Reductio Ad Absurdum

Note: photo posting is dead--again--today. Blogger itself is VERY iffy...and, of course, there's nothing on the status page.

This piece in Counterpunch captures, to a degree, what's been on my mind over the last couple of days while watching the lunacy enter into an extended waxing phase:

Thirsty in New Orleans

On Sunday, August 29th of last year, the hurricane we'd been watching metastasize in the Gulf of Mexico crossed from sea to land, disfiguring and permanently altering the city of New Orleans. Our beloved and often backward backwater became instant front page news across the country, in Europe and nearly everyplace else--a 9/11-style catastrophe (in truth, much larger in scale) that was soon on everyone's lips...

The suffering in Israel's Occupied Territories, however, is not the result of mismanagement or indifference. Instead, it is the consequence of premeditated, often cruelly ingenious strategies to strip an oppressed population of cropland, housing, security, education, basic services, medical care, freedom of movement, functioning government, olive groves, citrus trees, nightly sleep and water.

Harth draws a comparison between Palestinians and New Orleanians...however, I think we can further add Lebanese, Iraqi, and Afghan civilians to this, as well as men and women in uniform.

I'm not, by ANY stretch of the imagination, a naiive, Kumbaya optimist, but it continually amazes me to watch an almost comical-if-it-wasn't so maddeningly, frustratingly tragic search for "an enemy" on the part of the professional fear-mongers while those actually victimized are, for the most part, folks without so much as a dog in the fight.

Billmon, as usual, seems to capture this much better than I can:

The ultimate result, of course, is a truly insane combination of bed partners, with the Iraqi prime minister giving a stemwinder of a speech against Zionist aggression in Baghdad one day, and then flying off to Washington the next day to vow enternal vigilance against terrorism in front of the most pro-Israel body on the planet -- the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, Iranian-backed guerrillas are killing Israeli soldiers in Lebanon while an Iranian-backed government in Iraq sends its troops out on patrols with the U.S. military, which is speeding bunker buster bombs to the Israeli military so it can go kill more Iranian-backed guerrillas.

Yet, while this almost unimaginably complicated making and breaking of alliances plays itself out, we've got people in Gaza, Lebanon--and Israel--forced to play an obscenely deadly game of rocket or air-strike lotto on a daily basis, Iraqis are even WORSE off (yesterday something a Lebanese civilian said really hit me; paraphrasing here, it was about how Israel 'is trying to make us the next Iraq.' If that ISN'T the final nail in the coffin of the neo-con fantasy of 'reshaping the Middle East,' then it's most certainly ONE of the last ones).

And, as Harth points out, there are people here in the United who've likewise been victimized, by a government desperately seeking an object of hate...but a government that can't be bothered to provide basic services, must less develop a recovery plan for a region devastated to an extent every bit as great as what you'd expect from a war.

By the way, while the Gulf Coast--and New Orleans--are merely the most conspicuous examples of governmental failure, I doubt seriously they're the ONLY examples. There are regions throughout this country that have been systematically abandoned every bit as ruthlessly as the Crescent City--and, indeed, The Big Easy had been left for dead BEFORE the flood...by both Rethuglican AND Democratic administrations. They've both played the fearmonger card while ignoring REAL problems.

For example: Saddam Hussein, for all his thuggery, didn't have squat to do with the abysmal condition of the NOLA public school system OR the outrageously high rate of crime. Osama bin Laden, lunatic that HE is, didn't turn Washington DC into the murder capital of the United States. Hezbollah, Hamas/Fatah/the PLO and Israel didn't cause the vast amount of urban decay visible in pretty much ANY city here (or the similarly dismal outlook in rural regions).

No, the REAL enemies are the folks desperate to find a suitable counterpart with which to scare the hell out of as many people as possible, while they loot the public treasury, send people off to kill and/or die for no reason, destroy vast swaths of territory...and allow the rest to rot (even as they wall themselves in).

The other day, I noted the cynicism of some news organization--probably FAUX, but I don't remember--trying to rally us to Israel's "cause" by recycling, with a twist, the line from Le Monde after 9/11 (Nous sommes tous les Américains)--the "updated" version was "We are all Israelis."

At first, I dismissed this as typical sleazy propaganda...but on second thought, it seemed like a decent enough beginning: yes, we are all Israelis...just as we are all Lebanese, we are all Iraqis, we are all New Orleanians, and so on. We are ALL being victimized by the various demagogues who seem to view all of us as expendable fodder in their ridiculous but deadly game of "my god's bigger than your god...and my bigger god will ensure me a bigger place in history."

Again, without trying to sound so naiive, I just wish for once more people would be able to see through their bullshit.