SENSE AND NONSENSE—A NEW BEGINNING OR MORE OF THE SAME?
From the editor: The historic inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 will be historically significant only if it marks the beginning of the kinds of change that Obama called for in his campaign. The change he called for includes the following elements:
1. End the war in Iraq.
2. Restore the middle class in this country.
3. Close Guantanamo.
4. End the policy of torture.
5. Pass a national system of universal health care similar to Medicare.
6. Replace the one-size-fits-all K-12 punitive system with an incentive system.
7. Promote affordable higher education.
8. Enforce nuclear non-proliferation.
9. Find Osama Bin Laden and capture or kill him.
10. Fully fund Veterans’ benefits.
11. Reverse global warming.
12. Allow stem cell research.
13. Replace the tyranny of privatization with effective public-private partnerships.
14. Replace secrecy with transparency and accountability.
Since Ronald Reagan declared that “government is the problem” in his January, 1981 inauguration speech, the public policy of the United States has been in a dangerous, downward spiral of conservative ideology based upon fear, greed, free-market dogmatism, systematic distortion and dilution of constitutional protections, and religious extremism.
Adam Smith theorized that a free-market system would discourage extremism through a mechanism of enlightened self-interest. Unfortunately, Mr. Smith had not had the privilege of reading and/or meeting theologians and philosophers like Reinhold Niebuhr, author of books such as The Nature and Destiny of Man. Mr. Niebuhr understood that “man” is capable of any folly, as did British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Each human, without fail, will test the limits of folly when left to his or her own devices. A so-called “free market” has no chance of finding a fair and balanced center without checks and balances against the excesses of human nature.
The proper role of government is to protect its citizens against such excesses. Fortunately for us and for Obama, our forefathers—the authors of our Constitution including the Bill of Rights—understood the need for checks and balances. One of the most important essays on separation of powers and checks and balances can be found in Federalist No. 47 from The Federalist Papers. In this essay James Madison writes, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
He adds, “In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct.”
Compare Madison’s wisdom with the Bush/Cheney far-right notion of “the unilateral presidency” and concentration of power within the Executive Branch. The Bush administration’s contempt for proper Congressional checks and balances upon the Executive Branch can be documented accurately and profoundly in Bush’s abuse of signing statements, executive orders, and secrecy.
At issue here is not whether one political party controls the three branches of government; rather, it is whether one ideology gains control of government. For the last 28 years, the ideology of neo-conservatism has dominated all three branches. Obama’s call for “reaching across the aisle,” coupled with a pragmatic focus upon finding solutions to problems, is the right idea.
However, to achieve change, Obama cannot be naïve about the true nature of humankind or those who are quite willing to use the power of money to obscure the real needs of this country. Obama says he needs our help to make his call for change a reality. We can help by constantly reminding him—through calls, letters, and non-violent social and political action—of his campaign promises.
On the eve of his inauguration, the question remains: Is this “a new beginning or more of the same?”
COLLATERAL DAMAGE AT HOME AND ABROAD
From the editor: In 1995, domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh used the term, “collateral damage,” when he bombed the Oklahoma City federal building. One hundred, sixty-eight people were killed in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The victims ranged in age from three months to 73, not including unborn children of three pregnant women. Nineteen of the victims were children, including 15 who were in the America’s Kids Day Care Center. The bomb also injured 853 people.
Unlike McVeigh, I vociferously hate the term “collateral damage” and the willingness to include it as an acceptable cost of responding to terrorists.
In Gaza, more than 300 children have been killed. More than 1,050 Palestinians have been killed and at least half of those killed have been innocent civilians or “collateral damage.” Thirteen Israelis have been killed.
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman appearing on the MSNBC “Morning Joe” talk show was asked whether he thought the Israeli military action in Gaza was “disproportionate.” Friedman answered that he did not care about whether the casualties were disproportionate. “In war,” he said, “you are trying to win.” This attitude, which reflects the attitude of Israeli leaders, provides license and cover for the Israeli military machine to fall into the trap of shooting anything that moves. The U.S. military fell into the same trap in both Vietnam and Iraq. The U.S. even exacerbated the problem in Iraq by hiring private Blackwater “soldiers of fortune.”
An article published by The Los Angeles Times today (Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009) illustrates the thin line between justifiable retaliatory military action and murder or manslaughter of innocent civilians. The article carries the headline, “‘I waited for my fate,’ says Gaza father,” and the subhead, “A farmer’s attempt to flee to safety with his two sons fails when Israeli soldiers fire on their car. It takes 20 hours for an ambulance to get to them.”
