Jon Rauch writes:

On March 22, in Gaza, Israel shot a helicopter-fired missile at Yassin. Reaction was swift and scathing. The British condemned the attack as an “unlawful killing.” The European Union said that extrajudicial killings were “contrary to international law.” Turkey’s prime minister said, “This was a terrorism incident.” Most of the United Nations Security Council lined up behind an Algerian resolution condemning “the most recent extrajudicial execution committed by Israel” and denouncing “all attacks against any civilians as well as all acts of violence and destruction.”

The United States vetoed the resolution but did not directly challenge its premises, which were that Yassin was a civilian, that civilians are subject only to civil punishment, and that extrajudicial violence of any sort is therefore illegitimate. Instead, the Bush administration said it was “deeply troubled” by the Yassin killing but that the resolution should also have mentioned Hamas’s attacks against Israel. See? Everyone is a terrorist, but the resolution should have named all the terrorists. Or something.

If those are the rules, then former President Clinton is a terrorist, for he, too, ordered a hit. Clinton attacked Osama bin Laden with a cruise missile and only narrowly missed. According to the New York Times, President Clinton’s national security advisers have testified to the September 11 commission “that Mr. Clinton wanted Mr. bin Laden dead.”

The rap on Clinton, of course, is not that he tried to kill bin Laden but that he failed. Last week, while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was being fricasseed for hitting Yassin, the September 11 commission was grilling Clinton’s former secretaries of State and Defense for missing bin Laden. Even by Washington’s standards, the inconsistency was glaring. Whatever the tactical differences between the two cases, morally they are indistinguishable. . . .

The rest of the piece is also very much worth reading, as usual with Rauch’s work.