“Although one wonders if War and Peace would have been as highly acclaimed as it was, had it been published under its original title, War, What Is It Good For?”Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, is Elaine Benes with arsenic for blood, the air of a bedraggled, whip-wielding dominatrix, and a weight problem that seems to compete with her credibility issues. She does not believe in war. She sees no good in it. War is never "good." Its causes are irrelevant. War means violence, which may spill over into her own life. War is so scary to her and her ilk that there is no justification to discriminate between the combatants, between the good and the bad, between the aggressor and the invaded, between the civilized and the barbaric and homicidal. If any distinction must be made between the parties, it should be weighted in favor of the underdog, in this instance, Hamas, and not Israel.
If Israel didn't exist, all Mideast problems would be solved. That is the thinking. Or not thinking. So, because Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, is "small" and is the aggressor picking on the giant, the world comes down on the side of the bold and ugly midget.
Hamas, the midget, can with impunity and global approval hurl rocks and rockets at the giant, Israel. This is because Hamas knows that the whole world hates Israel because it is a giant, a stubborn, recalcitrant one that refuses to go away and leave the midget to his day in the sun over piles of Jewish bodies. So, Hamas and the Palestinians get a pass. It takes a global village to hate one tiny country that simply won’t roll over and play dead for the greater good.
Peace could be secured if Israel would just agree to withdraw to its pre-World War II borders and stop persecuting its marauding persecutors. Then no one need worry about a nuclear bomb-armed Iran. Israel is to blame because Iran cannot tolerate its existence and wants to wipe it out. After all, Iran's beneficent dictator and font of all wisdom, Mahmud Ahmajinadad, claims the Holocaust never really happened, and he wishes to correct that fiction by making it a reality. If Israel were to immolate itself and just let Hamas and Hezbollah and Fatah and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian zombies have their way with her in ways no one wishes to imagine, all would be peaceful and just. The Mideast would settle down and the only troubles one would hear about in that region would be on a par with the banal disputes of Friends.
One almost expects President Barack Obama to offer Hamas military air support. To judge by his behavior, rhetoric and conduct towards Israel since assuming office, the idea is not too fantastical.
John Rawls, in his notorious A Theory of Justice, among other things proposed that the competent, the able, and the superlative, be hamstrung and penalized so that the incompetent, the disabled, and the mediocre would have an equal chance at "success." Or at least the latter would be awarded the appropriate handicap points to accomplish the same thing. This was deemed a just system to achieve an equalization of results that would "humanize" competition and preempt the envy, hurt feelings and frustration of the incompetent, the disabled, and the mediocre. It is the same "humanitarian" philosophy responsible for such things as soccer games without scores, overseen by liberal soccer moms concerned about the self-esteem of their kids and at the same time resentful of the boisterous pride of the kids on the other team.
Contrary to the age-old notion and ethics of sportsmanship, the Rawlsian concept of "fair" is not playing by the rules and winning by the rules. "Fair" is the tilting of rules in favor of those unable to comprehend the rules or unable to win by them.
The Rawls notion of fairness is also partly responsible for the theme here, for stopping Israel from achieving a victory over Hamas and any of her past assailants and permanently extinguishing her mortal enemies, thereby achieving some kind of peace that Hamas would never break because it would no longer exist. That those mortal enemies are killers who wish to do to Israel what was nearly done to Lara Logan in Tahir Square – violation in every manner and complete dismemberment and an agonizing death – is of no import to the humanitarians who sweat like hogs to broker a deal between Israel and her enemies.
For the sake of peace, harmony, and international amity, what's one beautiful woman's life compared with the existence of hundreds of thousands of burqa-encased women doing their duty to not be beautiful and so not triggering the duty of Muslim men to assault them? What's the freedom of a single nation compared with the wishes of hundreds of thousands of manqués who do not yearn to be free but rather wish to be led, dominated and exploited as all of Allah's wingless chillun?
