Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin Gives Israel a Blank Check to Kill
I was watching Congressman Ro Khanna question Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on 2/29 about Israel’s demolition of Gaza when Austin uttered a humdinger about trusting Israel to “utilize weapons that we provide them in a responsible way.” He said that after noting that Israel has already killed more than 25,000 women and children in Gaza.
What “responsible” looks like
U.S. weapons shipments and transfers to Israel are couched as “security assistance,” and these weapons are often paid for by the American taxpayer, or put on the national credit card for future generations to pay. When Americans get antsy about being complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the Biden administration, supported by many Republicans, remind them that allegedly these weapons for Israel create jobs in the USA.
“Genocide creates jobs” is not exactly a healthy slogan.
Of course, Lloyd Austin alone isn’t the problem here. The entire Biden administration supinely supports Israel and Bibi Netanyahu. Donald Trump, Biden’s most likely opponent this fall, is even more slavishly pro-Israel.
And so the nightmare in Gaza continues as Israel utilizes its “Made in USA” bombs and missiles “in a responsible way.” Responsible in this case meaning the killing and injuring of more than 100,000 Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza’s ability to sustain human life for the remaining two million Palestinians there.
Disgust is the word today that captures my feelings about the actions of “my” government. Disgust at facilitating and defending the Israeli genocide in Gaza, as casualties among Palestinians soar above 100,000. Disgust that Congress only clamors for more billions for Israel ($14 billion in the Biden administrations’s bill; $17 billion in the alternate bill from the House Speaker) to enable more killing. Disgust at the strenuous efforts being exerted to get $61 billion in more weapons and aid to Ukraine while denying any oversight over or insight into how that money is spent. Disgust at the government seeking more billions to arm Taiwan, possibly stirring up a hornet’s nest of trouble with China. Disgust at constant fear-mongering about Russia hacking the 2024 presidential election, as if that “threat,” such as it is, can’t be countered and contained. Disgust.
My parents must have loved me …
To think that as a boy I stuck American flag stickers all over the house, including on the entry door and the washing machine, which must have just thrilled my parents, though I can’t recall them punishing me for it. To think that I saluted the flag innumerable times while standing at attention in uniform while serving in the military for twenty years.
Here’s the thing. I’m not disgusted at America. I’m not disgusted with Americans. I meet people every day who are kind, helpful, and generous, from the nurse who took my blood pressure this morning to the postman who delivered my mail and waved to me this afternoon since I happened to be outside when he came. Americans, generally speaking, are decent people. But there’s something seriously wrong with the U.S. government and its owners and donors, who are basically unaccountable to the rest of us.
Disgust is my prevailing emotion. So I write about it, I speak about it. I could do more, much more, but I suppose I am too risk-averse, too reluctant to act in a disobedient way to prevailing authority. So, in a way, I am part of the problem as well.
I am perplexed at how my fellow Americans can keep voting for men like Biden and Trump. Or any of the “usual suspects” who occupy Congress. Nothing will change for the better if we keep electing the same corrupt no-accounts. Why do we persist in such folly?
I suppose Senor Airman Aaron Bushnell couldn’t take it anymore. He was so disgusted, so demoralized, so damaged, by what he was witnessing in Gaza that he burnt himself alive in front of the Israeli embassy, crying out against genocide and for a free Palestine. When not ignoring his sacrifice, the mainstream media has been busy dismissing him as a radical anarchist raised within a religious cult. He was no “radical.” His “cult” was a devoted Christian community.
Aaron Bushnell, a brave and principled young man, sacrificed himself to draw attention to an ongoing crime against humanity. And so I feel more disgust when I see how his sacrifice is being twisted, when it’s addressed at all, by media sites in America.
Disgust. It’s not enough, I know. But I think when we open our eyes and truly seek hard truths, and truly see them for what they are, maybe then we can begin to move the needle in a better direction.
As a reader here says, hope is not a plan. But hope can sustain us as we come together to make a plan. A plan for a better America, one that isn’t constantly fear-mongering and warmongering, whether here or abroad.
