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08/06/2003 Archived Entry: "Republican morality"

Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader, gave an excellent speech at Knesset recently:

This war is the moral extension of World War II and the Cold War, and like the Nazis, fascists, and Communists before them, the terrorists are going to lose.
History, as always, will judge harshly those who would accommodate evil's aggression.

Standing up for good against evil is hard work.

It costs money and it costs blood, but after September 11, 2001, it's a
price we are determined to pay.

On that day, we left behind forever the illusion that terrorism was "someone
else's problem."

We were thrust into the horrible reality of terror that your nation has long endured.

We learned on that day what Israelis have known for decades: that evil cannot long be ignored or accommodated.

Good must stand up to evil. We must stand up to terrorism.

There is no middle ground or moral equivalence; no "moderate" position worth taking.

Appeasement is not an option!

Human freedom will not be subdued by human cruelty!

And so we fight: humbly, proudly, and together.

The common destiny of the United States and Israel is not an artificial alliance dictated by our leaders.

It is a heartfelt friendship between the citizens of two democracies at war, bound by the solidarity of freedom.

Brothers and sisters of Israel: "Be not afraid."

I watched this speech on C-SPAN. At the end, Sharon looked very happy and was shaking DeLay's hand enthusiastically over and over. I think this speech, together with a previous speech by DeLay, is fairly strong evidence that the GOP gets it:

The United States is the world's defender of freedom, and Israel is one of our greatest allies.

We won't allow anyone to reward terrorists and terrorist acts, least of all nations and organizations who appeased Saddam Hussein and who continue to appease Yassir Arafat.

This struggle is one of good versus evil; nations and organizations who fail to distinguish between the two disqualify themselves from input on this matter.

The President understands Israel must not be asked to negotiate with the men terrorizing its innocent civilians even as we speak.

The Palestinian Authority and their state sponsors must end the violence.

This must be an act of principle, not just a gesture of good will.

The Palestinian Authority's words have no meaning; their actions do.

The violence must stop, period. When it does, and not before, the Palestinian people will have a viable opportunity for peace.

Thankfully, President Bush understands that no peace process worthy of its name can be obscured by appeasers or moral relativists. He understands that "process", for its own sake, is not the goal: the security of our ally is. And no Quartet of Appeasement will obscure that fact.

Though tested by generations of fire, the people of Israel do not exhibit malice or seek revenge. Much like everyday Palestinians, they want peace and the security to live their lives, free from want and free from fear. They are not fools and should not be expected to bargain with murderers.

But when a new generation of Palestinian leaders rises, with a real and lasting peace as their goal – and, more importantly, the authority and will to deliver it – a comprehensive solution may finally be attainable.

Israel should not be expected to offer substantive concessions, while the Palestinian leaders offer only empty promises.

Israel should have the freedom to defend its national security and to negotiate at a time and on terms set by its democratic government, not those imposed by anyone else.

Replies: 19 comments

Imperial Perspectives
by Edward Said

The great modern empires have never been held together only by military power but by what activates that power, puts it to use and then reinforces it with daily practices of domination, conviction, and authority. Britain ruled the vast territories of India with only a few thousand colonial officers and a few more thousand troops, many of them Indian. France did the same in North Africa and Indochina, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese and Belgians in Africa. The key element is imperial perspective, that way of looking at a distant foreign reality by subordinating it to one's gaze, constructing its history from one's own point of view, seeing its people as subjects whose fate is to be decided not by them but by what distant administrators think is best for them. From such willful perspectives actual ideas develop, including the theory that imperialism is a benign and necessary thing. In one of the most perceptive comments ever made about the conceptual glue that binds empires together, the remarkable Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad wrote that "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion and or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish believe in the idea -- something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to."

For a while this worked, as many colonial leaders thought mistakenly that cooperating with the imperial authority was the only way. But since the dialectic between the imperial perspective and the local one is inevitably adversarial and impermanent, at some later point the conflict between ruler and ruled becomes uncontainable and breaks out into all-out colonial war, as happened in Algeria and India.