The Latest War News
Everyone’s favorite congress-barmaid Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has shocked the world by reminding everyone that not only is Israel guilty of the moral crime of defending itself against a gigantic infiltration by a well-organized tribe of murdering, torturing, immolating, kidnapping lunatics, but, even worse, that same racist and sexist nation had the audacity, back in 2019, to deny visas to two of her older and much less pretty congressional Squad cohorts, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Here’s what I had to say about that dastardly act of Islamophobia back at the time of the offense:
Two members of the Democratic Party’s Goon Squad, or Boob Squad, or Doom Squad, or whatever they are — Tlaib and Omar to be specific — have been barred from entering Israel in what is obvious proof of the global Zionist plot. You see, they planned a trip to Israel that had as its sole objective the promotion of the radical Muslim agenda of denying Israel’s legitimacy and encouraging international punitive actions against it. For that — just that one little thing about making an official visit to a country for the express purpose of advocating its demise — the evil Jews have refused entry to two sitting members of the U.S. Congress. Unbelievable.
In response, another member of the Squad, the one who is youngest and imagines she is prettiest, has announced that she is boycotting Israel — a brave move, and one likely to cost the international Jewish conspiracy trillions of dollars and mountains of credibility, assuming they don’t have her assassinated.
The speed with which so many prominent public figures and activist groups have condemned Israel for alleged war crimes during its current combat against Hamas in Gaza is evidence only of the interests and motives of those making the accusations, which is to say that the condemnation certainly constitutes no evidence of actual war crimes. Some are even daring to draw a direct analogy to the West’s charge of war crimes by Russia in Ukraine, claiming that the reluctance of Western governments to make the same accusation against Israel constitutes a double standard. Conveniently, they make this comparison while omitting the most basic factual distinction between the contexts in which the two military forces — Russian and Israeli — are committing these alleged crimes, namely the context of Russia’s entirely unprovoked act of military aggression carried out over many months versus the context of Israel’s retaliatory assault of a couple of weeks provoked by the most deliberately incendiary act of mass violence perpetrated against its civilian population.
“They all hate us.” “They are all being raised to kill us when they grow up.” “They all want to destroy us.”
These are the kinds of simplistic, categorical, and static declarations one makes, through gritted teeth and with squinting eyes, when deep in your heart you cannot quite reconcile yourself to some of the means you are employing or recommending against “them.” It is easier to do what you are doing, or what you wish to do, if you can tell yourself that none of their lives are worthwhile or redeemable, or that all of their lives are doomed to come to no good.
Even the most beastly and brutal necessities of war — and there are such necessities — must be deliberated and carried out by men, not beasts. That is, the comforting falsehoods or simplifications of “what they all deserve” must be confined to the understandable rage of a private moment, but never translated into the practice of public policy, if we are to remain human in the best sense, i.e., civilized.
The day after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, Truman received a telegram from Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia, encouraging the president to use as many atomic bombs as possible on Japan, claiming the American people believed “that we should continue to strike the Japanese until they are brought groveling to their knees.” Truman responded, “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare but I can’t bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner. For myself I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the ‘pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation, and, for your information, I am not going to do it unless absolutely necessary.” [From “Harry Truman’s Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” at the National Park Service website]
