The world has bid farewell to one of the most vile, hypocritical, and deceptive men to ever rise to power. I think there’s something ironic about the fact that Arafat dies the week that U.S. Marines are mounting a final assault on Fallujah. The family tree of Arab terrorism has Arafat at the roots. It was Arafat and his efforts in the 1970s that sparked the last three decades of Middle Eastern violence. I’m not saying that Israel, the U.S., Egypt, Jordan, and Syria are without blame, but the godfather of jihad is Arafat.

Powerline has a great post-mortem on Arafat, chronicling his era of terror:

He personally ordered the assassination of American Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel, Jr. and charge d’affaires Curtis Moore in Khartoum on March 2, 1973 … Arafat himself presided over the Khartoum operation and ordered the assassination of Noel and Moore by short wave radio from PLO headquarters in Beirut. Moore and Noel were only the first of many Americans murdered by Arafat’s terrorist thugs.

In a bizarre footnote to his assassination of American officials, Arafat became the foreign leader most frequently hosted by President Bill Clinton during his two terms in office. The many cold-blooded murders for which Arafat was responsible in the course of his life were politely passed over in silence as they remained entirely unavenged.

Go read the whole thing.