FOUR HORSEMEN
Which Of These Pricks Caused The Genocide In Gaza?
This might be a trick question
Israel’s unimpeded siege of Gaza should not be possible in the post-WW2 world. Indeed, the postwar international order was founded on a shared conviction that nothing like the Shoah would ever be permitted again, at least not anywhere under the influence of the Western powers.
And yet, a mere 80 years later, Israel is enthusiastically committing a diabolical, full-on genocide: one that the liberal Western powers knowingly sponsor while persecuting anyone who objects too publicly, resorting to everything from open police brutality to boardroom back stabbings and firings carried out with vague references to anti-Semitic hate speech or condoning terrorism.
How did we get here? Something crucial has changed: somehow, the institutional safeguards of humane behavior that our grandparents set in place after the war have been dismantled. Today’s question is simple: who dismantled them, and when?
Stay with the classics
In the early 1970s, Henry Kissinger popularized his belief that the value of U.S. power politics far outweighs such trifling concerns as Truth, Justice, and the American way. It’s not that generations of earlier politicians didn’t behave according to Kissinger’s belief; it’s just that Kissinger said the quiet part aloud — repeatedly, even proudly.
In earlier days, it had been thought wise to limit the public’s appreciation of just how amoral a business national and international politics tended to be, and how duplicitous its practitioners. People liked the idea that senators and presidents and generals were honorable folk who sought to do the right thing, even when they got it wrong. So politicians and government officials kept up appearances at least.
The Nixon administration changed that. They wallowed in their nastiness for all to see and fear. They expected to be admired and praised according to just how deadly cold they could become when US interests were on the line, or were said to be.
The chattering classes called it “realpolitik,” but the media called it pragmatism because realpolitik sounded kind of foreign and maybe subversive, what with the Cold War and all. Whatever we call it, the concept of abandoning ethical and moral reasoning for the overall betterment of mankind has inspired generations of work-shy right wing think-tank denizens to explore it right down to the molecular level.
Even so, there were limits. Nixon might have relentlessly carpet-bombed a neutral country or two in his day, but he knew that the American public would be outraged enough to punish him politically, so he did it secretly and falsified records to cover it. He later resigned from office over a coverup that, in today’s political environment, would scarcely elicit a public apology much less a resignation.
Original Sin
Nixon-era pragmatism can’t account for the ostentatious brutality we’re witnessing — and, more importantly, tolerating — in Gaza. Something took place more recently that makes it possible for us to be made aware of a full-on genocide involving thousands of incinerated children, without exhibiting a level of outrage commensurate with the magnitude of this mass atrocity.
I’m starting with the premise that you and I are broken. We’ve been numbed and coarsened — perhaps irreparably damaged — by the sociopaths currently in charge of the media, commerce, academia, and government, who grant us a steadily-narrowing, ever-cheapening, intellectual, artistic, and moral ecosystem.
The precedent here — the Original Sin so to speak — is the global war on terror of the second Bush administration, particularly the imaginary theory of preemptive self defense touted by vice president Dick Cheney.
This was a period when America debuted its might-makes-right doctrine before the world: “We will do whatever we deem fit, wherever we choose, to whomever we please, and no one will call us to account because no one has the power to challenge us.”
Bush & Company broke American law; they broke international law. They did it flagrantly. Breezily. Official propaganda went from dubious to preposterous, yet they doubled and tripled down in press conferences and TV interviews, encouraged by a compliant mainstream press corps. They talked absolute bollocks, and based monumental decisions on it, yet they couldn’t be stopped.
They exhibited North Korean levels of contempt for due process of law, with mass surveillance (Carnivore, Prism, etc); warrantless searches; national security letters; indefinite detention without charge; extraordinary rendition; enhanced interrogation; the paramilitarization of police departments; and the invasion of Iraq with no mandate except a fictional one, which, because of America’s almost supernatural power and influence, no nation dared challenge. Indeed, the Western allies fell in line with hardly a peep lest they be summarily weaned from the American commercial and defense establishment teat.
