THE BUSH WHITE House is currently in a buoyant mood. As a result of the midterm elections, the Republican Party now added control of the Senate to that of the House of Representatives. The president will see this success as an endorsement, at least domestically, of his hawkish attitude toward Iraq as well as his campaign against international terrorism.

No doubt, many US voters will have been influenced by the news of the slaying of a leading Al-Qaeda suspect in Yemen, apparently by a missile fired from an unmanned drone operated by the CIA. Their government is acting tough, no US lives were lost in the operation against a man widely believed to have been behind the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, in which 17 sailors were slain. They no doubt took the view that international terrorists were getting some of their own back, and good riddance to them.

Unfortunately in a civilized society, extra-judicial murders are not acceptable. Ali Qaed Senyan Al-Harthi may indeed have been a terrorist with blood on his hands, but it was not for the American CIA to act as judge, jury and executioner. Though it would undoubtedly have been far more difficult and might have caused the loss of further lives, the right thing to have done would have been to have apprehended Al-Harthi and brought him to trial. Butchering him and his body guards with a remotely fired missile was wrong.

Hitler’s propaganda supremo, Josef Goebbels used to boast that the bigger the lie, the greater its chances of being believed. Twenty four hours after the attack, the US administration came up with what many in the Middle East will see as a lie worthy of the biggest Goebbels ever told. The United States declared that it continued to oppose the policy of assassination used by the Israelis against what they took to be Palestinian extremists. How, when Washington’s secret army, the CIA has just done the self-same thing, can anyone believe this American claim?

In fact, what the Al-Harthi assassination lays bare is the fact that the United States believes that, while it cannot be seen to be endorsing Zionist extra judicial murders, privately it finds this uncivilized savagery by the Israelis perfectly acceptable.

It is one more double standard that can only add to the despair of those in the Arab world, who still hope that the Americans can push through a just and honorable settlement to the 50- year plight of the Palestinians. But how can Washington act as an honest broker when it is guilty of exactly the same deadly crimes as Zionists?

If Americans feel that the system of freedom and justice, which they appear to hold so highly as the centerpiece of their constitution, is insufficient to deal with the threat of Al-Qaeda, they are on dangerous grounds. If illegal violence is seen as a solution in Washington’s war against terror, how can the US possibly condemn Palestinians for fighting back against the terror imposed upon them by Zionists? The Land of the Brave and Free sent an unmanned drone to do its murderous dirty work. At least Palestinian fighters, however misguided, are prepared to die along with their unfortunate victims. Is it Washington’s case that it is all right to assassinate innocent civilians including children and women provided the murderer or murderers don’t get killed or hurt?

In behaving criminally, the United States is putting itself on a level with the terrorists who are its enemies. Indeed, because so much better should be expected of a civilized state built upon justice, it is actually placing itself below the criminals it now seems prepared to assassinate. There can be no exceptions to murder. They are all crimes, in the Yemen, in the West Bank and Gaza, on the streets of Israel or in the center of New York or at the Pentagon in Washington. The United States must not persist with this dangerous dishonoring of the rules of justice upon which all civilized societies are built. If it does, it will be making itself no better than the international terrorists it hunts.