Belmont Club's Take on Khalil's Assasination

Ordinarily, I don't quote large sections of other blogs or even newspapers. I will make an exception here because the point is so well made: entitled "The Road to Damascus."

Hats off to The Belmont Club.

Hamas' hesitation is evidence that the cellular structure of militant Islamism, meant to provide immunity against counterintelligence is also exacting a high strategic price. The decentralized command and control structure which freed cells to choose their own targets also allowed them to make their own enemies. And make enemies they did. Attacking the United States, seizing the Indian Parlaiment House, blowing up discos in Bali, smashing trains in Madrid and beheading people of every nationality has had the practical effect of multiplying the foes of radical Islam and enabled President Bush to build a global coalition against it. While it has arrogated to itself the power to ignore every civilized limit, Islamic terrorism itself is ironically dependent on their maintenance. Assymetric warfare relies on being able to do what your enemy is forbidden. Terrorism, being militarily weak, relied upon legal restraints, inviolate borders and traditional respect for noncombatants and holy places to provide the shelter that concrete could not. Khalil lived in an unguarded compound in Damascus, in an ordinary residential neighborhood, free to plot the deaths of Jewish civilians. His armor was neither Kevlar nor steel but the certainty -- until now -- that Israel would not attack him across an "international" border. Hama's eagerness to limit the response to Israel proper betrays a growing fear that borders no longer provide sanctuaries. In the weeks following the masscre of schoolchildren in Beslan, the Russian strongman Vladmir Putin announced his intention to strike pre-emptively at terrorist targets all over the world.

The reader may judge for himself how respectful Russia might be of "international law". But both Putin's warning and the Israeli carbomb attack in Damascus are a warning that Golda Meir may have been wrong. She once said, "there will be no peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians love their children more than they hate the Jews". She forgot the alternative which Putin may even now be thinking of. 'that there will be peace in the Middle East when every Arab school is as secure as Belslan; and the Kaaba as inviolate as any synagogue in Jersualem.' America must win this war before it is too late -- for Islam.