Terror Groups: Are Differences Important?

President Bush’s larger point, and the one Adam Shatz misses in his April 15 commentary, is that violent, radical Islam is “one big thing” challenging humanity the world over. A victory for Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Muqtada Sadr’s “militia” or even Taliban holdouts is a victory for all of them; conversely, if the world can unite to demonstrate that there is no future in any one of their nihilistic campaigns, they all are weakened.

Sure, their agendas and root ideologies are not necessarily “identical,” but they share strength and support in the same way that disparate, even rival, Mafia families work together to subvert the law. And they all commit their murder in the name of Allah.

Paul Fussel, the great literary critic and World War II veteran, lamented the “death of nuance” during wartime but realized that it made no difference if the bullets were being shot at him by a fanatical SS trooper or an Italian conscript. It is not a matter of appreciating the differences between the various jihadists but understanding that we are at war, ultimately, with the same “ideology of murder.”

Vincent Basehart

Los Angeles

*

Shatz’s commentary about the supposed moral clarity of our president regarding terrorists is right on the mark. I would just like to add one cogent point: In King George III’s view, George Washington and other founding fathers, as well as the militias that fought the British, were terrorists, and we revere them to this day. It would be nice to point that out to the administration.

Frank A. Grande

Lakewood

*

Shatz is dead right that Bush ignorantly clumps all violence under one misleading heading, helping to rationalize his own ideologies and murderous policies. But it is frustrating and tiresome that informed intellectuals like Shatz repeat, endlessly, the fiction that the suicide bombings inside Israel are “motivated by long-simmering nationalist rage against a 37-year-old occupation.”

The “long-simmering rage” part is true, but the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have all stated, many times over, and in writing, that their beef is not against the 37-year-old occupation but against the entire state of Israel, which they are committed to destroying. Kindly stick to the facts.

Nina Menkes

Venice