So Imad Moughniyah is dead:
Hezbollah leader Imad Moughniyah, on the United States’ most wanted list for attacks on Israeli and Western targets, was killed by a bomb in Damascus, the Lebanese group said on Wednesday…
He was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, which killed over 350 people, as well as the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.
As it happens, one of my favorite things ever written by anyone anywhere was about Moughniyah. This is from a 2001 article about him by Kenneth Zimmerman in the Washington Times:
Imad Fayez Mugniyeh [is] a Lebanese Shiite long considered one of the world’s most ruthless and elusive killers…
Once the Palestinians were kicked out of Lebanon in 1983, Mugniyeh and his two brothers, Fuad and Jihad, joined a new organization set up by Iran called Hezbollah (Party of God). Its goal was to drive the Western powers out of Lebanon…
Intelligence officials believe Mugniyeh is seeking personal vengeance on the United States and Israel for the deaths of his brothers, which explains in part his willingness to lend his expertise to operations organized by other groups. Mugniyeh’s brothers were killed in retaliatory attacks in Lebanon believed to have been carried out by Israeli and U.S. operatives.
“Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mugniyeh,” an Israeli-intelligence officer told Jane’s Foreign Report recently. “The guy is a genius, someone who refined the art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong motivation.“
Wait…you’re telling me that a young man, when his country was invaded by foreigners, got angry? And then when they killed his brothers, he became even madder? And he wanted revenge on the people who’d done it?
Well, we’ll put our best scientific minds to work on it, but I don’t think we have any hope of understanding this bizarre freak of nature. He’s simply too far outside human norms for us ever to comprehend.