An editorial from The New Republic: Fog of War:

“The occasion for the American flailing is Israel’s antiterrorist operation in the West Bank, which the United States cannot but support in principle but is failing to support in practice. What Israel calls Operation Defensive Shield is in no significant way different from what the United States called Operation Enduring Freedom, except that it is even more urgent, since the killers in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Haifa and Netanya and Afula come from next door. But suddenly the United States is treating Israel’s campaign of self-defense as just a huge strategic headache. In the weeks after the destruction of the World Trade Center, the joke made the rounds that Ariel Sharon had called George W. Bush to counsel restraint, but the joke is no longer funny.”

Compare and contrast: Word Play: all wars against terrorism are not the same by Peter Beinert, editor of The New Republic:

“Does Israel have the same right to defend itself against suicide bombers in Tel Aviv as the United States has to defend itself against suicide hijackers in New York? Is an attack on the Indian parliament as evil as an attack on Congress? Absolutely. But the question isn’t moral; it’s strategic. And strategically, Israel’s and India’s wars against terrorism differ radically from America’s because Israel and India aren’t merely fighting a terrorist network; they’re fighting a people. And a people can be militarily occupied, but they can’t be militarily crushed. The moral right to respond to terror with single-minded, overwhelming force doesn’t make such a response successful. And in the end, if a government’s response to terror doesn’t stop future terror, the moral clarity it provides is cold comfort indeed.”