The Washington Post is taking moral relativism to new heights. The Post’s Beirut bureau chief Liz Sly and contributor Suzan Haidamous co-authored a fluff piece that essentially attempts to re-define the terrorist group Hezbollah as a legitimate political movement.
Going on “tour” with the Lebanese Shia militia, Sly and her colleague took the word of Hezbollah leadership at face value in an apparent effort to normalize the morally depraved non-state actors.
On tour with Hezbollah in Lebanon, where they’re out to show that they, not Trump, are the ones fighting terrorism https://t.co/dPoWDYYu5A
— Liz Sly (@LizSly) July 30, 2017
“The current American president is ignorant of the region,” Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif told the Post reporters. “We are the force that fights terrorism while the United States continues to support terrorism in many forms.”
Afif added:
We are the ones defeating terrorism. The Americans and their allies are the ones who are supporting terrorism, and they are the last ones who should be criticizing Hezbollah.
And there you go, it’s the Americans who are “supporting terrorism,” not the jihadist martyrs with an AK-47 on their flag.
Failing to provide proper context to the terror group’s hostile behavior in the region, Sly and Haidamous mention Israel, Hezbollah’s primary victim, once. Adding insult to injury, the reporters actually have the gall to frame Israel as the oppressor and Hezbollah the victim of the “Israeli occupation.”
“Nowhere was there any evidence of the Lebanese state, which has struggled to assert its role in the years since the 1975-1990 civil war saw the country overrun by scores of private militias,” write Sly and Haidamous. “Only Hezbollah survived intact, retaining its status because of the role it played resisting what was then the Israeli occupation of a big chunk of southern Lebanon.”
Hezbollah’s spontaneous missile attacks against innocent Israelis along the Jewish State’s northern border with Lebanon are conveniently ignored.
Moreover, the sheer extent of Hezbollah’s war crimes in Syria are left out entirely. Financed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah has functioned as a de facto mercenary group to prop up the genocidal Assad regime in Syria. It’s Hezbollah fighters, paid for and trained by Iran, who are butchering civilians on behalf of Assad.
But to Sly and Haidamous, Hezbollah’s barbarity is far too complex for moral judgment of any kind.
Indeed, the two Post writers appear to take issue with President Trump’s recent characterization of the terror group as a terror group.
“Whether the Trump administration can navigate the pitfalls of this complexity may determine if this tiny, relatively calm country can continue to escape the turmoil raging elsewhere in the Middle East,” write the two reporters, channeling obscurantist post-modern academics with exactly zero military experience.