A new America that might make me proud to slap a sticker of the flag on my door, as I did with such innocence a half-century ago on a door now long gone …
Mainstream Media Outlets Say No One Was Harmed in the Israeli Embassy while Denying the Reality of Genocide
A young Air Force airman set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in DC to protest genocide in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell, 25, died after being taken to a hospital.
Aaron Bushnell before he set himself on fire. Mainstream media sites chose not to feature any images of Bushnell, focusing instead on the Israeli Embassy or “the crime scene”
This was an extreme and deadly act of political protest directed against the Israeli government’s killing and wounding of 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza and its ongoing war of annihilation there, a war abetted by the U.S. government’s political and military power. Bushnell shouted “Free Palestine!” as he burned.
Bizarrely, an officer at the scene pointed a gun at him as he burned before another first responder asked for fire extinguishers. How a man on fire posed a threat to others is unclear.
[Update 2/27, 0820 EST: Disgracefully, this was the headline of a story at the Washington Post on Bushnell: Airman who set self on fire grew up on religious compound, had anarchist past. At this link. It appears Bushnell grew up in a Christian society in Orleans on Cape Cod, that he joined the Air Force in 2020, served as a cyber defense ops specialist in Texas, and was interested in U.S. history, socialism, and anarchism. The Washington Post article is at pains to portray him as being raised by a weird, possibly abusive, Christian cult while putting a heavy stress on his interest in anarchism. He also liked cats and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, so you just know he was a misfit. In all seriousness, Bushnell seems to me to have been an unusually principled and sensitive man who acted out of strong moral conviction.]
Aaron Bushnell, an unusually principled, determined, and thoughtful young man
Coverage in the mainstream media is revealing. I checked three sites: NBC, CBS, and the Guardian in Britain. Let’s look at NBC first. NBC said that Bushnell’s act was an “apparent protest” against the “Israeli-Hamas war.” NBC later added that Israel’s “crackdown” in Gaza was termed a genocide by Bushnell. NBC itself stuck to the narrative that Israel is engaged in a defensive war, a “crackdown,” against Hamas.
Next, let’s look at CBS. CBS repeated the narrative of “an apparent protest of Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas.” CBS did mention that Bushnell’s stated motivation was that he could no longer be complicit in an ongoing genocide in Gaza, followed by a lengthy denial by Netanyahu and the Israeli government. Claims of genocide are “false” and “outrageous,” as CBS gave Netanyahu the last word.
Turning to the British Guardian, its first sentence is more blunt: An active-duty member of the US air force has died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, while declaring he will “no longer be complicit in genocide”.
It also included a key statement Bushnell apparently included on his Facebook page: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
Nevertheless, the Guardian downplayed the 100,000 killed and wounded in Gaza as numbers generated by the “Hamas-run health service” there.
The final site I’d like to consider is Antiwar.com, an example of alternative media, I suppose. This site gets it right, in my view, so I’m posting the article here in its entirety:
US Airman Sets Himself on Fire in Front of Israeli Embassy to Protest Gaza Genocide
The airman said he would ‘no longer be complicit in genocide’
An active duty US airman set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC to protest the US-backed slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
According to Talia Jane, an independent journalist who obtained the video of the incident, the airman, who was identified as Aaron Bushnell, 25, died of his wounds late Sunday night.
According to Axios, a video of the incident shows the airman saying he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and that he was about to “engage in an extreme act of protest.”
“But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” Bushnell said right before lighting himself on fire.
Washington DC’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department said in a post on X that the airman was transported to a hospital with “critical life-threatening injuries.” The department also said the officers who extinguished the fire were members of the US Secret Service.
The dramatic protest comes as the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza by the Israeli campaign is approaching 30,000, and over 69,000 have been wounded. About two-thirds of the casualties are women and children.
The International Court of Justice has ruled that it’s “plausible” Israel is committing genocide and decided to take up the case brought to the court by South Africa. Despite the massive civilian casualty rate and international pressure, the US continues to provide unconditional support for the slaughter.
Yesterday, I appeared on Podcast by George. George Clark and I discussed the Russia-Ukraine War, Gaza, and the military-industrial-congressional complex. Here’s the video:
As George and I discussed America’s constant state of (very expensive and deadly) war, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that my country lost the Cold War that we allegedly won in 1991.