Following are excerpts from the story:
Reporters Yasser Ahmad and Ashraf Khalil write, “About 1 p.m. Friday, Mohammed Shurrab and his two sons piled into a red Land Rover and fled the family’s farm in the village of Fukhari, southeast of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Kassab, a 28-year-old engineer, sat in the front passenger seat and Ibrahim, an 18-year-old college student, sat in the back.
“They didn’t get far.
“As they drove, a hail of bullets struck the car, shattering the windshield. A group of soldiers had opened fire from a house 30 yards away, Shurrah said.
“Panicking, Kassab leaped from the car, staggered perhaps 10 years and then fell in the street as the bullets continued to fly, his father said.
“With the body of Kassab lying in the street, Shurrab said, he and Ibrahim sat bleeding in their car for 20 hours.
“Shurrab called the local ambulance service and was told that they were waiting for coordination with the Israeli army so they could come safely to the scene. He phoned his relatives, who called the Red Cross and gave his number to local journalists.
“As night approached and his bleeding son grew weaker, he spoke with Al Jazeera, BBC Arabic and several local radio stations, pleading to be rescued.
“Ibrahim complained to his father that he felt cold.
“‘I could not do anything for my son,’ Shurrab said.
“Around midnight, the cell phone battery died. Soon afterward, Ibrahim stopped responding.
“‘I waited for my fate,’ Shurrab said, crying.”
In another story published by The Los Angeles Times on Saturday, January 17, 2009, reporters Jeffrey Fleishman and Batsheva Sobelman write, “Israel TV broadcast a father’s heartbreak Friday (Jan. 16) when a Palestinian doctor living in Gaza made a frantic call to an Israeli newscaster saying an Israeli tank had shelled his home, killing three of his daughters and injuring other family members.
“Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who speaks Hebrew, worked as a gynecologist in an Israeli hospital. Even as the crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel had largely been closed in recent months, he had traveled frequently from one place to the other. But he had remained in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began 21 days ago. He gave frequent interviews to the Israeli media on living conditions in the seaside enclave. He spoke of having tanks around his house and of passing through checkpoints; he told Israelis what it was like to be Palestinian.
“Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar’s cell phone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor’s home had been struck by a shell:
“‘Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They’ve killed my children…Could somebody please come to us?’
“Sitting at his news desk for one of Israel’s main evening news broadcasts, Eldar held his phone up. For three minutes and 26 seconds, Aboul Aish’s wailing was broadcast across the country.
“Eldar welled up. He made pleas for help for the family…until Eldar took out his earpiece and walked off the set to try to arrange for help.
“Aboul Aish was a single father. His wife had died of cancer. He made his daughters sleep close to the walls of their home in hopes that would keep them safe if airstrikes or artillery collapsed the ceiling.
“After the newscast, Eldar met with reporters. Eldar said of Aboul Aish: ‘It is simply surreal. He is part of this place yet not of it, belonging and not belonging.’
“Even so, across Israel the doctor’s anguished voice kept playing over and over.”
While it is indisputable that Hamas militants broke the truce by firing rockets into southern Israel, it is also indisputable that the Israel war machine timed their invasion of Gaza to take advantage of the last weeks of an ineffective, lame-duck Bush administration and the certainty that the incoming administration would not and could not become involved until after the Jan. 20 inauguration.
Evidence of the Bush administration’s completely absurd effort to bring about a cease fire included the U.S. veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease fire. Secretary of State Rice vetoed the very resolution that she had originally authored. Such inaction gave Israel the “green light” to bomb U.N. headquarters in Gaza City and then claim they had received incoming fire from that location.
The sad truth is that the Israeli invasion of Gaza enjoys popular support in Israel in advance of Israel elections scheduled for February.
Such support ignores two realities. As Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine and author of “Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror,” writes in the Jan. 14 issue of The New York Times, “There is a fixed idea among some Israeli leaders that Hamas can be bombed into moderation. This is a false and dangerous notion. It is true that Hamas can be deterred militarily for a time, but tanks cannot defeat deeply felt belief.”
The second reality is that war does have an unintended consequence. In the ill-conceived Israeli invasion of Gaza, the reality of “collateral damage” creates more militant extremists across the Middle East and makes Israel less safe.
The Compass Newsletter
Maynard Chapman, Editor
Copyright © 2009, The Compass Society
