When Is It Okay to Murder Children?

Loose Canon would like to see the United Nations headquarters in New York turned into condominiums. Such a change would elevate the moral tone of the neighborhood. But for those of you who still believe in this useless institution, here's a piece by Joshua Muravchik on why the U. N. has never been able to take a stand against terrorism:

"A proposed U.N. convention against terrorism has been stalled since 1997. The holdup? How to define terrorism. But this is nothing more than a semantic trick. The Islamic states insist that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose. Putting a bomb in a market or train or bus is not an act of terrorism, they say, if it is done for a righteous purpose; namely national liberation or resistance to occupation.

"To say there is a problem of definition is to focus on a word. The real question is whether it is ever legitimate to target women, children and other noncombatants. For the Islamic states, the answer is yes."

Muravchik says that the reason the U. N. has never been able to speak clearly on terrorism is the "stubborn efforts of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, made up of 56 states - nearly 30% of the U.N.'s membership."


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