Soccer Dad

Remembering 9/11

Many excellent columns were written after 9/11/2001, but my favorite remains "When Innocents are the Enemy" by the late Michael Kelly.
The column is filled with many excellent observations, but the best is:

I don't doubt Arafat's shock. And I don't think he had anything directly to do with the monstrous evil of Sept. 11. Indeed, it is possible that what happened yesterday had nothing to do with the Middle East. But this evil rose, with hideous logic, directly from the philosophy that the leaders and supporters of the Palestinian cause have long embraced and still embrace -- a philosophy that accepts the murder of innocents as a legitimate expression of a legitimate struggle.

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand.

Kelly questions the unquestioned understanding given the PLO all these many years. Well yes, alas, they kill people, but their cause is just. Few questioned whether a movement that was fueled by terror could possibly be legitimate. The past eleven years stand as testimony that the answer to that question is negative.
The failure of many to fight Palestinian terror and to lend it a patina of legitimacy is one of the factors leading to 9/11. We should never forget that fighting terror is an all encompassing job. It is not something that lends itself to excusing some terror because we identify with the cause. If Arafat had not been excused and, eventually, sanitized, Bin Laden may never have achieved his noteriety three years ago.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 10, 2004 05:37 AM | TrackBack