Why Are Our Politicians Too Cowardly to Talk About This?
It sure seems to me that the last, oh, say, 20+ years of deadly, costly, and rarely successful inter-nation actions in the Middle East should have provided sufficient data to lead to some learning, by one or more of the major parties involved. I am not talking about skill in targeting cluster-bombs, more strategic use of spent uranium, cheaper anti-personnel mines, or further means of providing distance between our killers and their victims - I'm not certain the idiocy and anti-humanitarian stances behind those programs are subject to incremental learned improvement. But even if my theory has some plausibility to it, it seems as if there is, at least for us, another major stumbling block when it comes to these things.
Our politicians are apparently thoroughly marinated in the idea that no action taken by Israel can actually be subjected to anything that could reasonably be called a balanced discussion, never mind a proper debate. To set the playing board properly, Israel's actions are largely funded and armed by the American taxpayer, i.e., the middle and lower classes (since most large corporations pay literally none or on relative scale virtually none these days, and the wealthy have been sitting back increasingly fat and happy these days thanks to those W tax cuts).
Remarkably then, we have virtually an anvil chorus of prominent politicians from both parties exclaiming on the rightness of the heinous bombing of a largely civilian population that has been walled off and sanctioned perhaps to the point of malnutrion. One hell-bent on finding anything faintly upbeat has to settle for slicing and dicing of what Axelrod did not say (this from the exceptional Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake):
I'm not generally one for projecting meaning into silence, but I think it's worthwhile to consider what David Axelrod didn't say about the Gaza strikes on Meet the Press this Sunday.
As Glenn Greenwald notes, 71% of Americans don't think the US should take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite this fact, the statements of Republican and Democratic leaders alike are in lockstep with George Bush. Reid, Pelosi, Hoyer and Berman all unilaterally support Israel's actions -- their releases could have been written by Bill Kristol.
Barack Obama himself has demurred, saying "there's only one President." So the only statement so far coming out Team Obama is from Axelrod.
As M.J. Rosenberg writes:
I have no idea if this is a valid assessment, or how Obama will ultimately choose to address the Israeli/Palestinian situation. But what is incontrovertibly true is that the US is scheduled to give Israel $30 billion in military aid over the next ten years, and that Israel used US made missiles in the current strike.
Axelrod:
Parsing Obama's silence is always tricky business, and he's never given any indication that he would drift from the status quo. But the fact that he is not immediately echoing the "suffocating orthodoxy of our politicians" cannot be comforting to those who depend on US support to finance and launch campaigns like the one currently underway in Gaza.
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That seems damned thin gruel to me, especially after so many years of these sniveling anti-press secretaries and flacks that have partnered up with the underdogs (David Gregory? What a hoot!!) the corpomedia have been "brave" enough to subject their owned politicians to.
But, I grant, this is not Nothing. Obama more or less mute and spokesman far from echoing Pelosi, Reid, et al. There's a bit more at the link as I recall, but we must move on.
This from Glenn Greenwald at Salon (probable Hamsher reference above):
University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes -- July 1, 2008:
CQ Politics, yesterday:
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Earlier this week, Nancy Pelosi issued an identical statement, and yesterday Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer did the same.
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By itself, the degree of full-fledged, absolute agreement -- down to the syllable -- among America's political leaders is striking, even when one acknowledges the constant convergence between the leadership of both parties. But it becomes even more striking in light of the bizarre fact that the consensus view -- that America must unquestioningly stand on Israel's side and support it, not just in this conflict but in all of Israel's various wars -- is a view which 7 out of 10 Americans reject. Conversely, the view which 70% of Americans embrace -- that the U.S. should be neutral and even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally -- is one that no mainstream politician would dare express.
In a democracy, one could expect that politicians would be afraid to express a view that 70% of the citizens oppose. Yet here we have the exact opposite situation: no mainstream politician would dare express the view that 70% of Americans support; instead, the universal piety is the one that only a small minority accept. Isn't that fairly compelling evidence of the complete disconnect between our political elites and the people they purportedly represent?
