Answering a Critique

Recently I was taken to task by an occasional reader for being overly emotional about the Israeli excursion into Lebanon and its effect on children. The commentator felt that this resulted in a lack of critical thinking on my part. I’d like to respond to that accusation.

Of course I have no way of proving that my critical thinking has been clouded by my deep revulsion of the slaughter of innocents that occurred in Lebanon and continues to occur in Gaza and Iraq. Of course I am aware that the same slaughter has occurred throughout history, in particular in the Nazi concentration camps of WWII. But the slaughter in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza are different, for me, because they are either directly the result of intervention by the U.S., or have occurred with our acquiescence in the case of Israel. The hypocrisy of mourning the 3,000 dead in the World Trade Center from five years ago while not doing so for the 1,000 dead in Lebanon and the continuing carnage in Gaza has not escaped me. As for Iraq, the daily death toll is horrendous. As Juan Cole reports, the police found 48 bodies in Baghdad on Saturday. Many of these had been tortured and executed.

This just does not seem to phase us, even though we in the U.S. are ultimately responsible for this horror. When people die for useless reasons (not disease or old age), I get upset. When children die for useless reasons, I go ballistic. Call it emotional if you wish, but it is not acceptable.

It is not sufficient to say that these deaths were perpetrated by terrorists or radical extremists. It is certainly not sufficient to say that Hizbollah is responsible for the deaths of children because they provoked Israel to attack. THAT is a lack of critical thinking. I have no desire to rehash the stupidities that have gotten my country into the mess it is in the midEast. But we have made a big mess of Iraq, and our unalloyed support of Israel may yet lead to the ultimate disaster, nuclear weapon use either by Israel or ourselves in an attack on Iran. (Isn’t it interesting that the democratically elected head of Iraq, that we have bragged so much about, is now on intimate terms with the President of Iran and has also condemned Israel for its Lebanon attack. Isn’t it interesting that the is a Shiite.)

I felt, up until recently, that I belonged to a democracy. I also believed, since it was instilled into me from the cradle, that being an American meant that I was exceptional. That somehow we came equipped from birth with a set of morals that would always, through the democratic process, triumph over any temporary civil or political evil. You may castigate the youth of the 60’s and 70’s as hippies, radicals and druggies. They did get us out of the Vietnam War. And they got us out for the right reason: it was immoral. We took some hits in Vietnam, particularly our mind and body scarred Veterans. Those young men “born on the fourth of July” who still carry the mental weight of the jungle. (It would be another whole blurb on what the scars of Iraq may mean in the future, if we have a future.)

So, up until recently I felt that, even though I didn’t vote for the bastards that have created the quagmire of Iraq, I still held responsibility. As for the disaster that is Israel, I confess to cowardice in the face of the threat of the antiSemitism label. I have also worked at institutions and departments that were dominated by Jews and to speak one’s mind was to suffer marginalization at best and termination in the future. Israel is a foreign country and we should be allowed to criticize it for its errors just as we can criticize America. That’s what a democracy is all about. To fall into the trap of political correctness with respect to Zionism is the same as political correctness with respect to any other “ism.”

But now, all is different. We have a President that is out of control by the electorate. He is potting war against Iran, when only Congress can declare War. He desires to torture prisoners even though he denies that we do so. He holds prisoners in secret detention (14,000 by today’s account) in flagrant violation of the most basic of human rights. He does these things, impeachable in the old days, plus many, many more that rub against the grain of the majority of Americans. And he gets away with it.

So, pardon me if my posts on this blog offend your sensibilities. I have no intention of changing. That is the good thing about blogs, you don’t have to read them if you don’t want to. There is no test in the morning.