Hamas and Hezbollah and Fatah are merely "freedom fighters" in Halloween costumes, ski masks, and a weakness for Mein Kampf, and we mustn’t judge them because of their questionable habits and psychopathic penchant for totalitarianism. Their feelings are hurt and pent up because the world will not grant them their handicapped justice, never mind that their concept of the kind of "justice" they intend for the Israelis is of the Zulu kind when the latter disemboweled colonial Dutch women and men settlers they happened to have overwhelmed and killed and paraded their children and infants on the tips of their assegais. Perhaps, when they returned to their kraals, they also passed out candy in celebration of their victory.
Lest someone suggest that is a "racist" comparison, I could also cite Vlad the Impaler and what he did to invading Turks, or the Turks and Kurds who savaged the Armenians, or the Apaches and the Iroquois whose methods of torturing and killing whites and other Indians rivaled in cruelty those of the Nazis. And, of course, Islam's sacred documents describe and report numerous methods of killing and torturing Jews, infidels, apostates, and others who do not submit to all of Allah's and Mohammad's dictats.
Daniel Greenfield, in his Sultan Knish column, "War is the Answer," about the alleged "cease-fire" coerced on Israel by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, mentioned the ethereal character of Immanuel Kant's plan for "perpetual peace." Kant is one of Rawls's intellectual ancestors. It should be pointed out, however, that our humanitarian diplomats are also motivated by one of the Prussian philosopher's categorical imperatives, to do that which one "feels" is right and to act to make it an ineluctable maxim, to "will" it as a moral law and duty, regardless of the cost to oneself or to others, even if it means engaging in a bit of nihilistic destruction.
Kant's notion of "peace" is also responsible for the "peace" promulgated by yesteryear's hippies and peaceniks, a "peace" without morality or conditions, "peace" for the sake of "peace," regardless of the cost to those who would lose their lives from its enforcement. And yesteryear's hippies became Rhodes scholars and attained permanent places in political leadership, academic, diplomatic, military, and policymaking circles. Need I mention names?
Hillary Clinton's notion of a "durable peace" is as ethereal and other-worldly as Kant's. And she and Obama know it.
Kant's 1795 idea of a kind of League of Nations that would somehow enforce peace would also depend on the "will" of its members, the "will" amounting to little more than squeezing their eyes shut and, sweating buckets, wishing very hard that governments and dictators and the authors of genocide just stop doing those atrocious things because they're very embarrassing and give the wishers after peace pangs of conscience and remorse. They'd rather not be bothered.
Thus, the "ceasefire" that is merely a hudna, or temporary truce, will benefit Hamas and allow it to catch its breath and rearm and prepare for the next round of massacring Israelis and perhaps even carry the butchery to the U.S. It's only "fair," you see: Hamas is so outgunned by Israel that it needs time to renew its stockpile of rockets and replenish the rocketeers who perished in Israel's retaliatory bombings, in order to continue its campaign against the giant.
Iran has boasted that it has supplied Hamas with its rocketry with which to pummel Israel into terror and submission. Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who "brokered" the cease-fire with much help from Obama, has now assumed dictatorial powers, insulating himself from all legal and political opposition. Morsi, a power in the global caliphate-seeking Muslim Brotherhood, is a child of the late Arab Spring, and the Arab Spring was a child of Barack Obama.
Some pundits will claim that now Obama has a real problem on his hands, in the way of finding a way to contain the ambitions and treachery of Morsi. They will say that it will require the highest art of statecraft and diplomacy. But that is wishful thinking. It is imagining that the conflict is no more serious than a difference of opinion in the fantasy world of Friends. Or in Elaine Benes's head. Neither Obama nor Clinton views the situation as a "problem." They seem to be rather content with how things stand. After all, they made Israel cry "uncle."
To them, war is simply no good at all. The wrong combatant might just win if left alone to win. And that would not be "fair."
