Thank you for your response, Lester. I’ll do my best to address your criticisms and concerns.
First, I would challenge your initial statement that the United States has “bomb[ed] the Taliban out of power.” As NBC News reported just this morning (25 June 2021), “According to Afghan media reports, eyewitness accounts and statements from local Afghan officials, the Taliban are advancing in rural areas and near Kabul. They now hold almost twice as much of Afghanistan as they did just two months ago [now nearly 1/3 of the country], raising fresh doubts about whether the Afghan government can survive once U.S. forces depart by Sept. 11.” I would contend that this confirms the core truth of Howard Zinn’s thesis from some twenty years ago:
“The moral equation in Afghanistan is clear. Civilian casualties are certain. The outcome is uncertain. No one knows what this bombing will accomplish – whether it will lead to the capture of Osama Bin Laden (perhaps), or the end of the Taliban (possibly), or a democratic Afghanistan (very unlikely), or an end to terrorism (almost certainly not)....
To get at the roots of terrorism is complicated. Dropping bombs is simple. It is an old response to what everyone acknowledges is a very new situation. At the core of unspeakable and unjustifiable acts of terrorism are justified grievances felt by millions of people who would not themselves engage in terrorism but from whose ranks terrorists spring. Those grievances are of two kinds: the existence of profound misery – hunger, illness – in much of the world, contrasted to the wealth and luxury of the West, especially the United States; and the presence of American military power everywhere in the world, propping up oppressive regimes and repeatedly intervening with force to maintain U.S. hegemony.”
Incidentally, this statement also serves the secondary purpose of refuting your claim that I “single out and question the right of a Jewish state's existence, but no other.” My main point (as well as that of Representative Omar and Professor Zinn) was that “we must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity.” This includes the actions of all expansionist/imperialist nations, the United States foremost among them (as evidenced by my ancillary example of the Mexican American War).
Furthermore, I must say I am deeply troubled by your claims that “many anti-Nazi Germans saw allied bombing and the Soviets at the gates of Berlin as a harbinger of liberation,” and that “the Hispanic and Indian inhabitants and their descendants [are] better off living under a highly imperfect American constitutional regime.”
To begin with, I fear that they express a form of fatalistic thinking that the fate of those less economically and/or politically powerful must forever fall victim to the actions of one expansionist power or another. This is a false dichotomy that is likely not only to lead to but also to subsequently justify all sorts of future atrocities in the name of necessarily choosing the lesser of two evils. This Highlander-esque approach to international relations implies that “if we don’t conquer them, someone else far worse undoubtedly will. Thus, would not they and their descendants be better off under our regime than another’s?”
Not only does this preclude the possibility of a more modest “live and let live” middle way, but it also retroactively moralizes on the fate of descendants while ignoring the many victims of conquest and oppression in the past or present (the deaths of whom prevent their having descendants in the first place). For instance, to argue that modern-day Hispanic, Native, and/or African Americans live better and more freely under the American flag than they would elsewhere in the world is to tacitly express support for the past wars, genocide, and “peculiar institution” of slavery that brought many of their ancestors under its dominion in the first place. Even should their current circumstance prove every bit as preferable as you profess (and that is debatable), it cannot, it must not, be used to justify or excuse the suffering of untold millions who fell victim along the way.
That said, neither I nor Professor Zinn endorse pacifism or appeasement as a viable response to the expansionism or oppression of others. As he explained when anticipating a similar objection,
“It was wrong to give up Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler. It is not wrong to withdraw our military from the Middle East, or for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, because there is no right to be there. That is not appeasement. That is justice. Opposing the bombing of Afghanistan does not constitute ‘giving in to terrorism’ or ‘appeasement.’ It asks that other means be found than war to solve the problems that confront us. King and Gandhi both believed in action – nonviolent direct action, which is more powerful and certainly more morally defensible than war. To reject war is not to ‘turn the other cheek,’ as pacifism has been caricatured. It is, in the present instance, to act in ways that do not imitate the terrorists.”
As for that way, Zinn has a suggestion:
“Instead of using two planes a day to drop food on Afghanistan and 100 planes to drop bombs (which have been making it difficult for the trucks of the international agencies to bring in food), use 102 planes to bring food. Take the money allocated for our huge military machine and use it to combat starvation and disease around the world. One-third of our military budget would annually provide clean water and sanitation facilities for the billion people in the world who have none. Withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia, because their presence near the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina angers not just bin Laden (we need not care about angering him) but huge numbers of Arabs who are not terrorists. Stop the cruel sanctions on Iraq, which are killing more than a thousand children every week without doing anything to weaken Saddam Hussein's tyrannical hold over the country. Insist that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories, something that many Israelis also think is right, and which will make Israel more secure than it is now. In short, let us pull back from being a military superpower, and become a humanitarian superpower. Let us be a more modest nation. We will then be more secure. The modest nations of the world don't face the threat of terrorism.”
In other words, our only hope of defeating terrorism (in all its myriad forms) is to eliminate the miserable conditions from which it perennially springs. And that will necessitate the United States and its allies finally acknowledging and addressing our own collective role in its dissemination all across the globe.
(Regarding the semi-serious joke with which you conclude your remarks, I would simply say that it provides a clear example of precisely what Voltaire once warned us. After all, Moses is a mythical figure. To note that his fictional presence in Palestine predates that of the Palestinians is hardly the retort you presume it to be.)
