Yesterday David Bromwich published a piece on Huffpo memorializing Rachel Corrie in the best way, by using her story to critique the media and the American government and ultimately to the fields of political philosophy and Jewish and American identity. Deeply moving. The piece begins with a precise description of several injuries to Americans who have put themselves in harm's way in Palestine, including Tristan Anderson, who Bromwich says is likely to survive, but with some brain damage. And then, to the large ideas:
What drives these Americans to risk their lives against Israeli soldiers on behalf of a subject people half the world away? The answer is a passion for justice, and a commitment to civil rights. Why should any of this be of interest to Americans? For a general reason and a particular one. The general: this is a passion and a commitment that we Americans at our best have been supposed to share; it is the largest single reason we have received the admiration of other people around the world. The particular reason is as obvious but more immediate. Barack Obama, our first black president, and a man who has identified himself as a beneficiary and successor of the tradition of Martin Luther King, has promised $30 billion of military aid to Israel over the next ten years — with no conditions, no budget-items specified, no limitations spoken of. Barack Obama is known to be a moderate politician, and so we may deduce that the moderate plan, with Israel, is to keep increasing the leviathan-bulk of the American subsidy and not to ask questions.
We ought to know a good deal about a country to which we give such large continuous donations. But Americans who care for public discussion of this subject are obliged to conduct it ourselves, since, if recent history is a guide, we will get no help from the leading American newspapers. Even the appointment today of Avigdor Lieberman, an avowed racist and a believer in the feasibility of the expulsion of all Palestinians, as foreign minister in the new Israeli government under Binyamin Netanyahu — even this predicted and extraordinary news is not likely to provoke the New York Times or the Washington Post to report with honesty who this Lieberman is, and what he signifies.
Nor will the Obama administration do it. They will be as hesitant and mixed and occasionally contradictory in their signals on Israel as they have been on many other subjects; more so, because in this case an organized body of censors and guardians attends to the reputation and support of Israel in the U.S. Let us nonetheless open the discussion by admitting that the Israel we think we know is the Israel of books written sixty and forty years ago, and of movies made from those books.
…No person fearful of being a victim can be rewarded with special rights or special powers. If we — Americans, Israelis, everyone — want to deserve our freedom, we must agree to live in a moral world where people are responsible for themselves. And just as we cannot be punished for the things that our parents did, so the crimes we commit can never be justified by the things our parents suffered.
This is a moment to study the life and death of Rachel Corrie. She left letters of great interest which show her to have been a kind of young American that many of us have known and admired. Thoughtless protectors of the status quo will say that this is Israel's cause after all; that we have no right to ask questions, as Rachel Corrie did; that Israel, like the U.S., is a democracy under siege. This will not do. The U.S. and Israel are not helpless "survivor" countries, trying to work off the trauma of recent victimhood. We are vastly powerful modern states, both of which dominate our regions, and one of which could dream of dominating the world in the year 2000. Both have recently engaged, under the eyes of the world, in exorbitant, brutal, and unjustifiable wars that have tarnished our fame. In both countries, there is no sign of the militarism ending.
Yet in both countries — though the U.S. lacks a newspaper even close to being as serious and candid as Haaretz — there is a citizenry capable of being educated and roused to punctual action in its own long-term interest. The truth about this has never altered. The commandment governing the long-term good of a country is the same as that for an individual — in the dry and accurate words of Thomas Hobbes, "Seek peace." And in memory of Rachel Corrie, let us say also: the addiction to war and indefinite expansion is no longer an Israeli problem. How did we ever dare to suppose that it was? When Americans are shot by a gun or mauled by a bulldozer, it is as much an American problem as when James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were beaten, shot, and burned, and their bodies left in a swamp, in Neshoba County, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964.
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'The addiction to war and indefinite expansion is no longer an Israeli problem. How did we ever dare to suppose that it was?'
Probably because the addiction goes unquestioned in the U.S., which never demobilized from WW II. Bases in occupied countries such as Germany and Japan became permanent garrisons, just as wartime intelligence agencies became permamnent fixtures of the security state, and wartime weapons spending never stopped expanding during peacetime.
