Idiots Perspective on War

James Carroll of the Boston Globe is an Idiot. No, wait, calling him an idiot is to insult idiots world wide. But then I can't come up with a term lower than idiot at the moment, so I'll go with it.

Another of the "It's all America's fault" crowd. I love his historical perspective. He uses the Bible. Oh how quaint. Couldn't actually find any history that isn't locked into a religious text. Just had to pop out Cain and Abel. I'll leave out his biblical rhetoric.

Instead of the originating sin of parents, the Cain-and-Abel combatants of today's Middle East (from the insurgent parties in Iraq, to the warring factions of Lebanon, to the antagonists in Israel and Palestine, now including the fratricidal Palestinians) are burdened by the fatal flaw of the United States of America. The indispensable nation, it turns out, proves indispensable only for the spread of chaos. The grievances of the Middle East are ancient, but so is the capacity for fragile balance, now upset. Iraqis, Lebanese, Israelis, and Palestinians all make violent choices and bear the weight of violent consequences, but the immediate context within which those choices are being made has been overwhelmingly established by violent choices made in Washington.

The Bush administration embraced the cult of war when it did not have to. Bush re-legitimized that cult, and sponsored it anew. In this, he was supported by the American people, its press and its political establishment. In the beginning, the nation itself re affirmed war as the way to justice-and-peace. We did this. The first fallacy lived. By now, even Washington's one self-proclaimed "victory" has led to further defeat. The "good" war in Afghanistan put in place structures of oppression that promised an inevitable resumption of savagery, which has begun.

There you go. Not that the Bush administrations actions were reactions to being attacked by terrorists. No that wouldn't be a reasonable thing to defend ones self. Cult of war is cute, though another cliche that lacks any real substance for debate. How the US is the catalyst of the Chaos in the middle east isn't stated. I'd give you that on the present Iraq war. But as for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict or the Israeli/Lebanese/Hezbollah conflict I don't see it. The US supports Israel in its right to existance and thus self-defense. If that is wrong, I suppose any one that defends themselves against an agressor is wrong, and I truly think Carroll would say that is a truth.

This column began with an eye on the far past. Because of the destructiveness of modern weapons, there will be no distant future unless humans, having seen through the congenital illusion of justice-and-peace through violence, come to the rejection of war. That must begin now. Democrats, take heed: Bush must not be allowed to further the chaos. Having led the world into this moral wilderness, America has a grave responsibility to lead the way out. We have to cease killing other people's children, which is the way to stop them from killing ours. Stop the war by stopping.

Wars stop by the combatants just stopping? I don't know of any historical basis for that. Usually the side that just stops gets butchered. One doesn't stop others butchering your children by lying down. That just ensures that they will be butchered. Reality. Something Mr. Carroll has been out of touch with for a long time.