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Anyone minimally objective and well-intentioned finds Hamas rocket attacks on random Israeli civilians to be highly objectionable and wrong, but even among those who do, one finds a wide range of views regarding the Israeli offensive. But not among America's political leadership. There, one finds total, lockstep uniformity almost more unyielding than what one finds among Israeli leaders themselves -- as though Israel's wars are, by definition, America's wars; its enemies are our enemies; its disputes and conflicts and interests are, inherently, ours; and America's only duty when Israel fights is to support it uncritically.
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Painful to have to slice-and-dice from that post. I'd much rather work over vegetables with a freshly-sharpened santoku knife, where the "throw-away" and "save" fractions involve rational choices. You owe it to yourself to check out the full business.
Much later in his great post, GG referenced this as his one must-read post on the Israel-Gaza issue:
I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.
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Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
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Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.
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At the very least, we need to find a way to get some dialogue going and terrorism by Israel and Hamas throttled back. We pay for all of the former - why cannot we influence it? Why can't we have a dialogue in which Israel is not given seven legs up as an ever-infallible soul-mate? We have been instrumental in the creation of one of only a handful of modern nations with a military capability for war-making, power-mongering, and, to be honest, terrorism comparable to what the USofA has somehow taken on as a hobby. Just as we need to end and make amends for our own shameful record, we must stop unquestioningly enabling and funding the inhumane actions of Israel.
Greenwald, later in his post quotes our first prez (1796 Farewell Address) as follows:
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? . . . . .
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.
It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. . . .
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.
-clip-
Our politicians are apparently thoroughly marinated in the idea that no action taken by Israel can actually be subjected to anything that could reasonably be called a balanced discussion, never mind a proper debate. To set the playing board properly, Israel's actions are largely funded and armed by the American taxpayer, i.e., the middle and lower classes (since most large corporations pay literally none or on relative scale virtually none these days, and the wealthy have been sitting back increasingly fat and happy these days thanks to those W tax cuts).
Remarkably then, we have virtually an anvil chorus of prominent politicians from both parties exclaiming on the rightness of the heinous bombing of a largely civilian population that has been walled off and sanctioned perhaps to the point of malnutrion. One hell-bent on finding anything faintly upbeat has to settle for slicing and dicing of what Axelrod did not say (this from the exceptional Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake):
I'm not generally one for projecting meaning into silence, but I think it's worthwhile to consider what David Axelrod didn't say about the Gaza strikes on Meet the Press this Sunday.
As Glenn Greenwald notes, 71% of Americans don't think the US should take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite this fact, the statements of Republican and Democratic leaders alike are in lockstep with George Bush. Reid, Pelosi, Hoyer and Berman all unilaterally support Israel's actions -- their releases could have been written by Bill Kristol.
Barack Obama himself has demurred, saying "there's only one President." So the only statement so far coming out Team Obama is from Axelrod.
As M.J. Rosenberg writes:
On Meet The Press this morning, David Axelrod was asked about Gaza by David Gregory. Gregory reminded Axelrod that the President-Elect had visited Sderot earlier this year and said that Israel had the right to defend its people against the mortars. What does he think now?
Axelrod said, predictably, that we have one President at a time. He also said that Obama understood the "urge" to respond militarily.
"The urge." That's it. None of that "of course Israel has the right to defend itself" stuff which was Bush's response to everything. Not this time. Israel's right to defend itself is not the issue: this particular onslaught is.
When Obama feels strongly about anything, the "one President at a time" mantra is abandoned. When he wants to avoid being boxed in, he invokes it. Under pressure to follow Nancy Pelosi's example and just endorse the attack, Axelrod punted. Big time. I hope the Israelis understand what this means.
I wish Axelrod said more but, in this case, silence was golden. Axelrod sent a signal. After Jan. 20th, America will be an "honest broker." That is what both sides need.
