Bush's NeoconsHave Put Israel in Terrible Jeopardy
Back when Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear facilities in 1981 I was one of the few supporters of human rights to find this action justified:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm
About the same time I was also criticizing Israel for imitating the South African pattern of 'preventive detention' -- detaining individuals without charges on the basis that they were security risks, the details of which could not be disclosed without risking or closing off sources of information. I recall an Israeli jurist defending this practice on the basis that only a handful of individuals would be affected. The terms of incarceration were only 6 month and would require high level renewal to be extended another six months. He was insensed when I suggested that Israel should be offering compensation to such individuals and/or their families for this deprivation of rights. Alan Dershowitz was apparently there long before with his own defenses of preventive detention:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Summaries/V50I6P69-1.htm
OK. There it is. How can one defend an 'unprovoked' bombing of another country with potential loss of innocent lives while objecting to the incarceration of presumed terrorists? I admit that only pragmatic, not principled, grounds can be offered to defend this apparent contradiction.
For myself I am in a sense a child of the Holocaust -- I was as a child of WW2 forever stunned by the sights of the prisoners who had survived the death camps. I read with horror about the details later as a college student. I editorialized against the blatant anti-Semitism that I found surrounding us at my undergraduate college, Yale. I can imagine the anxiety that any Israeli must feel now about the prospects of yet another Holocaust -- now in the form of a sneak nuclear attack such as might have emanated from Iraq under Saddam Hussein -- already with an established record of sneak attacks upon enemies he thought might be vulnerable to his aggressions (i.e. Iran) which had been launched shortly before the Israeli attack on his developing nuclear facilities:
http://www.emergency.com/hussein1.htm
The Israelis' destruction of Hussein's nuclear potential in my view was a justified instance of a preemptive strike -- not a war, mind you.
Let us fast forward: Our Bushy neocons, in addition apparently to the impulse to dominate the Middle Eastern oil reserves, have been following in most clumsy fashion the far more precise Israeli precedents. But we did not simply hit Afghanistan to knock it out as a haven for terrorists, we also launched an unthoughtout war on Iraq which Machiavelli would have warned was misbegotten -- never try to occupy a hostile territory with one's troops; avoid all wars that one possibly can (the citation from my signature below which he quoted in The Prince along with his warning that 'insurgents' will bitterly resist occupation). And needless to say the clumsy detentions of any and all with torture and rendition thrown in have thoroughly discredited the U.S. as an international rogue nation through our violations of basic international conventions and even of our own Constitutional protections of basic liberties at home!
So where are we going now? Nations around the globe are sticking their fingers in the eye of the Bush administration -- most of Latin America has been emboldened to go its own (non-free trade) way. Iran has us by the short hairs, too, with its capacity to disrupt our sources of energy and along with them our over stretched economy.
And where have we left Israel? If some agreement cannot be achieved to guarantee that those rockets being developed in Iran will not be loaded with nuclear warheads and aimed at it, Israel will be forced to reduplicate against Iran its preemptive strike against Iraq's nuclear facilities. Needless to say this will put Israel in a further no win situation, dependent on a most frail 'coalition of the reluctant' now running for cover to ensure its share of the dwindling world energy supplies. How much time will it take Bush to cut and run to leave Israel to fend for itself -- it has no energy resources to offer us?
I have the horrible feeling that I have seen all this before in different forms -- now the pogrom to end all pogroms?
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm
About the same time I was also criticizing Israel for imitating the South African pattern of 'preventive detention' -- detaining individuals without charges on the basis that they were security risks, the details of which could not be disclosed without risking or closing off sources of information. I recall an Israeli jurist defending this practice on the basis that only a handful of individuals would be affected. The terms of incarceration were only 6 month and would require high level renewal to be extended another six months. He was insensed when I suggested that Israel should be offering compensation to such individuals and/or their families for this deprivation of rights. Alan Dershowitz was apparently there long before with his own defenses of preventive detention:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Summaries/V50I6P69-1.htm
OK. There it is. How can one defend an 'unprovoked' bombing of another country with potential loss of innocent lives while objecting to the incarceration of presumed terrorists? I admit that only pragmatic, not principled, grounds can be offered to defend this apparent contradiction.
For myself I am in a sense a child of the Holocaust -- I was as a child of WW2 forever stunned by the sights of the prisoners who had survived the death camps. I read with horror about the details later as a college student. I editorialized against the blatant anti-Semitism that I found surrounding us at my undergraduate college, Yale. I can imagine the anxiety that any Israeli must feel now about the prospects of yet another Holocaust -- now in the form of a sneak nuclear attack such as might have emanated from Iraq under Saddam Hussein -- already with an established record of sneak attacks upon enemies he thought might be vulnerable to his aggressions (i.e. Iran) which had been launched shortly before the Israeli attack on his developing nuclear facilities:
http://www.emergency.com/hussein1.htm
The Israelis' destruction of Hussein's nuclear potential in my view was a justified instance of a preemptive strike -- not a war, mind you.
Let us fast forward: Our Bushy neocons, in addition apparently to the impulse to dominate the Middle Eastern oil reserves, have been following in most clumsy fashion the far more precise Israeli precedents. But we did not simply hit Afghanistan to knock it out as a haven for terrorists, we also launched an unthoughtout war on Iraq which Machiavelli would have warned was misbegotten -- never try to occupy a hostile territory with one's troops; avoid all wars that one possibly can (the citation from my signature below which he quoted in The Prince along with his warning that 'insurgents' will bitterly resist occupation). And needless to say the clumsy detentions of any and all with torture and rendition thrown in have thoroughly discredited the U.S. as an international rogue nation through our violations of basic international conventions and even of our own Constitutional protections of basic liberties at home!
So where are we going now? Nations around the globe are sticking their fingers in the eye of the Bush administration -- most of Latin America has been emboldened to go its own (non-free trade) way. Iran has us by the short hairs, too, with its capacity to disrupt our sources of energy and along with them our over stretched economy.
And where have we left Israel? If some agreement cannot be achieved to guarantee that those rockets being developed in Iran will not be loaded with nuclear warheads and aimed at it, Israel will be forced to reduplicate against Iran its preemptive strike against Iraq's nuclear facilities. Needless to say this will put Israel in a further no win situation, dependent on a most frail 'coalition of the reluctant' now running for cover to ensure its share of the dwindling world energy supplies. How much time will it take Bush to cut and run to leave Israel to fend for itself -- it has no energy resources to offer us?
I have the horrible feeling that I have seen all this before in different forms -- now the pogrom to end all pogroms?
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 10:33 AM
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