How so? After that “victory,” America was supposed to cash in on its peace dividends, becoming a normal country in normal times, to cite Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Instead, America doubled down on empire and the idea of imperial dominance. Militarism, not democracy, became a leading feature of our society, especially after the trauma of the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. government today remains shrouded in secrecy; those who would expose imperial war crimes, like Julian Assange or Daniel Hale, are imprisoned, even tortured.
The national security state, the MICIMATT,* is a colossus, far more insidious and invasive than anything even President Dwight D. Eisenhower imagined in his farewell address against the military-industrial complex in 1961. “Peace” is a word rarely heard in Washington, and the State Department has become a tiny branch of the Pentagon, bragging about weapons sales and shipments overseas rather than embracing diplomatic solutions to increasingly deadly conflicts. Even genocide in Gaza is dismissed as the Biden administration embraces Israel’s right to defend itself—against women and children in Gaza.
Courtesy of John Whitbeck, here’s a handy (and devastating) chart showing the damage inflicted on Gaza:
Chart prepared by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor available at this link:
*MICIMATT: military industrial congressional intelligence media academe think tank complex. We might also add Hollywood and the sports world to the complex, since both are so eager to celebrate war and “our” troops.
Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies from constant warfare, as James Madison warned us about. It’s worth repeating his words:
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare …
Since 2007, I’ve been writing for TomDispatch.com. Recently, Tom Engelhardt and I got to talking about war, American-style. I mentioned to Tom that I thought America’s presidents were appeasers, not in the Neville Chamberlain at Munich sense, but in the sense of kowtowing to the military-industrial-congressional complex and favoring more weapons and always more war. It got me thinking as well about our mutual affection for toy soldiers, how we as kids so innocently (and foolishly) played at war. Combining that with recent events in the Middle East led to this piece posted today at TomDispatch.
Like many American boys of the baby-boomer generation, I played “war” with those old, olive-drab, plastic toy soldiers meant to evoke our great victory over the Nazis and “the Japs” during World War II. At age 10, I also kept a scrapbook of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and its various Arab enemies in the Middle East. It was, I suppose, an early sign that I would make both the military and the study of history into careers.
I recall rooting for the Israelis, advertised then as crucial American allies, against Egypt, Syria, and other regional enemies at least ostensibly allied with the Soviet Union in that Cold War era. I bought the prevailing narrative of a David-versus-Goliath struggle. I even got a book on the Yom Kippur War that captivated me by displaying all the weaponry the U.S. military had rushed to Israel to turn the tide there, including F-4 Phantom jets and M-60 main battle tanks. (David’s high-tech slingshots, if you will.) Little did I know that, in the next 50 years of my life, I would witness increasingly destructive U.S. military attacks in the Middle East, especially after the oil cartel OPEC (largely Middle Eastern then) hit back hard with an embargo in 1973 that sent our petroleum-based economy into a tailspin.
Here’s the book I was fascinated with, published soon after the Yom Kippur War
As one jokester quipped: Who put America’s oil under the sands of all those ungrateful Muslim countries in the Middle East? With declarations like the Carter Doctrine in 1980, the U.S. was obviously ready to show the world just how eagerly it would defend its “vital interests” (meaning fossil fuels, of course) in that region. And even today, as we watch the latest round in this country’s painfully consistent record of attempting to pound various countries and entities there into submission, mainly via repetitive air strikes, we should never forget the importance of oil, and lots of it, to keep the engines of industry and war churning along in a devastating fashion.
Right now, of course, the world is witnessing yet another U.S. bombing campaign, the latest in a series that seems all too predictable (and futile), meant to teach the restless rebels of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and possibly even Iran a lesson when it comes to messing with the United States of America. As the recently deceased country singer Toby Keith put it: Mess with this country and “We’ll put a boot (think: bomb) in your ass.” You kill three soldiers of ours and we’ll kill scores, if not hundreds, if not thousands of yours (and it doesn’t really matter if they’re soldiers or not), because… well, because we damn well can!
