Burning Bush: The President and His Enemies

If there is a hell, then you can be sure that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is roasting there now. And if there is a heaven, then rest assured that whether or not he wins the November election, President George W. Bush has earned his place in it.

What a week for contrasts. A so-called "religious cleric," whose principal contribution to his people was to inspire them to blow themselves up, taking as many innocent civilians along with them, dies and is hailed by the Arabs as a hero. But the principal savior of Arab life alive, a man who rescued more than 20 million Muslims from the clutches of Saddam Hussein, continues to be vilified and excoriated by the Arab press.

Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the quintessential wolf in sheep's clothing, may indeed have been a Muslim cleric. But let's not forget that Joseph Stalin was an ordained priest. And when the State of Israel rightly defended itself from this cold-blooded murderer, it came under a barrage of international condemnation. Among the arguments proffered was that eliminating Yassin would only inflame Palestinians and provoke Hamas. Provoke Hamas? Really make them angry? You gotta be kidding. What are they going to do now? Kill hundreds of Israelis? They are already doing that. Dismember pregnant women? Been there, done that. Blow the arms and legs off children? Ditto.

This reminds me of the claim of the defenders of Pope Pius XII, the foremost moral coward of the 20th century, that he never once condemned the Nazi extermination of European Jewry because he didn't want to provoke the Nazis into further atrocities against the Jews. Had the Pope spoken out, so the advocates of beatification for the Pope argue, the Nazis would have stepped up their campaign against the Jews. But are they really suggesting that the Nazis could have been come up with anything worse than Auschwitz? That the Germans might have stepped up a program that was already killing more than the 15,000 Jews per day in their crematoria? Even when more than 1000 Jews of Rome were rounded up, on October 16, 1943, directly in front of the Pope's Vatican window and kept at a military barracks not 300 feet from his office, Pius did not offer a protest. Was this to protect the Roman Jews from an even worse fate than they met a few days later when nearly all were gassed at Birkenau?

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