There are few concepts more elastic and subject to exploitation than "Terrorism," the all-purpose justifying and fear-mongering term. But if it means anything, it means exactly the mindset which Goldfarb is expressing: slaughtering innocent civilians in order to "send a message," to "deter" political actors by making them fear that continuing on the same course will result in the deaths of civilians and -- best of all, from the Terrorist's perspective -- even their own children and other family members.Read the whole thing. This is the kind of writing that, for me, deads this whole idea that people who write "columns" are somehow real journalists, while bloggers are just penning screeds.
To the Terrorist, by definition, that innocent civilians and even children are killed isn't a regrettable cost of taking military action. It's not a cost at all. It's a benefit. It has strategic value. Goldfarb explicitly says this: "to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause."That, of course, is the very same logic that leads Hamas to send suicide bombers to slaughter Israeli teenagers in pizza parlors and on buses and to shoot rockets into their homes. It's the logic that leads Al Qaeda to fly civilian-filled airplanes into civilian-filled office buildings. And it's the logic that leads infinitely weak and deranged people like Goldfarb and Peretz to find value in the killing of innocent Palestinians, including -- one might say, at least in Goldfarb's case: especially -- children.
« Drugs, jewels and Versace | Main | Class » I'm late to this...05 Jan 2009 11:00 am
But Glenn Greenwald has been on it. Here he is tackling Goldfarb:
Comments (27)Comments on this entry have been closed. |
Today's Headlines From The Atlantic |
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
That piece was just devastating, and accurate. Greenwald's such an excellent writer.
For some excellent commentary, watch Greenwald's appearance on Bill Moyers' show.
Read the whole thing. This is the kind of writing that, for me, deads this whole idea that people who write "columns" are somehow real journalists, while bloggers are just penning screeds.
Indeed, indeed. If only dipshits like Richard Cohen read (and comprehended) Greenie, the world would be better place.
Greenwald has a lot of blind spots, but he shoots this particular barrelled fish quite well.
The problem I have with Greenwald's analysis it is far to simplistic, and it doesn't address Israel's actual strategy so much as what he'd like it to be. Even if Israel=Goldfarb Israel targeted civilians linked to decision makers in Hamas. That is a very different proposition than simply targeting random people on the street. But there isn't a shred of evidence that Israel is doing that. Rather, Israel killed civilians incidentally because they wanted to kill a specific target who was near them. The Hamas leader was the target. And you may think that, to, is unacceptable, but then you are getting to a place where any airstrike, because of its imprecise nature, any indirect fire of any kind in combat is immoral and illegal. And I think that is unreasonable.
The problem I have with Greenwald's analysis it is far to simplistic, and it doesn't address Israel's actual strategy so much as what he'd like it to be.
But Greenwald's post isn't about Israeli strategy. Its about those, like Goldfarb, who take what ought to considered the rather extreme position that civilian casualties are actually objectively good. Moreover he is taking aim at what seems to be the attitude among Peretz and his ilk that terrorism is defined by who is doing it and not by the acts themselves. He certainly disagrees with Israel's strategy and has said so but that is not what he is writing about her.
@ Robert
I don't think Greenwald is making a judgment about whether or not that strike should have occurred, but rather the bloodthirst of people like Goldfarb who encourage further bombings. It's not that the strike should or shouldn't have occured; it's about chest beating like "don't fuck with the jews" and Goldfarb's inability to distinguish his Weltanschauung from OBL's
You guys may be correct. If so, I apologize.
Greenwald lays down the truth, as usual.
But what I don't get about Goldfarb's piece is that he makes it really, really obvious that he's defending the moral logic of terrorism. He isn't hiding behind weasel words or playing the usual neocon rhetorical game that excuses the crimes of the good guys because their hearts are purer than the bad guys. He's coming right out and saying it. He's saying that the only problem with terrorism is that they want to kill OUR children. Killing THEIR children and terrorizing THEIR civilians is not merely an excusable response... it's the right thing to do.
Whenever Israel launches attacks that kill civilians, just like whenever the US launches attacks that kill civilians, the hawks always rationalize the killings by attempting to seize the moral high ground and relentlessly attacking the motives of the messenger. The message is usually this: we're better than they are because we don't want to slaughter their innocents and drive them into refugee camps... we do this only because they've FORCED us to do this... and the rightness of our cause is so self-evident that anyone who opposes our actions must be some kind of bigot.
