works thing, but are known/remembered chiefly for the rhetorical and actual violence.
Figured no reason to make folks' heads go 'splody this early in the morning. . .
A couple points:
I think it was stupid for Sharon to have Yassin killed, and I think it would have been stupid for the U.S. to assassinate bin Laden too. Assassination=bad. There are a lot of other ways the Al Qaeda problem could have been addressed in years past besides killing bin Laden.
Also, maybe I shouldn't bring this up since I don't remember a specific source for where I heard this, but wasn't it found that the Israeli government had actually helped to start Hamas in the beginning? There are definitely acknowledged, well-documented cases of Israeli intelligence doing the Reichstag-burning thing, as when they tried (and failed) to implement a bomb attack on an Egyptian synagogue and pin it on Arabs to gain support for their cause. The idea is that they helped establish Hamas in the beginning with that aim, though as far as anyone can tell, Hamas went renegade relatively quickly and were out of their control.
So Sharon killing Yassin is sort of like...well, the U.S. killing bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, both of whom we trained and gave weapons too.
Hamas and Al Qaeda have similar goals. Hamas, like other like-minded Palistinian organizations want to drive Israelis out of the Middle East entirely.
AQ wants to do the same thing to a measure, but doesn't wish to stop there - they have a stated long-term goal of making all nations Islamic nations, and to eliminate any opposition anywhere on the planet.
In their collective minds, anyone who is not Islamic is an infidel, and should be killed.
Civilians are looked at as collateral damage, and are - in their minds - OK to kill as well.
That being said, and getting back to the original point, the only way that I think Sharon would be considered to have been mistaken is if he is not prepared for all comers. Killing Yassin is akin to tossing a live squirrel in a room full of dobermans and walking in behind it.
For Sharon to head down this path, he - and Israel by extension - need to be prepared for all-out warfare, because that's what he's about to get.
The other hand grenade that he may throw in the near term (which, IMO would send the whole region up in smoke) is to take out Arafat. Some sources indicate that the IDF has instructions to be prepared to do so; I don't know how reliable that information is.
Things are pretty snarky there now, and I'm not optimistic for the next month or so in that neck of the woods.
As for your other point, Aaron, any good works by Hamas does nothing to mitigate the murder and destruction by them. In that light, they are no different than AQ.
Michael, do you know how many civilians the US killed during the Vietnam War?
No, neither do I, we didn't bother keeping track. The Vietnamese might know, seeing as it was their friends and family members (and we did kind'a branch out into neighboring nations), but the current government is the Enemy, and any numbers they give can be discounted on that basis. I'll go out on a limb and say it's an order of magnitude higher than the number of Israelies (and anyone else who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time) killed by Hamas.
I'm not making the argument that this somehow eliminates "any good works" done by the US, just pointing out that your argument, taken to its logical conclusion, doesn't go anywhere terribly interesting.
Well, from a US or Israeli point of view it does, but for a Palestinian living in the Occupied Territories, or survivor of the Vietnam War. . . I don't have to finish this line of thought, do I?
I have a lot of issues with George Bush, but the fact that he didn't "take out" bin Laden isn't really one of them. Now, I do have a problem with the fact that an utter mess was made of Afghanistan and then dropped for the more attractive mess in Iraq. My suspicion is that this is what really concerns many people, so I'm a little cynical about the particular phrasing/ rhetoric of that email.
I'm also not sure how Hamas' good works come into play. They do matter if you're questioning the morality of the organisation. Personally, I'm really uncomfortable with governments approaching terrorism from a moral perspective. I'd prefer them to approach it from a legal and tactical perspective. This is why I'm bothered by the fact that Yassin was assassinated without any form of accusation/trial/judgment by a relatively objective third party.
If an individual has murdered a bank teller in a robbery on one day, and used the money to rescue orphans the next day, the legal issue of murder still needs to be resolved-- legally. Whether or not that individual is a moral person is up to theologians or deities. Not governments. Because, hey, we're all morally in a gray area in some way or another? Or is it just me? ;-)