America’s leaders, possessing a peerless Air Force, regularly exhibit a visceral willingness to use it to bomb and missile perceived enemies into submission or, if need be, nothingness. And don’t for a second think that they’re going to be stopped by international law, humanitarian concerns, well-meaning protesters, or indeed any force on this planet. America bombs because it can, because it believes in the efficacy of violence, and because it’s run by appeasers.
Yes, America’s presidents, its bombers-in-chief, are indeed appeasers. Of course, they think they’re being strong when they’re blowing distant people to bits, but their actions invariably showcase a distinctive kind of weakness. They eternally seek to appease the military-industrial-congressional complex, aka the national (in)security state, a complex state-within-a-state with an unappeasable hunger for power, profit, and ever more destruction. They fail and fail and fail again in the Middle East, yet they’re incapable of not ordering more bombing, more droning, more killing there. Think of them as being possessed by a monomania for war akin to my urge to play with toy soldiers. The key difference? When I played at war, I was a wet-behind-the-ears 10 year old.
The Rockets’ Red Glare, the Bombs Bursting in Air
No technology may be more all-American than bombs and bombers and no military doctrine more American than the urge to attain “peace” through massive firepower. In World War II and subsequent wars, the essential U.S. approach could be summarized in five words: mass production enabling mass destruction.
No other country in the world has dedicated such vast resources as mine has to mass destruction through air power. Think of the full-scale bombing of cities in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, ending in the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Think of the flattening of North Korea during the Korean War of the early 1950s or the staggering bombing campaigns in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s. Or consider the massive use of air power in Desert Shield against Iraq in the early 1990s followed by the air campaigns that accompanied the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003 (and never quite seemed to stop thereafter). The butcher’s bill for such bombing has indeed been high, quite literally millions of non-combatants killed by America’s self-styled “arsenal of democracy.”
And indeed, as you read this, another country is now faithfully following America’s example. Israel is systematically destroying Gaza, rendering it essentially uninhabitable for those Palestinians who survive the ongoing rampage. In fact, early in its war of annihilation, Israeli leaders cited the Allied destruction of the German city of Dresden in 1945 in support of their own atrocious air and ground campaign against the Palestinians.
Looking at this dispassionately as a military historian, the Dresden reference makes a certain twisted sense. In World War II, the Americans and their British allies in their “combined bomber offensive” destroyed German cities indiscriminately, seeing all Germans as essentially Nazis, complicit in the crimes of their government, and so legitimate targets. Something similar is true of the right-wing Israeli government today. It sees all Palestinians as essentially members of Hamas and thus complicit in last year’s brutal October 7th attacks on Israel, making them legitimate targets of war, Israeli- (and American-) style. Just like the United States, Israel claims to be “defending democracy” whatever it does. Little wonder, then, that Washington has been so willing to send bombs and bullets to its protégé as it seeks “peace” through massive firepower and genocidal destruction.
Indeed, of late, there has been considerable debate about whether Israel is engaged in acts of genocide, with the International Court of Justice ruling that the present government should strive to prevent just such acts in Gaza. Putting that issue aside, it’s undeniable that Israel has been using indiscriminate bombing attacks and a devastating invasion in a near-total war against Palestinians living on that 25-mile-long strip of land, an approach that calls to mind the harrowing catchphrase “Exterminate all the brutes!” from Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness.
In a sense, there’s nothing new under the sun. Certainly, the Old Testament itself provides examples of exterminatory campaigns (cited by Bibi Netanyahu as Israel first moved against the Palestinians in Gaza). He might as well have cited a catchphrase heard during America’s war in Vietnam, but rooted in the medieval crusades: “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”
America’s Unrelenting Crusade in the Middle East
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush got into trouble almost instantly when he referred to the “war on terror” he had launched as a “crusade.” Yet, as impolitic as that word might have seemed, how better to explain U.S. actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan? Just consider our faith in the goodness and efficacy of “our” military and that all-American urge to bring “democracy” to the world, despite the destruction visited upon Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen over the last several decades. Or go back to 1953 and the role the CIA played in the overthrow of Iran’s legitimate democratic ruler and his replacement by the brutally repressive regime of the Shah.
