Just Kill the Snake Already

After a long stretch of tiresome Catholic Boosterism which damn near made me give up on him, David Warren reminds me he’s still one of the clearest foreign policy thinkers in the business:

On the moral question, whether it was right for the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to order the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, there is no difference from the question whether it would be right to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden co-founded Al Qaeda, Yassin founded Hamas. These are organizations which exist for the express purpose of killing people; Qaeda being committed to killing “Crusaders and Zionists” plus bystanders; Hamas more specifically Jews plus bystanders. The question is not whether one should do it, but how.

Read that last line again and smile.