The Bush administration has rushed to label the targeting of the military leader of Hamas, Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, “heavy-handed,” as criticism comes from the usual suspects at the United Nations and Europe. That’s a fine phrase from a commander in chief whose generals are squatting on mats in Afghanistan, apologizing for civilian deaths caused by American bombings. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, tried to draw a distinction yesterday, saying that while America sometimes drops an errant bomb, Israel targeted an apartment building, “knowing that innocents would be lost in the consequences of the attack.” Such a distinction is ludicrous. The fact is that President Bush himself, at the outset of America’s own expedition against terrorist enemies, cautioned of the inevitability of civilian casualties. Every civilian killed in war is an infinite tragedy, one that every decent commander carries with him to his own grave.

The administration’s choice of words yesterday leaves him open to the charge that he is not serious, that he is second-guessing an ally who is prosecuting one of the most complex and dangerous of wars and has shown extraordinary care with respect to enemy civilians, often at the cost of exposing its own forces to considerable addition al peril. The fact is that Sheik Shedadeh was one of the bloodiest terrorists on the planet. The military wing of Hamas has been one of the architects of the campaign of so-called “suicide” bombings, a campaign that makes it Hamas’s business specifically to target Jewish civilians, including women, old people, and children. It has killed them by the hundreds for the purpose of sowing terror. He hid in the apartment building where he died because he maintained no regard for civilian life, not even that of his neighbors.