THIS OPINION-EDITORIAL in the Sydney Morning Herald slams moral equivalency:

Bleeding hearts left exposed as fools

October 15 2002

Perhaps those who blamed the US for September 11 will now realise they have been deluded.

Who will be on Michael Leunig’s Christmas card list this time? Last year, in the aftermath of the terrorist murders in the United States, the Melbourne-based cartoonist declared that it was time to extend “mercy, forgiveness, compassion” to, wait for it, the leader of al-Qaeda.

Writing in The Age on Christmas Eve, the intellectual guru of Down Under’s leftist luvvies declared: “Might we, can we, find a place in our heart for the humanity of Osama bin Laden and those others? On Christmas Day, can we consider their suffering, their children and the possibility that they too have their goodness? It is a family day, and Osama is our relative.” It remains to be seen whether Leunig will exhibit similar sentiments this Christmas with respect to the weekend’s massacre of the innocents. . . .

Bush’s stance on the coalition against terrorism and/or Iraq may, or may not, be correct. It is driven by an assessment of the threat to US lives rather than by the availability and price of imported fuel. Those who do not recognise this fail to understand contemporary America. It is this lack of comprehension which has dated the views of such well-known leftists as John Pilger in Britain, Noam Chomsky in the US, Scott Burchill and Michael McKinley in Australia, among others. . . .

Whatever personal positions are held about Bush, Blair and John Howard, contemporary terrorism amounts to an attack on Western civilisation. The sooner this is understood, the sooner the likes of Leunig will recognise that bin Laden is one of those brothers who, if given the chance, commits fratricide; before, during or after Christmas.

Indeed.