Mass Murder

Around four minutes into his 13 minute farewell address, George Walker Bush had this to say:

"When people live in freedom, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue campaigns of terror. When people have hope in the future, they will not cede their lives to violence and extremism. So around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights, and human dignity. We are standing with dissidents and young democracies, providing AIDS medicine to bring dying patients back to life, and sparing mothers and babies from malaria. And this great republic born alone in liberty is leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations."

Moments later, there was this:
"Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere."

The disconnect between these two statements is profound. Yet to most people watching the speech, including major media outlets, the myriad tragedies of the Iraq War are measured primarily in the heroic deaths of coalition personnel. But what about the number of Iraqis who have died as a direct result of the war? It is worth noting that this number, or even an estimate within the nearest 10,000, is obscured, and perhaps consciously so. Data is available here, here and here, and corroborated by various studies, but is our national moral stupor so deep that we don't want to know about such things? George W. Bush, proponent of a culture of life, has claimed absolutely no public responsibility for the deaths that are the direct result of his decisions, decisions we now know were based on cherry-picked intelligence. As public reaction to Kanye West's statements has proven, it is in poor taste and ultimately ineffective to charge Bush with valuing life along a scale of pigmentation. Further counterclaims to Bush's racism can be found in his truly commendable efforts to save lives in Africa.

But back to the war that he started, where is the remorse, or even the acknowledgement of the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of innocent lives lost by bombing, strafing, shelling and scorching in Iraq? How does one reconcile dodging responsibility for such a grand scale of suffering with having a clean conscience? I am careful about calling people evil and believe it is worth noting that there are huge gulfs between George W. Bush and history's great villains. I also acknowledge that I am guilty of being nearly as outraged by his public displays of hubris as I am by the horrible strife for which his policies are responsible. I want to see sorrow, doubt, recapitulation, or even mere weight on his conscience. But I would gladly countenance more smirking and linguistic belly flops if we could see fewer human beings killed for bullshit reasons. Were such a statement to find its way into the purview of fans of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, I would expect to be accused of caring more about towelheads than about Americans. But that's a false choice. And in case you really are reading this, that's a false choice you stupid motherfucking life-devaluing piece of pigshit. Put down your fucking Doritos, turn off your fucking football game and ask your senator, congressman, and media outlet of choice to publish the number of non-combatant Iraqis who have died violently since March, 2003. You want to tell me that I value cameljockey lives more than American heroes, well I'll tell you that you value third down conversions and the orange dust on your fingertips more than the lives of innocent women and children. And if that isn't true, then I'll re-suggest my solution: ask your senator, congressman and favorite media outlet to publish the number of civilian deaths caused by our invasion of Iraq.

Everybody knows that approximately 3,000 people died on 9/11 [actual official # including WTC, Pentagon and airline passengers is 2,975]; and that the US Troop death toll in Iraq is approximately 4,000.

But how many civilians have died in Iraq? Why don't we know this? Why don't we care that we don't know this? Well, I care. George W. Bush is about to end his Presidency without being accountable for his actions. Obviously, the failures of his policies have extended beyond the battlefields in Iraq. But let's focus on this.
Please contact your senator, congressman and preferred media outlet and urge them to publish the number of Iraqis killed as a result of George W. Bush's war. It's a number he should carry.

Israel

Here is a "nightmare scenario" as envisioned by many proudly pro-Israel Americans:

President Obama: Israel must accede to the demands of the UN Security Council and immediatley cease all military activity in Gaza.

Pro-Israel American: The UN has an anti-Israel bias.

President Obama: It is not in America's best interest to support Israel in their campaign. If they continue their current policies, we will cut aid to them.

Pro-Israel American: Israel is America's closest ally!

President Obama: How would America be hurt if Israel were not its ally?

Pro-Israel American: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East!

President Obama: So what?

Pro-Israel American: Anti-semite!

Of course, Israel is a watchdog for America and our aid to Israel is cheaper than setting up our own military outpost in the territory. And since we depend on instability in the region to keep oil cheap, Israel offers further economic value in terms of her advanced infrastructure. In nearly every industry, Israel's manufacturing and distribution capabilities are superior to that of her neighbors. Were more of her border states to enter into open trade, Israel's products would dominate regional marketplaces and put thousands of Saudi, Yemenite, Libyan, Moroccan, Syrian and Lebanese companies out of business.

But what is any of that compared with the violent antipathy that Israel and her patron superpower evoke in the world?? Pro-Israel Americans use this very violence to justify America's need to stick with Israel. But why? What if America told Israel to go fuck herself? How would that hurt America?

To be more frank, how would it hurt America if Israel were to be wiped from the map- not with all of her citizens murdered, but with the nation militarily defeated to the point of political dissolution? How? Would I as a Jew no longer be able to worship or practice my faith? Would the sudden shift in the rights of former Israeli citizens somehow make America less free or secure?

The folks who stick up for Israel care about Israel. They never state exactly what America gains from this costly friendship. And just like in the Middle East, pro-Israel interets are able to dominate the free American press and convince Americans that the Palestinians are just a bunch of expendable extras in an Indiana Jones movie. Per the latest conflagration, we are asked to imagine how we would react to rocket fire from Mexico? The analogy is more apt than one might think, since a majority of Mexicans are indeed descendents of the indigenous folks the white man colonized not so very long ago. And though the acolytes of Benjamin Netanyahu believe that the solution indeed is to beat these primitive people into submission until the idea of attacking their rich and successful neighbor is as absurd as Mexico attacking Texas, I offer this analogy:

A man and his pregnant wife are seated on a bus. A man of greater means gets on the bus and pushes the pregnant woman out of her seat so that he can sit down. The woman's husband spits in the wealthier man's face. The rich man slits the spitting man's throat, claiming that the dead man started it, and that he is now entitled to push everybody to the floor while his friends, family and business associates take the seats. And if the people writhing on the floor complain, the rich man and his cohorts are justified in kicking them.

Maybe the man who spit was an uncouth asshole, but he and his wife were there first. But since the killer is more "important" to society, we seem inclined to side with him. And anyway, isn't it just dangerously naive to think that the value of the spitting man's life is equal to that of the captain of industry? Why, if we thought that, our infrastructure would be in shambles and we might go around spitting in each other's faces right? Well, actually hell fucking NO! Does the insult of spit negate the outrage of shoving people out of their seats.

For 60 years, Israel has paraded that spit on her face around as justification for wielding her ax. All questioners of this equation are referred to Europe in WWII. But the pregnant woman on the floor is omitted from American discussion of the issue. And now Israel is saying that her heartache is greater than that of the folks they drove off of their land, because those folks are too primitive to know the difference between their normal chaotic lives and the death and destruction wrought by a truly industrialized nation. And when the Palestinians complain of the injustice dealt to them, they are accused of aping their conqueror's heartache over every retaliatory act. My upbringing makes it hard for me to admit, but even harder for me to avoid that Israel's case is an insult to my sense of logic and compassion.