A Double Standard

Frank Gaffney looks at the war on terror and the differences in how it is being fought. As Frank writes, “the U.S would never accept the limits being pushed on Israel.”

How We Fight Terrorists

America launched air and ground assaults on Afghanistan, aimed at destroying not only the al Qaeda safe havens but toppling the Taliban regime. We damaged or destroyed critical Afghan infrastructure so as to deny its use to the enemy. Civilian casualties occurred, as did refugee flows. At one point, the U.N. declared the resulting dislocation a humanitarian crisis.

Once the campaign to eliminate al Qaeda was launched, there was no consideration given to negotiating with the terrorists or the government that afforded them protection. The United States would not have contemplated a U.N.-mandated ceasefire, let alone the insertion of an international peacekeeping force under a Chapter 7 mandate from the Security Council--whose purpose, inevitably, would have been to protect the terrorists from our military, not the other way around.

And most especially, it would have been inconceivable that the U.S. could accede to one of its enemy's central demands--for example, the removal of all American forces from the Mideast--as part of a negotiated ceasefire brokered by the U.N. and approved by the Taliban at the direction of al Qaeda.

How We Expect Israel To Fight Terrorists

First, Israel was told it must not undermine the Lebanese government, even though the latter had not only acquiesced to what amounts to a Hezbollah-controlled state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon. The government in Beirut actually has two Hezbollah ministers in its cabinet--a role al Qaeda never enjoyed in Taliban Afghanistan. This injunction had the practical effect of limiting Israeli efforts to press officials in Beirut to disassociate themselves from the terrorists in their midst.

Then, the U.S. embraced the idea that Israel must reward the government that has allowed Hezbollah to occupy and operate against the Jewish State from the part of south Lebanon the Israelis foolishly and unilaterally vacated in 2000. Where we destroyed the regime that afforded safe haven to our foes, Israel has been told it must make a further territorial concession to its counterpart by surrendering to Lebanon a small area known as Shebaa Farms that Israel has occupied since 1967.

It only gets worse from there. It makes me wonder how anyone can expect such a double standard to be employed, let alone enforced. It's no wonder Israel has said “Go to Hell!”

I would, too.