Despite some shortcomings, President Biden delivered a strong speech on Tuesday defending Israel and condemning the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists.
“There are moments in this life . . . when pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world,” Biden said at the beginning of his remarks. “The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend. The bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas — a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews. This was an act of sheer evil.”
It was an excellent opening, but the most important line came later in the speech when Biden discussed how he had spoken to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and told Netanyahu, “If the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive, and overwhelming.”
That is exactly the right way for Americans to think about the proper response. If ISIS — or some other entity whose stated purpose for being is to kill Americans — controlled Tijuana and terrorists invaded the United States in order to slaughter 1,200 innocent civilians, what would the proper response be? Our just goal would be the destruction of ISIS — a “decisive” war rendering it unable to commit large-scale atrocities in the future.
That just end, of course, ought to be pursued through just means. As Biden said shortly after describing how Americans would respond in a similar situation: “Terrorists purposefully target civilians, kill them. We uphold the laws of war — the law of war. It matters. There’s a difference.” Exactly right again. There’s all the moral difference in the world between terrorism that deliberately targets civilians and a just war that targets combatants.