Western colonial outposts such as Israel were easily adopted into the U.S. global empire. And as with brutal caudillo rule in its former Latin American satrapies, the U.S. remains unconcerned about the harsh domestic policies of its client states.
NATO, whose treaty describes a European mutual defense pact, has reinvented itself to menace Russia's borders and immerse itself in a hopeless debacle in Afghanistan, with a fresh push from the newly-elected Democratic president. These policies occasion almost zero debate.
The U.S. mindlessly supports Israel because it is a bipartisan militarist nation which instinctively feels kinship with fellow militarists … particularly those with cabinet ministers such as Avigdor Lieberman, who can be 'as nasty as they wanna be' without fear or shame. This will never change as long as most voters are content to keep playing in the media-managed bipartisan sandbox, under the silent gaze of their discreet adult minders.
I'm not a big fan of "sandalistas." Inmure yourself in other people's politics and you are taking risks and need to be prepared for the consequences.
Americans need to be concerned is our mindless subsidization of the carnage and oppression, and our political linkage for no discernible good reason to a doomed crusader state. Persons of Jewish descent need to abjure the crimes that are being committed, supposedly in their name.
Nothing needs to be added to what Bromwich wrote.
Except that nothing defines the corruption of America more than
Israel.
When both your government and media is so corrupted that there is no truth there isn't much left to do but a bloody revolution…I guess that will come last.
Dreyfuss's piece at the Nation will warm Phil's heart. Is Dreyfuss being too optimistic?
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/418375/obama_rebuffs_israeli_hawk?rel=hp_picks
Her emails to her mother reveal a young lady in the best tradition of what it means to be an American. Sadly she is denigrated, ignored, as each day our squandered good reputation sinks yet lower. It is now Bernie Madoff who represents the USA elite at home, and Likud-R Israel who represents us abroad.
We certainly have no moral high ground in the Mideast between Israel and the oil.
When I think about where we are now, it could have all been avoided if we had pursued alternative fuel research with a vengeance back in the 70s when the red flags went up. Instead, we coddled Saudi princes and built trucks and SUVs. Japan went for fuel efficiency and they will be building cars while we arrange bailouts.
None of this had to be. Without our dependence on the oil, pro-Israel American Jews would have had a much more difficult time ramming their agenda down our collective throat.
Bromwich's Huffpo piece on Rachel Corrie is excellent.
I'm all for energy efficiency, Liza, but SUVs and trucks are a drop int the bucket of energy use when compared to the energy used by the military and government. American auto makers are going broke because they make garbage at a higher cost than the Japanese make decent cars. I'd look at complacent and arrogant industry management and lousy and currupt union employees and management to see what destroyed the U.S. auto industry.
BTW, I agree that the U.S. has no moral high ground in the Middle East.
I have never understood why Rachel Corrie is referred to as a "peace activist", unless, of course, the term is meant in an Orwellian sense. There is a well-known photo of her burning an American flag with a deranged look on her face with a bunch of Palestinian kids around her cheering her on? Wouldn't a "peace activist" be trying to encourage brotherhood between people and dialogue? How is burning a flag supposed to further this. Unless, as I said, it is meant in an Orwellian sense where things mean the opposite of what they say…i.e. by being a "peace activist" she is trying inflame passions.
More like a Darwinian sense.
Liza: "When I think about where we are now, it could have all been avoided if we had pursued alternative fuel research with a vengeance back in the 70s when the red flags went up. Instead, we coddled Saudi princes and built trucks and SUVs."
I have no fondness for American car companies. But I think they made an effort to build energy efficient cars. GM's electric car was beyond the technology of the time. It was incredibly expensive (GM would only lease them to customers at a steep loss). In the end GM couldn't afford to maintain the cars, which generally only got 70 miles or so per charge anyway.
Same thing with the GM Saturn. I remember all the type when GM decided to start manufacturing the Saturn. There was to be a new management style, feedback, consultation, a leveling of the hierarchical management pyramid. And in the end, I recently read, GM never made a penny off the Saturn. GM built big rear-wheel drive cars and pickups because that was where they made their money. When they tried to build small cars they went broke. I'm sorry for people who work for GM (my dad used to work there). But that's life. Companies, like countries, constantly rise and fall. GM's time has come and gone. And America's will too, probably faster than we think.
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