I should be more upset about the war raging in the middle east. After all, who could tolerate the needless bloodshed, civilians indiscriminately blown away daily, Israel's security threatened yet again, Lebanon torn apart for the second time in 25 years? The answer is, we could. America. We are no better than Joe Lieberman: only concerned with our own short-term interests. Everyone else can suck it.
As a nation, anesthetized nightly by images of carnage from Iraq, we don't care as much as we should-- especially about the innocent victims of war on both sides. If we were really global citizens, would we allow our leaders to sit idly by while a trash can fire burns out of control in the heart of the Exxon station that is the middle east? I know we blithely managed to let most of Africa slip away to AIDS, malnutrition and genocide, but shouldn't we at least pretend to care about civilians in a region we just mortgaged our nation to invade and "democratize"?
Many, who know far more than I about the region, have all kinds of rationalizations for why we should do absolutely nothing. Simon Jenkins' Huffpost today gives a particularly eloquent, if tortured, kind of alibi for inaction. Still, I can't help but feel we should be a little more, uh, concerned. It may very well to be to our advantage to let Hezbollah and Israel bomb the hell out of each other, taking Lebanon as a - whoops! - casualty. Just as it may be to Joe Lieberman's advantage to run as an independent. But that doesn't make it right.
Our dinner-roll chomping leader and his butler Blair set the tone for the public non-reaction to this almost month-old war when they leaked their version of "G-8's Funniest Home Videos." In that dismissive, utterly cringe-inducing moment where Bush famously waved off Blair's hope of becoming a peace envoy, our president damned the region to hellfire, countless civilians to certain death, and handed the zealots on both sides the keys to the asylum. "Go ahead and destroy everything in your path, just don't bother me while I'm clearing brush in Crawford." