Neoconservative David Brooks’s column approving Obama’s deal with the Taliban to release Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is getting a lot of attention because of its ideological independence. The NYT columnist says Obama was right to free five Taliban leaders in order to gain the freedom of the young army sergeant from Idaho who is said to have walked away from his base in Afghanistan five years ago at a time when he questioned the US purpose there.
Brooks endorsed the deal by citing Israeli nationalist esprit-de-corps.
Israel once traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to get back one of their own. Another time they traded 1,150 prisoners to get back three of their own. They did it because of a deep awareness that national cohesion is essential to national survival. They did it because Israeli parents share a common emotional bond; the imprisonment of one of their children touches them all. In polarized countries, especially, you have to take care of your own.
That’s not surprising, considering that Brooks was taught to be “gooey-eyed” about Israel, as he confessed on his 12th pilgrimage there.
But I noticed his acceptance of the Taliban:
It doesn’t matter either that the U.S. government ended up dealing with terrorists. In the first place, the Taliban are not terrorists the way al-Qaida is. America has always tried to reach a negotiated arrangement with the Taliban, and this agreement may be a piece of that. In the second place, this is the dirty world we live in. Sometimes national leaders are called upon to take the sins of the situation upon themselves for the good of the country, to deal with the hateful and compromise with the loathsome. That’s their form of sacrifice and service.
Would Brooks ever say that Israel must reach a negotiated settlement with Hamas? Let alone qualify Hamas’s official status as a terrorist organization? I sincerely doubt it. If he hasn’t, he should do so now, in endorsing Palestinian reunification as a step toward resolution of the conflict.
The Taliban is a whole lot worse than Hamas, in social attitudes, intolerance, orthodoxy and commitment to violent struggle.
And note Brooks’s statement about Israel: “In polarized countries, especially, you have to take care of your own.” But that’s the problem: Israel only looks out for its own, Jews. Which is why the country (by which Brooks seems to mean Israel and Palestine) is polarized.
(P.S. I don’t spout opinions about Bergdahl because, like David Brooks, I’ve never donned a uniform.)
“Sometimes national leaders are called upon to take the sins of the situation upon themselves for the good of the country, to deal with the hateful and compromise with the loathsome. That’s their form of sacrifice and service.”
Yes, well.
Consider how our ever-so-reluctant leaders (Bush/Cheney et al.) forced themselves to do the dirty (for the good of the good ole USA of course) by attacking Iraq, torturing some of their prisoners, and doing all the hideous kidnapping, indefinite detaining, and rendering for torture. But, hey!, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Oh yes, and destroying the last vestiges of the USA’s constitutional civil rights. So sorry, but war is hell, even if we started it and it was wholly unnecessary and illegal to boot.
And, of course, neocons and conservatives LOVE violence and love to show that they are above the moral weakness of complying with international law (or any other law, come to that), are above rules and morality, are tough macho men, gangsters. And these same neocons and conservatives hate the communist command-economy government, but love our oligarchy-commanded economic and governmental system, much promoted by these stupid wars. (Pity the people: nobody loves democracy any more!)
“Israel once traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to get back one of their own. Another time they traded 1,150 prisoners to get back three of their own. They did it because of a deep awareness that national cohesion is essential to national survival. They did it because Israeli parents share a common emotional bond; the imprisonment of one of their children touches them all. In polarized countries, especially, you have to take care of your own.” brooks
“They did it” because they could go right back a week later and re arrest them.
It seems brooks thinks only Israel,s Jewish parents have a strong bond and care more about their children than anyone else.
Maybe Jews invented that as well as honouring one,s parents as Nuttyahoo claimed.
P.S. I don’t spout opinions about Bergdahl because, like David Brooks, I’ve never donned a uniform.)
It’s not what the recruiters described. Imagine a bureaucratic Post office full of lazies but which recruits through a poverty draft and where the ‘volunteers’ self select on their attraction to submissiveness to authority, and a willingness to travel to kill people, plus an absence of competing opportunities. Then the process of dehumanization and glorification of murder for the flag–this is where the psychopaths get stoked
But there are many idealists who were misinformed and talked themselves into it. They are the ones who walk.
Consider yourself blessed.
David Brooks is desperately trying to stay relevant …it’s not working.
Has Brooks said anything about how the USA should handle the new Palestinian unity government?