Terrorist Label Not Helpful?

This is from an interview with Mark Malloch Brown, Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations:

What is troubling to me is the US and UK now carry with them a particular set of baggage in the Middle East. The challenge for them is to recognise that ultimately they have to allow others to share the lead in this effort diplomatically and (in putting together) a stabilisation force.

It's not helpful for it again to appear to be the team that led on Iraq or even on Afghanistan. It's not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism. Hizbollah employs terrorist tactics, it is an organisation however whose roots historically are completely separate and different from Al Qaeda.

Got that? He admits that Hezbollah uses terrorist tactics, but we're not supposed to call them terrorists. Why? I don't know. He probably thinks it would hurt their feelings or something.

As I pointed out yesterday in a post about the European Union being too skittish to call Hezbollah terrorists, it is little wonder that many citizens in the world tend to forget about the true nature of the evil we're fighting and why we're fighting it. If we can't even label the enemy properly how on earth are we going to defeat them?

If using terror tactics does not make one a terrorist, what does?

When are some of these people going to admit that there is no moral equivalence to what Hezbollah does and what Israel does? Hezbollah targets civilians. Hezbollah attacks Israel from civilian areas so that when Israel hits back they can use the civilian casualties as propaganda. Israel is a nation trying to protect itself and its citizens. Hezbollah is a group willing to kill any amount of people - be they Israelis or their own people - in their crusade to drive the Jews into the ocean.

There is no equivalence between the Israelis and Hezbollah. There aren't even a lot of the "shades of gray" bleeding heart liberals are always referring to. There is a country trying to live in peace and a group of hate-mongers attacking that country for no other reason than what religion the majority of citizens in that country practice.

On the way home from work yesterday I was listening to the news on the radio. During the updates about the situation in the middle east I heard the reporters talking about rockets that had killed Israeli citizens and IED's that had killed Iraqis. What amazes me is how the media rarely, if ever, reports on who is responsible for those attacks. When Israel fires a missile at a site from which Hezbollah is launching rockets and ends up killing some civilians in collateral damage the media is quick to call it an "Israeli attack" that killed civilians. Yet Hezbollah rains rockets down in Israeli communities you rarely here the media say that the rockets were part of a Hezbollah attack. Or that the rockets killed civilians.

I'm not saying that the media should make a conscious effort to demonize these Islamic extremists. Rather, I think the media should just report the truth about them. They employ terror tactics, so they are terrorists. Period.

There shouldn't be a lot of confusion about this.