Ed,
ReplyDeleteYou name Kant and Rawls in your essay. I think that is exactly right. Today we are ruled by modern liberalism; ie The Left. The essence of the Left is its skeptical epistemology (Kant), its altruist ethics (Kant's CU), and its egalitarian politics (Marx and Rawls). EVERYTHING the Left does is motivated by egalitarianism. If there is a perceived power imbalance between one group and another, then the perceived strong group must be sacrificed to the perceived weak group. We have seen this play out with Israel for nearly 50 years.
Egalitarianism is a civilization destroying ideology, and that is exactly what the Left is doing with it - destroying civilization. I see the Conservatives as non-players. They are essentially powerless to stop the Left because while most of them reject egalitarianism, all of them accept altruism (because of Christianity). Modern Conservatism is essentially a non-factor in American politics. The only thing they are motivated for is abolishing abortion and gay marriage.
The Left is running the show. And they are sprinting in the direction of totalitarianism. I don't see how Peikoff thinks there will be some Christian dictatorship in 50 years. The whole O'ist obsession with the "imminent Christian theocracy" is batshit crazy to me. Our enemy is modern liberalism and its major weapon is egalitarianism. Israel will not survive in a modern liberal world, especially since it is being run by what are in essence Jewish liberals (and it has been run by such types for 50 years).
MadMax: Peikoff's point, and I concur with it, is that once people see the nihilism brought on by the Left and rampant liberalism, most of them will turn to God. Rand touched on this phenomenon in Atlas Shrugged, towards the end of the novel, when the country was falling apart. A "back to God" movement arose there. People will turn to the only broad scope of morality they've ever known, which is religion. There are elements of it in the Tea Party movement (and was there from the beginning). Virtually every "pro-freedom," anti-Big Government blogsite I know of has a blatant or covert religious agenda. Bill Whittle and Scott Ott of PJTV,for example, no matter how articulate they are in arguing for freedom, are religious. They'll lose control of the trend and be swept aside, eventually.
ReplyDeletePeople will refuse to submit to the Left's (and Islam's) nihilism. They will want something that is "pro." They will turn back to God or some vestige of religion. That's the broader perspective, and there's plenty of evidence of it today. It won’t gel into anything like a theocracy tomorrow or even in four years. But unless it's countered with unadulterated reason, it will happen.
Re MadMax's--"I see the Conservatives as non-players.... Modern Conservatism is essentially a non-factor in American politics. The only thing they are motivated for is abolishing abortion and gay marriage."
ReplyDeleteAbolishing the right to abortion is not an aim that can properly be attributed to "a non-factor". It is the most profound assault on rights imaginable--tantamount to Islam's stoning of adulterers, or China's practice of forced abortions. In itself--and in what it implies about the mindset and ultimate intentions of its advocates--it is just as threatening to human freedom as is neoliberal nihilism. I find it appalling that the antiabortionists do not, anymore, seem to generate as much disgust and contempt as that which is (justly) directed at the nihilists.
And moreover: theocracy remains a threat owing in no small part to the fact that the American populace remains, believe it or not as you will, so bloody religious--with nearly half the country subscribing to one or another Christian denomination alone, at least as of the year 2000. I think it a grievous error to discount the threat posed by America's aspiring theocrats. (Many of them are referred to, in the MSM, as "rising stars." Would that they were setting suns; but sorry, not in our lifetime.)
And one more "moreover": The only short-term political solution to our imminent demise is establishment of a "third party." But neither "Libertarianism" nor "Teaism" need apply (although I think certain select members from both gangs, might).
ReplyDelete"Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, is Elaine Benes with arsenic for blood, the air of a bedraggled, whip-wielding dominatrix, and a weight problem that seems to compete with her credibility issues." And that's no kidding. Even absenting her politics, she's a gross insult to "the female of the species." I hope her appearance presages an early demise--so that we are not subjected to viewing this revolting personage again, across the span of an interminable "campaign" come 2016.
ReplyDelete