Obama in the Bombsights


An article in the Jerusalem Post, from February 21st, was forwarded to me by a Jewish friend, who has been a supporter of Obama but is having second thoughts because Marc Zell says Obama is no friend of Israel. Zell happens to be a former law partner of Douglas Feith, who was Rumsfeld's Undersecretary of Defense and one of the bright bulbs behind the idea of starting a chain of wars, Iraq, Iran, and Syria for starters, to transform the Middle East by use of force. The blitzkrieg never made it out of Iraq.

To begin with, Feith and Wolfowitz were the ones who consulted with Paul Bremer and decided it would be a good idea to disband the Iraqi army, which might win the prize as the most stupid move of the occupation of that country. It was approved by Rumsfeld and carried out, even though it's uncertain that even George Bush knew it was going to happen. There was unanimous agreement by administration officials that this would not be done.

So my view is that Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld are criminals who aren't going to be prosecuted because nobody in this administration is ever prosecuted for being stupid or outside the law. They are instead given the Medal of Freedom or entrenched in the military industrial complex, or in the case of Wolfowitz, put in charge of the World Bank. They can get everything wrong and lead the country into chaos, but there they are on the news shows, or in the Jerusalem Post, loudly proclaiming what we should do next.

Because I have good friends who are Jewish I generally stay away from the topic of Israel. I don't want to discuss the rights of people to own land because of a promise to Abraham back before Christ. I'm afraid some Native Americans will show up and take over my property. "We don't have written language but it's in our oral tradition that someday we'd come back and claim this place."

That's silly to me, though I support a homeland for the Jews on the basis that they needed one. But I don't like the way they went about it. I certainly hope there are no Jews who are anti-immigration. I'm uncomfortable with the amount of influence the Israel Lobby has over Jewish lawmakers. I watched while they influenced Jewish senators to support a Jewish nominee for Attorney General who then turns around and gives us the finger when we want some justice administered. I don't like it but I shut up, like everybody else shuts up, because if you don't shut up you're anti Semitic.

So it seems like Israel gets pretty much what she wants from us. Certainly it's political suicide for any candidate to do anything but take her side in any dispute. I don't like this for the same reason I didn't like the Bush administration sucking off Wall Street with such shameless abandon. Eventually it's bad for them, and will lead to a realization that Justice wears a blindfold not because she's trying to hit a pinata full of cash and defense contracts, but because in the long run it's the best policy for everybody.

Regulation of the financial markets would have saved them from themselves, and Bear Sterns wouldn't have imploded at two bucks a share. I happen to believe that refusing to favor Israel in every dispute, because otherwise the Jews in America might vote against anyone who isn't in the pocket of the Israel lobby, would be good for Israel in the long run. After all, the people who want special treatment are not generally ethical people, and they usually end up in a shithole, which means if we follow them we all end up there with them.

So I wrote out what I think of Zell's letter, and of the idea that Obama should be opposed because he has advisors who are not out on the right extreme with him and Feith and the other neo-cons who led us into this ungodly mess we're in:

I guess my view of the newspaper article you sent me won't set well with you, but I think the Palestinians are in about the same shape as the blacks used to be, and that the anger of black men, especially old black men, is expected.  

Chris Rock: "The most racist people are old black men! He went through real racism back them. He couldn't go through that "I-can't-get-a-cab" thing. Back then, he WAS the cab! A white man jump on his back, "Main Street!"

The only thing that makes me sad is that Obama repudiated the old man.   If he loves him and respects him that's his business.  We don't hold the right wingers responsible for the their religious support, some of which is arguably fascist, racist, homophobic, and war mongering. 

Besides, I happen to think that from one point of view, which is as valid in a free society as another point of view, he is correct, and that America's chickens are coming home to roost.  The prohibition against saying it out loud doesn't make it not so.

We certainly did drop atomic bombs on civilians, and we certainly did set up military bases in the Middle East as a protection against Soviet expansion, and then when there was no more threat, refused to leave.  We overthrew the democracy in Iran for British Petroleum and brought back the Shaw, overthrew the royal family in Hawaii to please the sugar interests; god knows what it was we did in Vietnam but we certainly had no business being in the middle of their civil war, and we cannot contain nuclear weapons if we don't lead disarmament by example. Instead, we are trying to militarize Space.

The Iranian leader is a fool and a bigot but he is not more a fool and bigot than our President.  And we are spending three trillion and counting on a war of aggression against a neutral country, because we began following a neo-conservative ideology,  the basis of which was that we could militarily dominate Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and in essence force them to change.  The result is that we can't take care of our social needs, so that society is disintegrating.  

The idea of continuing this is madness in my book.  It is madness in my book for Israel to continue a policy which allows them to kill and imprison as many people as they want because of the act of an individual, or two or three people,  under the assumption that the leadership is responsible for everything that happens.  That is absurd to me.  How could anybody control the factions there?  It is poisonous and it spreads.

The Palestinian camps are breeding grounds for terrorism and it's not going to get better by sending in more tanks and using more force.  With a man and a woman, if the man overpowers and dominates with masculine force, the woman will turn to poison.  It is no different with societies.  Israel is being poisoned by the Palestinian camps and walls and pictures of tanks running over shacks.    

That Obama wants to put public business on CSPAN, and on the internet, is the most important thing in this campaign.  Linda said today that we don't even know how to do business in public view anymore.  That is certainly true.  If we get through the rest of the Bush term without all ending up on the bread lines, and then elect another shill for the  military industrial complex, we will have to keep starting wars to get return on our investments.  That's where we're putting our wealth, and it may be too late already to do anything about it.

That's my view.  I hope it doesn't seem harsh and certainly I hope there is nothing personal in it.  I have other Jewish friends but so far as I know they pretty much agree that the people running Israel aren't any improvement on the people running this country.  They keep the fear going by keeping the conflict going and they keep building more nuclear weapons and bigger tanks and drain off increasing wealth for "defense."  They have no interest in peace, because if they did they would first acknowledge their own culpability and stop pretending to be innocent victims of unreasonable and inferior people.  Why compromise if you have the power?

I think it is when you have the power that you can show true ethical values, which means that you apply the rule to yourself, first, before applying it to anyone else.   If we applied the rule to ourselves, for example, in relation to Iran, we have invaded a country on their border and set up permanent bases.  And we want to bomb them because they're interfering?  This is insane.  If China set up permanent military bases in Mexico we would go batshit.   They have about as much legal authority to do that as we had to go into Iraq and set up permanent bases. It was right wing nut cases like Feith who led the way and circumvented the law under the assumption that they are smarter than everybody else. You've got to be really stupid to think that. Feith was in fact the man General Tommy Franks called "The stupidest fucking guy on the face of the earth." So we should listen to his partner's advice on how to vote in the United States?



The entire Middle East is turning into a shithole because of the Palestinian problem, and it all comes down to property disputes and social integration.   It isn't going to get better by manipulating the American political system to continue the policies that have been in place by the ultra conservatives.    

I don't think the people who are wrapped up in this whole thing know how ugly they look to people who are emotionally removed from it, or how totally insolvable it is if they keep wrapping themselves up in it.  

Posted: Mon - March 17, 2008 at 05:37 PM