The worst of it was the idea of preemptive self defense concocted by Dick Cheney, who said, “If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.” He didn’t condescend to soften it even slightly: a vague suspicion can justify a military invasion. And there we’ve got the Iraq debacle in a nutshell.
This type of thinking, and the behavior it inspired, made America appear frightened and weak and mean-spirited, like an outlaw bully, at least to me. Not a good look for the world’s only hyperpower. Cheney is said by some to be highly intelligent, but he always impressed me as an insecure guy who would struggle mightily to pass the Turing test.
Fast forward
So here we are, with the Israeli genocide in full swing for over a year: Gaza is nearly destroyed; one sovereign nation has been invaded and another attacked, and both were comically warned not to dare fight back lest America crush them on behalf of its beloved Zionist lapdog.
The atrocities America has been sponsoring are too many to enumerate, but the highlights include: targeting children; siege warfare and starvation; carpet bombing of hospitals, schools, refugee camps, mosques, and residences; use of white phosphorus in civilian areas; and attacking aid workers and supply vehicles alongside journalists, UN staff, and peacekeepers.
Yet the chorus of Biden administration flacks drones on: Israel has the absolute right to self defense; the Israelis have no choice but to target civilians occasionally because terrorists hide among them. Hamas is in the hospitals, schools, and mosques. Hamas is in the aid trucks. The IDF takes great care to safeguard civilians. We’re aware of potential humanitarian issues and have made our concerns known, but only Israel can investigate such allegations. We’ve seen no credible evidence of Israeli war crimes.
They make no effort to persuade anyone of anything. They don’t feel the need: they can insist that day is night despite incontrovertible evidence, and the media simply repeat their lies. The record will never be corrected. And that’s what they’re communicating: we operate with impunity.
However, Biden and Bibi aren’t responsible for these conditions; they operate in a moral and rational vacuum that has existed for years. We’re looking at the toxic fruits of 9/11 and the Bush administration’s frightened, lawless over-reaction to that attack. They established the principle that America and its designated agents will do whatever they please, deaf to reason and impervious to shame.
And the winner is
So who caused this global shitshow? It’s kind of a trick question. You and I are implicated because we’re clearly not doing enough to stop this, while Dick Cheney is the most obvious bad guy; but I think we should apply the “but for” standard, and, much as I hate to admit it, the guy who wrecked the world is the one who inspired America to panic and go rogue.
Now, Cheney & Company would certainly have wanted to implement the so-called “PATRIOT” Act and exercise American power overseas recklessly and with total impunity, but I find it hard to imagine them advancing as far as they did without 9/11. It was a rare event, in both its magnitude and emotional impact, so the Bushies got more of the neoCon agenda accomplished in less time than would otherwise have been possible. So, but for this fucker right here, we might not be seeing the high levels of official depravity and authoritarianism that saturate Western politics today:
Of course, Cheney is a powerful villain too, as I said. He did the actual panicking and overreacting; he directed the propaganda blitz and fake evidence and lame justifications while daring us to disagree. He planted phony stories in the New York Times, then quoted them as “evidence” supporting his ridiculous claims. He and Rumsfeld and the whole neoCon wrecking crew wanted to invade Iraq, and later Iran, to transform the Middle East into an America-friendly economic zone, presumably under Israeli management.
It didn’t work out that way, of course; the entire effort was a spectacular failure except as an exercise to un-tether the American juggernaut from all vestiges of logic, morality, and self-restraint. You can’t stop the Western empire from doing what it pleases, however foolish or depraved that might be. You cannot reason with it; you cannot shame it; and you certainly can’t oppose it militarily or economically.
So I no longer wonder when the erasure of Gaza will be complete. I’m confident that it will become irretrievable at some point this year; that no one will try earnestly to stop it; and that no one will ever face prosecution for it. It’s worse than the Shoah because it will never be acknowledged. The fuckers will get away with this.
No, I wonder more these days about when, and where, the next American genocide will commence. Because, clearly, it’s only a matter of time.
Pleasant dreams.
