MORAL CLARITY

Is Andrew Sullivan losing his?

...the Chechnya situation strikes me as one in which the necessary distinction between terrorists' methods and the injustices that sometimes fuel them is not as iron-clad as, say, in our war against al Qaeda or against Saddam. The truth is: Putin has treated Chechnya barbarically, and his brutal suppression of legitimate demands for autonomy is partially responsible for the chaos in that region and the violence across Russia. We should therefore not give in to the easy notion that Putin and we are on the same side in this war. Putin is trying to destroy self-government in Chechnya in favor of Russian imperialism.

Wow, actual nuance from a conservative. Obviously I agree with him on this, but I wonder if he feels that this distinction also applies to Israel's thirty-seven year occupation and colonization of Palestine and the terrorism which has resulted?

The basic conservative script holds that there are two, and only two, teams: US(The United States and whichever countries are part of our Coalition of the Moment-good!) and THEM(everyone else-bad!). This lazy and simple-minded moral calculus is exemplified perfectly by Victor Davis Hanson, pet historian of the Moral Clarity Brigade:

Ask yourself: What do a Russian ten-year-old, a poor black farmer in Darfur, an elderly pensioner in Israel, a stockbroker in New York, and a U.N. aid worker in Afghanistan have in common? In the last three years, they have all died in similar ways: Unarmed and civilian, they were murdered by a common cowardly method fueled by a fascist ideology.

Hanson is correct that the thread of radical Islamism does, to some extent, run through each of these examples, but that's also about all they have in common. While there is no excuse for the murder of civilians, it's simply ignorant not to recognize that the events Hanson mentions arise from very different circumstances and contexts, and thus will require different strategies to prevent them occuring in the future.

Listen: opposing Putin's vicious methods against the Chechens does not equal supporting aspiring Chechen Muslim theocrats; Recognizing that Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians is a constant incitement to terrorism does not equal excusing Hamas' suicide bombings; Recognizing that there are longstanding ethnic and cultural factors contributing to the conflict in Darfur does not equal excusing the Janjaweed genocide.

President Bush has claimed repeatedly that we are "not in a war with Islam," but if he follows the advice of people like Hanson and approaches every situation in which radical Islam is a factor as yet another front in the War on Terror, we soon will be.