I have no idea if this is a valid assessment, or how Obama will ultimately choose to address the Israeli/Palestinian situation. But what is incontrovertibly true is that the US is scheduled to give Israel $30 billion in military aid over the next ten years, and that Israel used US made missiles in the current strike.
Axelrod:
He's going to work closely with the Israelis. They're a great ally of ours, the most important ally in the region...But he will do so in a way that will promote the cause of peace, and work closely with the Israelis and the Palestinians on that -- toward that objective.
Parsing Obama's silence is always tricky business, and he's never given any indication that he would drift from the status quo. But the fact that he is not immediately echoing the "suffocating orthodoxy of our politicians" cannot be comforting to those who depend on US support to finance and launch campaigns like the one currently underway in Gaza.
-clip-
That seems damned thin gruel to me, especially after so many years of these sniveling anti-press secretaries and flacks that have partnered up with the underdogs (David Gregory? What a hoot!!) the corpomedia have been "brave" enough to subject their owned politicians to.
But, I grant, this is not Nothing. Obama more or less mute and spokesman far from echoing Pelosi, Reid, et al. There's a bit more at the link as I recall, but we must move on.
This from Glenn Greenwald at Salon (probable Hamsher reference above):
University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes -- July 1, 2008:
A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.
CQ Politics, yesterday:
Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle rallied to Israel’s cause Monday as it pressed forward with large-scale air attacks against Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip. . . .
“I strongly support Israel’s right to defend its citizens against rocket and mortar attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza, which have killed and injured Israeli citizens, and to restore security to its residents,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev. . . .
-clip-
Earlier this week, Nancy Pelosi issued an identical statement, and yesterday Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer did the same.
-clip-
By itself, the degree of full-fledged, absolute agreement -- down to the syllable -- among America's political leaders is striking, even when one acknowledges the constant convergence between the leadership of both parties. But it becomes even more striking in light of the bizarre fact that the consensus view -- that America must unquestioningly stand on Israel's side and support it, not just in this conflict but in all of Israel's various wars -- is a view which 7 out of 10 Americans reject. Conversely, the view which 70% of Americans embrace -- that the U.S. should be neutral and even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally -- is one that no mainstream politician would dare express.
In a democracy, one could expect that politicians would be afraid to express a view that 70% of the citizens oppose. Yet here we have the exact opposite situation: no mainstream politician would dare express the view that 70% of Americans support; instead, the universal piety is the one that only a small minority accept. Isn't that fairly compelling evidence of the complete disconnect between our political elites and the people they purportedly represent?
-clip-
Anyone minimally objective and well-intentioned finds Hamas rocket attacks on random Israeli civilians to be highly objectionable and wrong, but even among those who do, one finds a wide range of views regarding the Israeli offensive. But not among America's political leadership. There, one finds total, lockstep uniformity almost more unyielding than what one finds among Israeli leaders themselves -- as though Israel's wars are, by definition, America's wars; its enemies are our enemies; its disputes and conflicts and interests are, inherently, ours; and America's only duty when Israel fights is to support it uncritically.
-clip-
Painful to have to slice-and-dice from that post. I'd much rather work over vegetables with a freshly-sharpened santoku knife, where the "throw-away" and "save" fractions involve rational choices. You owe it to yourself to check out the full business.
Much later in his great post, GG referenced this as his one must-read post on the Israel-Gaza issue:
I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.
-clip-
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
-clip-
Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.
-clip-
At the very least, we need to find a way to get some dialogue going and terrorism by Israel and Hamas throttled back. We pay for all of the former - why cannot we influence it? Why can't we have a dialogue in which Israel is not given seven legs up as an ever-infallible soul-mate? We have been instrumental in the creation of one of only a handful of modern nations with a military capability for war-making, power-mongering, and, to be honest, terrorism comparable to what the USofA has somehow taken on as a hobby. Just as we need to end and make amends for our own shameful record, we must stop unquestioningly enabling and funding the inhumane actions of Israel.
Greenwald, later in his post quotes our first prez (1796 Farewell Address) as follows:
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? . . . . .
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.
It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. . . .
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.
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posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:46 PM
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