In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
I listen to a lot of conservative talk radio. Anyone who's reading this knows the official line on war and Middle East politics, from both sides. Everyone is pointing fingers and figuring out how to make the best political hay. But I was listening to this one guy, Dan Lynch, who advertises his show as "radio for people who think" and declares himself immune from the radical fringes of either side, and even ran for office a few years ago (as an independent) and lost to a Republican who waged a dirty campaign (big surprise); he had this whole week of programs about the Palestinians and Israel, and his argument, in a nutshell, is that Israel should bomb the shit out of Hamas and anybody else who attacks, and if civilians get killed along the way, so be it. He even went as far as to suggest that we intervene in Iraq-style fashion, "to teach the governments of Syria and Iran who sponsor terrorist groups a lesson." He cares not about the Bush fabrications about why we went to war, brushing them all aside as inconsequential, that 9/11 landed this "festering hatred" in our front yard and the only thing that Arabs understand is force, "That what happened to Saddam can happen to you too, and it will."
I have a huge problem with this kind of thinking. First, we're talking about Cain and Abel here. This is blood hatred that defies all reason, all fear, and all consequences, going back to before the ink was dry on the Old Testament. For as long as people have known their history, these two have dedicated their existence to annihilate one another, this is how they define themselves, to themselves. Second, it is the height of foolishness to try to "solve the problem" of the Middle East. To look at this as a problem that has a solution is the difference between a country that is only 200 years old and the cradle of mankind, which goes back to a time before history was ever recorded. There is no solution. There are islands of peace, and episodes of war, and everlasting hatred. The national borders are all fictions, based on the last 100 years of British imperialism and American neoimperialism, and the warlords were all set up by their European and Continental masters. So these arguments of statehood are all bogus, to the extent that any one group is indigenous. It's a hypocritical argument any way you look at it, this idea of "we were here first." Nobody was anywhere first, except maybe Africa 160,000 years ago, and take a look at Africa. How come no one talks about their "right of return"? Totally specious.
Third, why do conservative-minded political thinkers think that violence solves problems? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that violence begets violence. How can we be invading countries and bombing thoroughly modern cities with the most extreme technologies of violence and war making available and talk about peace, to the very people we are bombing and murdering? How is that a "solution"? I keep imagining some Arab radio host with a call-in audience discussing in a pseudo-intellectual patronizing way why Dan Lynch and everyone who listens to him should be killed. Or you and me for that matter. Just imagine it. Lofty foreign philosophers weighing in with their audiences of "people who think," arriving at the civilized conclusion that Americans would all be better off dead, "because that's the only thing we understand." And what's with this morality? The equivocation and moral relativism used in the Middle East arguments are all disgusting. The Palestinians are evil and cowardly because Hamas hides among women and children, and the Israelis have every right to kill them all in massive bombing raids, but Israeli blood is shed indiscriminately, and thus immorally, because the suicide bombers target public places and don't distinguish between combatants and civilians. Well, what about us? We bomb the shit out of whomever we please, wherever and whenever we please, for money. What does that make us, in the moral scheme of things? It's all horseshit. I'm sick of this idea that America's job is to "do the right thing" and "solve" the world's problems. We can't even deliver a budget in Albany. The reality is, the Middle East will never, ever, in a hundred million years be free of hatred, war and blood feuds. Bush et al. have dragged us -- screaming and kicking -- straight into the world's oldest quicksand, where we will be mired for years and years and years, enough to make Vietnam look like a mud puddle. In the meantime, talk show hosts are splitting hairs about rationales. Tell it to the dead.
- Michael 10:30 PM - [PermaLink] -
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