Alan Dershowitz Tries The Wrong Case

Alan Dershowitz, Obama supporter and America’s favorite “defender of Israel,” has just issued his ruling on “targeted assassinations” in the wake of Obama’s Osama hit, and uses it to make a point about the Jewish state.

“So let the world stop applying a double standard to Israel and let it start judging the merits and demerits of military tactics such as targeted killing. On balance, targeted killing, when used prudently against proper military targets, can be an effective, lawful, and moral tool in the war against terrorism.”

There’s no problem with that, except Dershowitz, as he does often, is harvesting low hanging fruit while ducking the thorny issue of the propriety of rendition, waterboarding and other “harsh interrogation” techniques which, years after Obama banned them, made the targeted killing in question possible.

In the past, Dershowitz has taken an equivocating position on the matter, creating an improbable, corny Hollywood “ticking-bomb” scenario in which he might condone “torture,” or at least understand its use. Of course, even that tentative mumbo jumbo came before Obama was president. In fact, the context was an “advice column” to the Democrats warning his party not be seen as national security wimps in the upcoming 2008 election. Now that Dershowitz’s man has occupied the White House and the President’s first clear-cut political victory is the product of outlawed Bush-era interrogations, I wonder what, if anything, the liberal legal eagle will have to say – leaving Israel aside.