The responses to this post by Stephen Walt are illustrative.
But I think Goldfarb does us all a service by dispensing with all the propaganda and laying bare what this conflict is really all about -- it's a straight-up gang war. No more, no less.
Greenwald points to this as one of the cruxes (cruces?) of the conflict:
excessive tribalistic identification (i.e.: the group with which I was trained to identify is right and good and just and my group's enemy is bad and wrong and violent), which causes people to view the world only from the perspective of their side, to believe that X is good when they do it and evil when it's done to them
There's a well-known story that some Roman soldiers once taunted Rabbi Hillel by saying that they'd convert to Judaism if he could summarize all of Torah while standing on one foot. Rabbi Hillel raised one foot off the ground and said, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is Torah. The rest is commentary. Now, go study."
Robert,
I'd advise you to read the whole piece. Particularly this:
"One should be clear that this sociopathic indifference to (or even celebration over) the deaths of Palestinian civilians isn't representative of all supporters of the Israeli attack on Gaza. It's unfair to use the Goldfarb/Peretz pathology to impugn all supporters of the Israeli attack. It's certainly possible to support the Israeli offensive despite the deaths of these civilians, to truly lament the suffering of innocent Palestinians but still find the war, on balance, to be justifiable."
I read Goldfarb's piece and I think Greenwald is taking some liberties with his words. Maybe Goldfarb does in fact think that killing kids is ok, but from my reading, he is talking about the effect of an action that has already occurred.
Take this phrase for example :
"to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause."
One reading could be that maybe in the future, Hamas fighters won't use their families as shields if they think it won't work.
In fact, if one reads the piece in its entirety, Goldfarb has major doubts about whether such air raids( the killing of this guy's family was an air raid) will be successful at all. He states:
In Israel's current fight in Gaza, against a terrorist organization rather than a state actor, air power alone seems even less likely to produce a successful outcome.
Four eras of warfare as we know it.
1 - Since the first ape slapped another - Whoever brings the most combatants almost always wins
2 - Gunpowder Era - massed weapons fire almost always wins, giving way to static defensive warfare
3 - WWII era - most maneuverable almost always wins, ending static defenses and fortifications
4 - modern era...maneuverability has been largely trumped
That's a gross oversimplification, but it's been a dawning realization for about 10 years for most professional military planners. You have to ask yourself, though, why number 3 gave way to number 4? IMHO, it's nothing more profound than the relatively newly developed western morals regarding combat and collateral damage. Given this fact, what are we to do in the face of an enemy like Hamas?
They openly refuse to acknowledge Israel as a sovereign state and have said publicly more than once that cease-fires are merely rearming periods until the next go-around.
What do you do with an actor like this?
My answer would be to create a zone out to the range of these rockets and make it a no-travel zone. Unfortunately, 1) Hamas would just procure bigger rockets from Iran and 2) there's simply not enough real estate down there to play with in this manner.
I'm at a loss...what do you suggest?
Greenwald is the premier political journalist/analyst in the US today, and it's not even close.
Scott asks: "They openly refuse to acknowledge Israel as a sovereign state and have said publicly more than once that cease-fires are merely rearming periods until the next go-around.
What do you do with an actor like this?
My answer would be to create a zone out to the range of these rockets and make it a no-travel zone. Unfortunately, 1) Hamas would just procure bigger rockets from Iran and 2) there's simply not enough real estate down there to play with in this manner.
I'm at a loss...what do you suggest?"
Imagine if over the past 25 years or so we'd cut the amount of military aid given to Israel in half and directed those funds toward humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. Would Hamas even exist today? Would there the same level of antipathy towards the US that there is now?
Can it be acknowledged that Israel isn't just an aggrieved party here, but that it too has a lot to answer for? Greenwald's central point on the issue is that this is true - but that American politicians, almost unanimously, refuse to address it. He's right.
If the 'do not fuck with the Jews' approach were efficacious, it wouldn’t have to be employed so regularly.
Israel and the US should accept UN jurisdiction and a return to the 1967 borders. The PLO and virtually all Mideast governments agreed to that outcome 20 years ago.
There’s no guarantee of peace in our competitive, weaponized world, but this would isolate the extremists on both sides.
"Imagine if over the past 25 years or so we'd cut the amount of military aid given to Israel in half and directed those funds toward humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. Would Hamas even exist today? Would there the same level of antipathy towards the US that there is now?"