Try to imagine such events from the perspective of a historian writing in the year 2200. Might that future scribe not refer to repeated U.S. invasions of, incursions into, and bombing campaigns across the Middle East as a bloody crusade, launched under the (false) banner of democracy with righteous vengeance, if not godly purpose, in mind? Might that historian not suggest that such a “crusade” was ultimately more about power and profit, domination and control than (as advertised) “freedom”? And might that historian not be impressed (if not depressed) by the remarkable way the U.S. brought seemingly unending chaos and death to the region over such a broad span of time?
Consider these facts. More than 22 years after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. still has at least 30,000 troops scattered across the Middle East. At least one Navy carrier strike group, and often two, dominate the regional waters, while striking numbers of military bases (“Little Americas”) are still sprinkled across countries ranging from Kuwait to Bahrain, from Qatar to the United Arab Emirates and beyond. So many years later, about 900 U.S. troops still illegally occupy part of Syria (not coincidentally, where that country produces most of its oil) and 2,500 more remain in Iraq, even though the government there would like them to depart.
Yankee Go Home? Apparently Not in My Lifetime
Meanwhile, American military aid, mostly in the form of deadly weaponry, flows not only to Israel but to other countries in the region like Egypt and Jordan. Direct U.S. military support facilitated Saudi Arabia’s long, destructive, and unsuccessful war against the Houthis in Yemen, a conflict Washington is now conducting on its own with repeated air strikes. And of course, the entire region has, for more than two decades now, been under constant U.S. military pressure in that war on terror, which all too quickly became a war of terror (and of torture).
Recall that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the death of roughly a millionIraqis and the displacement of millions more as refugees. How could that not be considered part of a “crusade,” even if a fitful and failing one? Yet, here’s the rub: just as those Catholic crusades of the Middle Ages weren’t entirely or even primarily about religion, so today’s American version isn’t motivated primarily by an anti-Muslim animus. Of course, there is indeed an inescapably religious aspect to such never-ending American war-making, but what drives those wars is largely naked greed, vengeance, and an all-American urge both to appease and amplify the military-industrial-congressional complex.
Of course, as was true in the years after 9/11 and is still true today, Americans are generally encouraged to see their country’s imperial and crusading acts as purely defensive in nature, the righteous responses of freedom-bringers. Admittedly, it’s a strange kind of freedom this country brings at the tip of a sword — or on the nosecone of a Hellfire missile. Even so, in such an otherwise thoroughly contentious Congress, it should be striking how few members have challenged the latest bombing version of this country’s enduring war in the Middle East.
Forget the Constitution. No Congressional declaration of war is believed necessary for any of this, nor has it mattered much (so far) that the American public has grown increasingly skeptical of those wars and the acts of destruction that go with them. As it happens, however, the crusade, such as it is, has proven remarkably sustainable without much public crusading zeal. For most Americans, those acts remain distinctly off-stage and largely out of mind, except at moments like the present one where the deaths of three American soldiers give the administration all the excuse it needs for repetitive acts of retaliation.
No, we the people exercise remarkably little control over the war-making that the military-industrial-congressional complex has engaged in for decades or the costs that go with them. Indeed, the dollar costs are largely deferred to future generations as America’s national debt climbs even faster than the Pentagon war budget.
America, so we were told by President George W. Bush, is hated for its freedoms. Yet the “freedoms” we’re allegedly hated for aren’t those delineated in the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Rather, it’s America’s “freedom” to build military bases across the globe and bomb everywhere, a “freedom” to sell such bellicose activity as lawful and even admirable, a “freedom” to engage in a hyperviolent style of play, treating “our” troops and so many foreigners as toy soldiers and expendable props for Washington’s games.
It’s something I captured unintentionally five decades ago with those toy soldiers of mine from an imagined glorious military past. But after a time (too long, perhaps) I learned to recognize them as the childish things they were and put them away. They’re now long gone, lost to time and maturity, as is the illusion that my country pursues freedom and democracy in the Middle East through ceaseless acts of extreme violence, which just seem todrone on and on and on.
History teaches that you can have genocide without war, you can have war without genocide, and you can have war and genocide together. In Gaza today, the right-wing Israeli government is clearly engaged in a war on the Palestinian people that amounts to a genocide.
