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When will we ever learn?
As a member of the US Congress for 16 years, I gave over 500 speeches warning about the consequences of US wars against Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria. I spoke for the imperative of peace in the Middle East, on behalf of Israelis and the Palestinians alike. I met with leaders of many countries who were grappling to keep their nations out of conflict and I came to understand the role some in the US government have played to intentionally catalyze war, fueling arms sales globally, without regard for the consequences. The consequences are here!
We are cartwheeling towards a massive East v. West war with religious and ethnic overtones. This seemingly inexorable March of (nuclear) Folly, will ultimately pit the United States militarily against China, Russia and their allies.
The US, with its political divisions on full display, functions now only for purposes of funding wars. Otherwise, the government will shut down over its inability to balance the books from the expenses of previous wars which were put on the national credit card.
The polarization of US politics, the cognitively impaired and failing executive branch, the instability of the congressional leadership, the purblind partisanship, the ideologically, click-bait driven media has produced a mad blood lust for war against Iran and acceleration toward the abyss.
Through illegal war after illegal war, the US has demoralized and demonized itself against the rest of the world. It is the US and Israel against the Arab, Muslim, Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Turks, et al. The probability of nuclear war is higher than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 16-28, 1962, when President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev found an off ramp averting annihilation. Today, the price of nuclear vengeance and retribution would be the deaths of at least five billion people, and the end of life on planet Earth.
The Biden foreign policy has always been a shambles. It has been based on military domination, economic coercion, and ideological arrogance which has swept up in its maw the Democratic party. The war in Ukraine, for example, meant to weaken Russia, has strengthened it economically and politically at the cost of the lives of 350,000 of the flower of Ukrainian youth. The US has rattled China over Taiwan, pretending we can intimidate the Chinese Navy and Coast Guard in their own front yard.
The latent virus of megalomania has so excited America’s leaders that it has accelerated the formation of an alliance against our nation, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Diplomacy has become an abattoir. Blood lust blinds, sweeping aside primal human sympathies, exciting those ancient emotions to declare enemies, take up the cudgel and beat those enemies to death.
We are at an exceedingly dangerous moment of world crisis when the fragile bonds which connect us, each to the other, are being torn asunder by acts of mass murder, the miasma of apartheid, oppression and occupation, stereotyping, racism, bigotry, accelerating mistrust, desire for vengeance and retribution, compelling a dialectic of conflict which could lead to the destruction of the world.
Our survival as a species depends upon surmounting moments such as these, making of human relations a science, and human and ecological security the highest purpose of the work of people everywhere. When our brothers and sisters are killing each other, it is imperative, in the name of all humanity, that we intervene to stop the killing so that all may survive.
Like an unruly child, our government is out of control. We must call out now, hastened by whatever survival instinct that yet resides in us, and say STOP IT!
Stop the escalation.
Stop the militarization.
Stop the race toward the abyss.
It bears reflection at this moment that some of the same individuals, including President Biden, who led us into the disastrous Ukraine war and before that into devastating wars which killed over a million people in Iraq and Libya, are now leading the US into war against Iran … and World War III.
The US is now defending itself by bombing sites assumed to be Iranian proxies in Syria. The panoply of offensive materiel which the US is pouring into the region suggests preparations are being made to attack Iran, which in turn will prompt other nations to respond.
Now comes the Middle East conflict between Hamas and Israel. Instead of playing peacemaker, a role which ultimately protects Israel from destruction, the US is enabling the wholesale slaughter of Gazans, naively warning all others to step aside while standing guard with aircraft carriers and planes, emplacing US troops, and putting all US service personnel in the region at grave risk.
This is the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir government has fearfully approached a ground invasion while collective punishment having been previously meted out from the air to over 7,000 of Gaza’s civilian population. The air attack and the ground invasion are retribution for Hamas’ horrific attack on October 7th, which resulted in the murder of 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians. Under such circumstances, the hostages in Gaza are damned from above and below.
On October 7th, shattered were the myths of the omni-competent Mossad and the technologically superior Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which were powerful deterrent factors against attacks. Israeli movements into Gaza will find synchronous advancement in the north, by Hezbollah, across the Lebanese border and attacks soon coming from many directions.
The continued bombing of the Palestinians in Gaza is inciting hundreds of millions of Muslims in the region who were already on edge because of the desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque on October 4th, 2023, which could have played a role inciting Hamas’ Oct. 7th unjustified planned massacre.
Masked in the attack on Gaza is the agenda of Israel’s far-right ultranationalist government to establish an ethnically-pure religious state, removing the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, and the realization of the establishment of the prophesied Third Temple, which means razing Al Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam.
I believe in the protection and survival of Israelis and Palestinians. I believe in the protection and survival of all people.
The protection and survival of Israel or Palestine is not furthered by the bombing, starvation, and mass killings of innocents. It is a form of suicide presenting as homicide.
It is time to stop taking sides and start working instead for the goal of a just peace.
I oppose the killing of innocents whatever their race, color, creed, nationality or nation. There are hundreds of millions of Muslims and Arabs in the neighborhood now seething at the injustices of the massacre of innocents, and only nine million Israelis…
The whole world is watching. The region is waiting. The Times of Israel reports today that as of October 29th, Israeli citizens who happen to be Palestinians, will be shot at public protests. Does anyone think the murders of Palestinians in the West Bank, together with those who will be shot for protesting, will not result in a sharp upcycling of violence in the region?
Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel through Jihad. Those on both sides who advocate kill or be killed are on the ascendant. Let us stand, then, in the place where all this killing leads, to northern Israel, on Mount Megiddo, (original Hebrew Har Megiddo, Anglicized to Armageddon).
The final battle awaits with nuclear missiles as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, then the Second Coming of Christ on the Mount of Olives, and the establishment of the Third Temple supplanting Al Aqsa.
Frankly, I’d rather watch the Netflix version.
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Featured image: “Peace Dove” by Jose Trujillo
