24-Feb-10: A further word about systematic murderers

Michael Totten, an American who has written extensively from many of the Middle East's battlefields as a freelance reporter and who describes himself as "weird combination of liberal, libertarian, and neocon", makes some points that seem to have gotten overlooked in the Dubai assassination jamboree.

"Even as European Union officials perfunctorily squawk about the use of forged passports by the assassins, few others have grounds to complain. Al-Mabhouh was a terrorist commander on a mission to acquire Iranian weapons for use against civilians. He was a combatant. Unlike his victims, he was fair game. He would have been fair game for even an air strike if he were in Gaza. As he was, instead, in Dubai, he was taken out quietly without even alerting, let alone harming, any of the civilians around him. If only Israel could fight all its battles this way. It would be the cleanest and least-deadly war in the history of warfare. Even some of Israel’s harshest critics should understand that... Hamas and Hezbollah use civilians as human shields. Hezbollah uses an entire country as a vast human shield... If the Arab-Israeli conflict will continue — and it will continue — civilians on both sides should prefer combatants be taken off the board quietly while everyone else goes about their daily business in peace."

This is from "More Like This Please", published yesterday on Commentary's website. The whole article is here.