The horrific face of genocidal war
Of course, Israeli leaders claim they are engaged in a war against Hamas, and Hamas alone. Events, however, prove they are engaged in a genocidal war of annihilation.
A few harrowing data points: Israeli forces have already killed or wounded 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israel:
has damaged or destroyed all 12 of Gaza’s universities. Some 280 government schools and 65 UNRWA-run schools have also been destroyed or damaged, often resulting in dozens of fatalities. About 133 remaining schools are used to shelter those displaced by the assault. More than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes amid continued Israeli ground and air offensive that has killed more than 25,000 [now more than 28,000] people, including 10,000 [now more than 12,000] children.
Clearly, Israeli leaders are using war as a means of genocide, an excuse for it, as well as a form of camouflage for it. Don’t be deceived. War and genocide can and do coexist and feed off each other, as did the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews during World War II. As Israeli leaders readily admit to war while dissembling about genocide, at least they can be justly accused of war crimes while being held to international agreements governing the conduct of war, such as the Geneva Conventions.
Israel’s genocidal war, if left unchecked, will eliminate Gaza and its people. That is the stated intent of the Netanyahu government, which spouts the worst kind of eliminationist rhetoric, rhetoric that amounts to a “final solution to the Palestinian question.”
Any country that arms Israel in its genocidal war is complicit. Guess which country is clamoring to send another $14 billion in weaponry to Israel so it can pursue its war/genocide in Gaza? Yes: The United States of America.
In Gaza, both Hamas and Israel may act savagely and cruelly, but only one side truly has the means at its disposal to slaughter the other, and that side is Israel. Meanwhile, the mainstream media reserves words like “slaughter” for Hamas, even as Israeli forces kill Palestinians on a massive scale.
Clearly, the current strategy of the Israeli government is to destroy Gaza, making it uninhabitable, forcing the Palestinians in Gaza to leave or die.
When Israel is done in Gaza, they will turn to the West Bank. As Netanyahu said, Israel’s goal is to dominate Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Palestinians “in the way” are being killed, or starved, or expelled, or (if lucky) reduced to subjects under intolerable conditions of apartheid.
The Israeli government is getting away with this because it has the legal, military, and propaganda cover of the U.S. and much of Europe as well. The Biden administration complains about the worst excesses of Israel’s genocide while sending its leaders the weapons they need to continue the killing. Members of Congress like Nancy Pelosi suggest that earnest Americans calling for a ceasefire in Gaza are the useful idiots of Vladimir Putin.
It seemingly never occurs to Biden and Pelosi that they are the useful idiots of Bibi Netanyahu.
Stop the war in Gaza. Stop the genocide.
Postscript: The “Words About War” Team have posted ten suggestions for writing and talking more clearly, honestly, and accurately about Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Please go to https://www.wordsaboutwar.org/gaza.html.
The Costs of Blanket Support of Israel and Ukraine
This morning, three headlines caught my eye from the various news sources I subscribe to. The first came from Reuters: “Israeli tanks batter hospital districts” in Gaza. Here’s the short synopsis from Reuters:
Israeli forces relentlessly bombarded areas around two hospitals in Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis, pinning down large numbers of displaced people, residents said, in an offensive to take Hamas’ main stronghold in the enclave’s south. Follow the latest on the conflict.
The United Nations said that Israeli tanks struck a huge U.N. compound in Gazasheltering displaced Palestinians, causing “mass casualties.” Israel denied its forces were responsible and suggested Hamas may have launched the shelling. The attack prompted rare outright condemnation from the United States.
The second headline came from CNN and also focused on Gaza: “Red Cross warns of complete medical shutdown in Gaza.” Here’s a short synopsis of that story:
The Red Cross has warned that Gaza faces a complete medical shutdown unless immediate action is taken to safeguard essential services. “Every functioning hospital in the Gaza Strip is over-crowded and short on medical supplies, fuel, food and water,” said William Schomburg, the head of the Red Cross office in Gaza. This comes as Israeli forces have insisted that Hamas systematically operates in Gaza hospitals and adjacent areas, “using the residents as human shields.” Meanwhile, a United Nations building sheltering displaced Palestinians was hit by Israeli tank fire on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people and injuring 75 others. The White House said it is “gravely concerned” by the strike as Israel pushes forward with its military campaign.
