Adam Kinzinger Looks Bigger Each Day
Congressman Adam Kinzinger, or “Little Adam,” as kook fringe (i.e., Trump-supporting) blowhard Madison Cawthorn once called him, has taken another step away from the Idiot Party mainstream, by doing what almost no prominent Republican has dared to do. He has called Israel’s government to account for its current stand and rhetoric on Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked scorched earth campaign against a peaceful sovereign country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Israel’s Knesset on Sunday in which he said, “You can mediate, but cannot mediate between good & evil. I could ask why we are not receive protection from Israel. Why are we not getting your Iron Dome, that would protect the Jews of Ukraine? Why hasn’t Israel joined the sanction régime against Russia?”
In a Twitter thread, Kinzinger retweeted a post with that quote and said “Really good questions of #Israel.”
For this simple and worthy point, Kinzinger was naturally attacked, as is anyone who has the gall to suggest that Israel’s government should be held to account and judged on its actions, as would be the government of any other country. (Note that since he was merely amplifying Zelensky’s points, the online mobs attacking him in “defense” of Israel were implicitly deriding Zelensky as well.)
In fact, in response to the knee-jerk attacks from these critics, Kinzinger clarified his position:
We have stood with Israel and will continue to do so. But at the moment there is a battle between Good and Evil, between a world based on raw power or … one based one the post WW2 rules. Everyone must pick a side. The outcome of this fight will impact the world my son grows up in, and now is the time to call anyone to the carpet who does not do their utmost.
[I]f we don’t want to directly attack Russia, then our leverage is in the world uniting in sanctions and assistance for the people of Ukraine. This includes everyone, and Israel doesn’t have a special exemption. Hopefully they will do the right thing.
Perhaps this expression of frustration is born of the continual moral equivalency statements issuing from the Israeli government, as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett adopts the “mediator” role between Russia and Ukraine, admitting that there is still “a long way to go,” but trumpeting Putin’s lie that he no longer seeks the removal of Zelensky nor “the complete demilitarization of Ukraine” — as though these were great concessions, rather than demands Putin had no right to make in the first place — and then offers outrageous statements such as this:
We will continue together with our other friends in the world to try to bridge [between the sides] to put an end to the war, this is the best thing that can happen. [Emphasis added.]
The gap between the two sides in this case is a divide between an invaded nation that wishes to defeat its invader and restore its sovereignty and its territory and an invading tyranny that seeks to occupy and subdue its victim by means of random mass murder and mass starvation. But Bennett is seeking satisfactory flexibility from both sides, and insisting that putting an end to the war — meaning the active fighting — is “the best thing that can happen.” No; the best thing that can happen, given the current reality initiated by Putin, is for Russia to surrender unconditionally, retreat to its own country, pay massive reparations to the country whose cities and lives it has destroyed, and then begin the internal process, by whatever means are most convenient for them, of overturning Putin’s tyranny in favor of a more civilized, less aggressive regime willing to live peacefully with its neighbors.
By playing the peace at all costs game, Israel is effectively acting to ensure further Russian aggression in the future — though imagining, undoubtedly, that this aggression will never reach Israel, as long as Israel continues to treat Putin as a legitimate leader and moral equal.
Kinzinger’s comments, it seems to me, amount to nothing more than urging allies to stop being cowards and start taking account of the seriousness of the current situation, rather than getting mired in the usual short-term risk-avoidance and financial benefit pragmatism. Why should this urging not be applied to Israel, just as to any other country?
(Note: I expect nothing of Kinzinger in the long run. He is an American politician of this era, which means only bad things to me. But when someone, even someone in whom you have no faith, speaks or acts with righteousness and some measure of courage, especially in a general atmosphere of cynical calculation and cowardice, he deserves credit for it.)