Non-sequitur. While the past always leads to the present, you can no more go back and change things than I can. What solutions outside what's going on do you bring to the table?
Since 2005, it seems like Israel has been giving up quite a bit and making concessions that were once considered impossible. 2006 was a military blunder, but how do you stop incorrigible militants from firing basically unguided bombs mostly randomly at your populace? Do you sit there and take it? What concessions can you make to an enemy that wants your absolute destruction?
Imagine if over the past 25 years or so we'd cut the amount of military aid given to Israel in half and directed those funds toward humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. Would Hamas even exist today? Would there the same level of antipathy towards the US that there is now?
Better yet, imagine if Israel did this.
What if the Palestinians allies gave them humanitarian aid over the past 25 years. Iran could give them 50 cents for every barrel of oil they export, the Saudis can afford to kick in $1 as could the Kuwaitis as could the UAE.
If you're charitably inclined toward Goldfarb (which I'm most certainly not), you could read his statements as something like this:
"While civilian casualties are tragic, and Israel is rightly doing all it can to minimize them, they are unavoidable. Hamas is, for the first time, on the receiving end of the horrible realities of war. Perhaps this will change their approach in the future, and they will stop picking fights they cannot win."
I don't think that's an unreasonable statement. I don't think it's what Goldfarb meant, at all. But it's a reasonable reading of his words.
What if the Palestinians allies gave them humanitarian aid over the past 25 years.
Well, that would be wonderful. But the Arab world is not particularly fond of the Palestinians. A lot of people have speculated that it's in many of the Arab states' best interest to keep the Palestinians miserable, rootless, and pissed off at Israel, as it serves a variety of purposes (a repressed minority to rally behind, a distraction from local political causes). And really, if you're an ally of Israel's, you're probably not hoping that the Palestinians become deeply grateful to a bunch of states that, you know, hate Israel.
Goldfarb probably doesn't even have his own sock puppet.
When I was in Saudi in '91 and '93, I got a firsthand look at the housing the vaunted Saudis gave Palestinians that had immigrated or asked for asylum.
From what I saw, they cared about the same or less about the Palestinians than they did their Phillipino guest workers...which wasn't a great deal. The Saudis I worked with certainly didn't have anything charitable to say about their displaced brethren.
I am not going to get into who is right and who is wrong but I think people should actually be informed about this conflict and so far I don't think we have been. Even and sometimes especially those who try speak on it with authority. I have a post up about this Army War College study of the I/P conflict. Now let me repeat that so there aren't any attempts to minimize this or say its from a pro anybody source. This is the US ARMY WAR COLLEGE report. And it definitely does NOT say what I bet a bunch of people think it will.
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/abstract.cfm?q=894
I would not have thought that a US Army think tank document would be of the "kill 'em all, let God sort em out" typem, so not suprising at all. I guess that gets me out of that bunch of people...lol
Yeah well I didn't think so too, but that report went a lot further away from that meme than I would have imagined and just about cast doubt on what every leader on both sides of the aisle have said.
Scott replies: "Non-sequitur. While the past always leads to the present, you can no more go back and change things than I can. What solutions outside what's going on do you bring to the table?
Since 2005, it seems like Israel has been giving up quite a bit and making concessions that were once considered impossible. 2006 was a military blunder, but how do you stop incorrigible militants from firing basically unguided bombs mostly randomly at your populace? Do you sit there and take it? What concessions can you make to an enemy that wants your absolute destruction? "
It's not a non sequitur at all. Israel needs to take a realistic long-term approach and not change that approach every 12 minutes. And this "enemy that wants your absolute destruction" business is the REAL non sequitur, since the Palestinians have no way of destroying Israel no matter how badly some of them might want it.
The violence in Northern Ireland began to abate after the British government abandoned the hardass Thatcher approach and started making REAL concessions to the Catholics. This involved (among other things) acknowledging that they had civil rights and were being systematically discriminated against in terms of employment, etc. I won't pretend to have detailed solutions for Israel v. Palestine but obviously an admission that the Palestinians are treated like second class dogs would be a good start.
An interpretation of goldfarb's words: "Hamas is, for the first time, on the receiving end of the horrible realities of war."
Except, of course, that this is not the first time that Hamas, or any Palestinian leadership, is on the receiving end of the horrible realities of war.