Tag: Palestinian

PAPER TIGER REDUX

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

President Biden’s foreign policy mantra is to avoid escalating current conflicts. To use his favorite word: don’t. Don’t do anything that will upset America’s enemies, don’t properly defend American troops abroad, don’t do everything possible to protect American interests, and certainly don’t upset the not-so-mainstream media, upon whom his re-election, in large measure, depends. But history sadly shows us that such weakness causes the very escalation such policies seek to avoid. Trying not to risk expanding conflicts generally leads to expanding those conflicts. One word admonitions scare no one and accomplish nothing, except to make the United States look ridiculous. The US is confronted with multiple wars and serious threats, yet the White House seems oblivious to the lessons of history.

English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously engaged in a policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler prior to WWII in an attempt to avoid a major conflict. Hitler had taken the Rhineland, Austria, and part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Chamberlain met with Hitler to appease him in order to avoid war and both signed the Munich Agreement in 1938. Hitler agreed to no more territorial acquisitions and Chamberlain stated, “I believe it is peace in our time.” But in 1939 Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland, starting WWII.

By the 1850’s the US Congress had made several agreements between northern states and southern states about the extension of slavery as the country grew westward including the Missouri Compromise (1820) and the Compromise of 1850. The war with Mexico, ending in 1845, reignited the slavery issue as Texas would be entering the union as a slave state. Northern abolitionists opposed the extension of slavery and southern slaveholders insisted on it. The Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case in 1857 made the situation much worse by ruling that Congress did not have the authority to prevent the extension of slavery into the new territories. President James Buchanan, a northern Democrat with southern sympathies took office in 1857 but failed to resolve the slavery issue, taking a passive stance and leaving the issue to the radicals on both sides of the issue. He did not run for re-election in 1860, eleven southern states seceded and the Civil War started in April of 1861.  More Americans lost their lives in this conflict than in all other wars combined.  Buchanan didn’t think those states had the right to secede, but he did nothing to stop them, nor to resolve the conflict.  He left office in April 1861 with the country in shambles.

There are other historical examples. The price of weak leadership is extraordinary, but the Biden White House is trying to make sure that whatever we do, we do nothing to expand any of the currently expanding conflicts. We don’t want to further upset anyone. We issue warnings and have demonstrations of force but do little. Evidently the policy is we can get mad at them, but we don’t want them to get mad at us.

The Biden administration is preoccupied with how our enemies feel, so the president makes sure the US doesn’t overreact, even when American interests and American friends are under assault. Terrorist organizations have attacked American bases in the middle east over 100 times, Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainians in a war of conquest, the Chinese Communist Party is working overtime to wreck the US economy and on October 7 Hamas put on a freak show that would have embarrassed the Gestapo. There are college students demonstrating in support of this ridiculous terrorist organization. How crazy do you have to get before these students see how bad this is? Biden does not want to upset these college demonstrators and the Palestinian supporters either, so he simultaneously supports a middle east ceasefire to call attention to the plight of the Palestinians but then states again he is “rock solid” behind Israel.  Then no one gets mad at him or the US.  But as it turn out everyone is mad at America.

Weakness solves nothing, and as Sen. Kennedy (R-LA) stated “more sheep is not going to solve the wolf problem.” Biden cannot ignore the consequences of appeasement and inaction. This toxic dissonance results in bold moves by American enemies abroad, and nationwide demonstrations at home. Biden has the same title as Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but he is not in the same league.

THE IGNORABLE PAIN OF THE VOICELESS: ISRAEL’S MORAL QUANDARY IN GAZA

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

The butchery and torture that took place during the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, would have embarrassed the Gestapo. Israel immediately declared war and attacked Hamas in the Gaza strip, a small piece of land in the Middle East and one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world. The Jewish state is convinced that Hamas must be eliminated to ensure the survival of Israel, but unfortunately Hamas was, and is, deeply embedded in the Palestinian people. This is the deadly tactical issue, how can the IDF kill Hamas without killing innocent Palestinians. The answer: they can’t.

Reports (which vary) state that about 31,000 people have been killed in the war, including around 12,000 Hamas fighters and several hundred journalists and UN workers. This leaves about 18,000 or so Palestinian civilians killed. About 1,800 Israelis have died, including almost 600 IDF soldiers. Again, reports of these numbers vary. But if they are reasonably close, a lot of innocents have been killed, which has generated a great deal of protest and uproar. Much has been made of the IDF killing civilians, and this in a region where the fighting has a long history. Many have died on both sides over a long time thus October 7 cannot be viewed in isolation, but the sheer savagery of Hamas cannot be condoned in any historical frame. Israel means to destroy that organization once and for all, but not without severe collateral consequences. It has tried to minimize the casualties but are getting a lot of blame in the press and from around the world nonetheless. There is a partial defense for Israel in that attempting to not kill innocents, and actually killing innocents, are two different ethical constructs, but the damage has been done and the dilemma remains. Israel does not want to kill Palestinians but must kill them to accomplish its mission to eliminate what they firmly believe is an existential threat.

Palestinian children caught in the cross-hairs of a violent war are innocent in the baseline meaning of the word, and by any estimate thousands have been killed. This is the agonizing choice for the Israeli people, and a desperate moral quandary: are the deaths of innocent children necessary to the survival of the Israeli people? Supporting Israel and saving the innocent Gazans are not necessarily mutually excludable goals, thus the current attempt at a deal between the warring parties to exchange the remaining hostages in return for a 6 week pause in the fighting. But then Hamas resupplies and repositions, and how many more IDF soldiers would die as a result? How does Israel make such a decision? Innocents for soldiers. No good answer.

Not as many Americans are paying attention as there were in the early days of the war. How quickly these disasters fade in the rearview mirror, maybe a few new cycles. But the great moral issue remains.