Friday, June 17, 2016

The moral outrage of 50 US diplomats

How brave of them.  50 US diplomats defied the conventional wisdom and called for more US bombing of an Arab country. How much courage this has taken.  I mean, for a group of US diplomats to toe the line of AIPAC requires an unusual amount of courage.  In the past, the courage of US diplomat was (rarely) displayed when an individual--not group like this case--defied US policies in favor of Israeli aggression and occupation.  Almost to a diplomat, those cases of courage (George Ball and others around the Washington Report) were displayed only after those diplomats retired from service, when their usefulness was quite limited.  SO this time 50 US diplomats (who deal with diplomacy) felt that their government was not doing enough in terms of bombing in the Middle East against yet another Arab country.  Those 50 US diplomats--mind you--never bothered to utter a word against the Israeli war crimes in Gaza or Lebanon, and they never felt courage against GCC-US war crimes in Yemen.  But they were so compelled to call for US bombing of Syria.  Of course, those 50 US diplomats were never concerned about the inevitable civilians who die from US bombing of Arab countries.  And can those 50 US diplomats point to one case in which US bombing advanced the cause of peace and democracy, or to a case where US bombing or even occupation replaced a dictatorship with a better form of government? Leave to the US to be able to replace Qadhdhafi's dictatorship with a worse regime.  The US has singlehandedly succeeded in turning many Iraqis into nostalgia for the regime of Saddam Husayn.  But that does not matter: 50 US diplomats want US to bomb Syria, and they mean business.  Here, an objective neutral observer speaks on behalf of the 50 US diplomats in the New York Times: "“There is an enormous frustration in the bureaucracy about Syria policy,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy."  Also, did any of the US diplomat speak against the US relations with the Syrian regime when the two sides were allies? Just as no US diplomats ever spoke against US alliance with Saddam Husayn during the honey moon years.  Those 50 US diplomats have as much courage and as much moral fortitude as Hillary Clinton when she calls for more aid to Israel.