It’s nice to know the U.S. government is “gravely concerned” even as it sends more tank shells to Israel so that the destruction of Gaza and its hospitals can continue apace.
The third headline came from journalist Aaron Maté and focuses on the almost forgotten war in Ukraine: “Biden’s $60 billion plan for Ukraine: prolong the war through 2024: As US weapons shipments to Ukraine dry up, Biden’s $60 billion request faces new hurdles in Washington.”
And then I saw this image on Twitter/X. Given the horrendous events in Gaza, this satirical image doesn’t seem that extreme to me:
Biden’s unequivocal support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza gives the lie to the concept of a “rules-based order” that America allegedly upholds and protects. As Biden expresses his “grave concern” about Israeli war crimes in Gaza, he keeps sending the weapons that make possible the very crimes he allegedly deplores. At the same time, his administration is opening a new front in this war with its deadly attacks on Yemen. Biden has said the bombing raids against Yemen aren’t stopping attacks on shipping even as he vows to continue them.
Meanwhile, Biden continues to fight for at least $60 billion for Ukraine in a stalemated war that’s killing untold thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. The aid that Biden wants to send this year won’t end that war; it won’t even give Ukraine a decisive edge. Most experts believe this aid will merely prolong the fighting, meaning more destruction and dead bodies on both sides.
The Biden administration’s embrace of genocide in Gaza and brutal indecisive war in Ukraine highlights the moral bankruptcy of its foreign policy. On the campaign trail, Biden is increasingly being confronted by protesters calling him out for his brutal and militaristic foreign policy. “Genocide Joe” is a nickname that stings because there’s truth in it.
When the main message of the Biden campaign is “Vote for Joe because Trump’s worse” and yet Joe’s latest nickname is linked to genocide, it doesn’t bode well for electoral victory in November.
Testimony before the International Court of Justice
Israeli military action is killing roughly 50 mothers a day in Gaza; 120 children a day; one journalist a day. Gaza is at the brink of mass famine. The Israeli strategy is clear: render Gaza uninhabitable. Force the Palestinians to flee. Create a desert and call it “peace.”
The following testimony before the International Court of Justice makes it abundantly clear that Israel is engaged in a campaign of incremental genocide, a genocide in slow motion, supported without equivocation by the United States. More than supported: U.S. weaponry facilitates the destruction of Gaza.
The destruction of Gaza, the mass murder of Palestinians, makes a mockery of the so-called rules-based order that the Biden administration allegedly upholds.
Yemen, Israel, Ukraine, and the U.S. Embrace of War Everywhere
Last night, the U.S. bombed another country, Yemen, in the name of the “rules-based order.” Yemen has been striking shipping as a form of protest against the ongoing Israeli genocide-in-slow-motion in Gaza. It always looks good when the U.S. uses its military to enable mass murder elsewhere. I’m sure the “peace bombs” we dropped will bring stability to the region.
The U.S. military bombs and launches Tomahawk missiles as its answer to everything. Meanwhile, our dynamic commander in chief, Joe Biden, launched a new front in this war of terror without Congressional authorization, an impeachable offense. But of course most in Congress will salute him for taking “decisive” action by bombing yet another poor country with brown-skinned Muslim people living in it. Perhaps Biden is counting on being a “wartime president” as a way to eke out a narrow victory in November.
In Gaza, incremental genocide continues with at least 23,000 Palestinians dead and another 60,000 wounded, the majority being women and children. The Israeli government is poisoning the land and water of Gaza, blasting buildings into rubble, and starving the Palestinians while still claiming to be the victims of the war. Antony Blinken, America’s diplomat-in-chief, says the war will end when Hamas offers its unconditional surrender. After which, what, exactly? Israel will rebuild Gaza and embrace Palestinians as brothers and sisters?
Israel is going to rebuild all this for the Palestinians in Gaza?
