How America should hit back at Lebanese terror

Press, 14 August 1989, Page 20

How America should hit back at Lebanese terror

The “Economist” argues for a counter-strike

THE AMERICAN marine who went to Lebanon as a peacekeeper, wearing the blue beret of the United Nations, ended up being hanged by bigots in some Lebanese basement. Lieutenant-Colonel William Higgins may not really have been killed last week, as his assassins claim, in response to Israel’s moonlight kidnapping a few days earlier of Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid. But even if he was killed months ago his murder cries out for an appropriate reply from President Bush. The answer of some Americans, like Senator Robert Dole, has been to blame Isrel for provoking the wild men of Lebanon. Others want instant, violent American retribution against the murderers and the governments that give them succour and sanctuary. Neither of these first reactions is right. Those who criticise Israel’s action on high moral grounds (“an abominable crime,” the Right Rev. Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, called Sheikh Obeid’s abduction) are talking sanctimonious nonsense.

There is no moral equivalence between the criminal who preys on innocents and the State that stops the criminal and — when it can — brings him to justice. Hizbollah, the Iranian-inspired “Party of God” to which the sheikh belongs, has declared itself the enemy of the West. It

has backed up this declaration with kidnapping, extortion, air piracy and mass murder. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” The hard doctrine of Genesis describes justice-in-anarchy. It also describes self-defence. The first duty of a State under attack is to defend itself and protect its citizens. When the attackers are criminals like the Hizbollah gangs, the ideal defence is to haul them before courts and have justice rendered under the rule of law. When that is impossible — and the rule of law has long since collapsed in Lebanon — other methods are justified. This is why it was right for America to bomb Tripoli in 1986 to punish Libya for past terrorist acts and deter it from future ones; right for F. 8.1. agents to abduct a Lebanese hijacker from a yacht off Lebanon’s coast in 1987; and right for American fighters to force down a jet carrying away the man responsible for seajacking the Achille Lauro in 1985.

Morally, the kidnapping of Sheikh Obeid falls into this category. The question remains whether it will work. The killing of Colonel Higgins — if he did die this week — is not a conclusive answer, but Israel’s opera-

tion may have been ill-suited to" its purpose. If Israel hoped to trade the sheikh for its own men in Lebanon it may have misread the Implacability of its enemies; by failing /to consult its friends it exposed itself to a share of the world’s rage as those enemies prepared to muri der Western hostages in revenge.; Whatever errors Israel may have made in the kidnap, it is the world that will be making a mistake if it talks itself into believing that Israel’s behaviour is the main cause of terrorism. The politician’s instinct of Mr Bush, who watched the Carter presidency break apart and the Reagan presidency buckle under the weight of the recurring hostage nightmare, was to distance himself from what Israel had done.

But to respond as a statesman he must go beyond the plea he made for both sides to free their respective prisoners and thus “break the cycle of violence.” That sort of curse-both-their-houses even-handedness is based on wishful thinking. The wishful thought is this: if the world stopped provoking Hizbollah and its kind, terrorism would fade away. It wouldn’t, even if Israel bowed to American pressure to surrender up Sheikh

Obeid for nothing in return. Hizbollah does not act as it does because of some “cycle of violence," but because it chooses to find a lot of unexceptional things sorely provoking. It is provoked by Israel’s existence, not just its actions. It is provoked by British authors who write novels it dislikes. Despite the advent of the putatively moderate President Rafsanjani in Iran, the declared policy of both Hizbollah and its Iranian paymasters is still to extinguish the Jewish State and murder Mr Salman Rushdie.

Against unreason like this it is no policy for free men to mutter, with the Roberts Dole and Runcie, “Don’t provoke them." The answer to terrorism is to wage constant, active, resourceful war against it. Left undisturbed, the madness that breeds in Lebanon does not stay meekly at home. It reaches out, to destroy American jumbo jets over Lockerbie or to blow away lives and limbs in the boulevards of Paris.

Fighting back does not mean heeding calls for the sort of blind retribution that satisfies voters at home by dropping bombs indiscriminately abroad. Military retaliation is justified when the case is clear-cut, when it is possible to single out and hit

precise targets, and when punishment would be likely to have the desired effect., More often the provenance of terrorist attacks is unknown or the culprits beyond reach. In such cases the duty of responsible governments is to swallow their frustration and keep their aircraft carriers in port. Yet even then they do not have to be powerless. < The two best weapons against terrorism have so far been least used. One is to deprive the terrorist organisations of oxygen by applying relentless pressure against Iran, Syria and Libya, the three governments which openly shelter them. The other is to hunt down individual terrorists, both to bring those who are caught to justice and to scare the others.

Israel was on shaky ground if it snatched Sheikh Obeid to bargain for the release of its own prisoners. Too many governments have rewarded kidnappers by buying back their victims with cash and favours. But it had the right idea in making a pin-point attack on one of the people waging terrorist war. These weapons may not save the lives of the handful of hostages now facing their worst-ever week in Lebanon. They may even endanger them. But they offer the best hope for ending the wretched commerce in hostages once and for all. Copyright—The Economist.