http://antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=2201,
“Israel has a right to defend itself,” said President Bush. And against whom was Israel defending itself at dawn on Monday?
A half blind and deaf paraplegic being wheeled out of a mosque after prayers, Sheik Ahmed Yassin was struck by missiles that blew him to pieces. In carrying out the assassination of the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Ariel Sharon used a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship. Thus, in Islamic eyes, we are passive accomplices in the killing.
Instantly, protests erupted in Mosul and Basra. Ayatollah al-Sistani, the Shi'ite leader on whom we depend for a peaceful transfer of power in Iraq, was enraged: “(T)his morning, the occupying Zionist entity committed an ugly crime against the Palestinian people by killing one of their heroes, scholar-martyr Ahmed Yassin.”
Sharon's defenders say the sheik had sanctioned terror attacks on innocent Israelis. But why did Israel not then seize him, expose his complicity in murder, and put him in prison, as Israel had before? Why convert this crippled old sheik into a martyr-saint? Why enhance the prestige of Hamas?
Has the killing made Israel more secure? If so, why were Israeli buses deserted all week? Has it made us more secure? Why then were the travel advisories issued to Americans in the Middle East? Why are U.S. embassies shutting down? How does inflaming the Islamic world against us advance the president's goal of persuading the world that Islam is not America's enemy?
President Bush must begin to realize that his blind solidarity with Sharon, who has shown himself contemptuous of America's interests in the larger region, is among the greatest crosses we have to bear in the war on terror.
A year after the fall of Baghdad, Bush's men are boasting of his triumphs