In Ukraine, the war continues to be stalemated as Ukraine waits for another $65 billion or so in aid from the Biden administration. Which brings me to this story from The Boston Globe this morning:
More than $1 billion worth of shoulder-fired missiles, drones, and night-vision goggles that the United States has sent to Ukraine have not been properly tracked by US officials, a new Pentagon report concluded, raising concerns they could be stolen or smuggled at a time when Congress is debating whether to send more military aid to Ukraine.
Over the last two years, the U.S. has flooded Ukraine with weaponry, producing a stalemated war and a healthy black market in stolen arms. The next step should be obvious: persist in the same folly by sending Ukraine even more weapons. Again, the argument is made that it’s all Russia’s fault and that, if Putin wants the war to end, he should basically surrender by withdrawing all Russian troops from the territory he has seized.
There you have it. The annihilation of Gaza will stop when Hamas totally surrenders and the war in Ukraine will stop when Russia totally surrenders, otherwise the U.S. must keep sending more than $100 billion in weaponry and aid to the “democracies” of Israel and Ukraine in their righteous battles against evil. Yes, that really is the position of Biden and Blinken.
Finally, a reader sent along this important article on how the U.S. is funding these wars and in fact the entire war on terror: by deficit spending. Call it “the ghost budget.” America’s national debt has ballooned to $34 trillion mainly due to the disastrous war on terror (roughly $8 trillion), colossal Pentagon budgets, and gargantuan bailouts of banks and corporations due to financial and Covid crises, real or constructed. Vast wealth continues to flow upwards in America as Biden’s “everyday people” struggle. Whether for Biden or Trump, the answer to the debt is always more tax breaks for the rich in the name of “stimulating” growth. Those tax breaks, of course, only drive the national debt up further, but never mind that.
What’s coming is a concerted attack on social security and Medicare/Medicaid in the name of fiscal responsibility. As the comedian George Carlin predicted: They’re coming for your social security. And they’ll get it, he added. Which is consistent with what Joe Biden has said in the past about the need to cut social security as well as health and veterans’ benefits.
Incremental Genocide and Displacement and Replacement in Gaza
Courtesy of OpenSecrets.org, I saw a chart on AIPAC contributions to U.S. senators that showed that all 100 senators have taken AIPAC money. Leading the way are senate “giants” like Mitch McConnell (nearly two million dollars) and Chuck Schumer (roughly $1.7 million). Talk about bipartisanship! I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the U.S. Senate is so strongly pro-Israel. It obviously has nothing to do with the power of AIPAC and all that money.
Bipartisanship and no divisiveness. Who says we have a dysfunctional and divided Congress? Nonsense!
Here’s how AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) describes itself on its own web site:
The Largest Pro-Israel PAC in America
WE STAND with those who stand with Israel. The AIPAC PAC is a bipartisan, pro-Israel political action committee. It is the largest pro-Israel PAC in America and contributed more resources directly to candidates than any other PAC. 98% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their general election races in 2022.
That last sentence is a killer. AIPAC is reminding Members of Congress that if you want to be elected, or win reelection, you very much want AIPAC on your side. And if you don’t kowtow to their agenda, they will do everything in their power to defeat you.
Imagine if there was an American Palestine Public Affairs Committee, an APPAC, that contributed hundreds of thousands if not millions to every U.S. senator and that boasted of a 98% success rate in getting APPAC-anointed candidates elected or reelected. Do you think maybe the U.S. Senate would have a different position on Gaza and the West Bank?
Speaking of Gaza, I watched Chris Hedges interview Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian. Pappé put it simply and clearly: Israel is engaged in “incremental genocide” against the Palestinian people, a genocide in slow motion, a strategy of “displacement and replacement.” The “displacement” of the Palestinians is done by mass bombing, mass destruction, mass death, and (hopefully for the Israelis) mass migration, and the “replacement” will come when Jewish settlers take possession of Gaza (after a lot of munitions cleanup and infrastructure redevelopment, I suppose, probably paid for by the U.S. taxpayer).
There’s an Orwellian term for this. For mass death followed by forced expulsion, Israel is using the term “voluntary migration” (or “voluntary” emigration). But of course there is nothing “voluntary” about any of this.
If U.S. government officials appear clueless about what’s happening in Gaza, they’re not. They’re just bought and paid for.
Bracing Views 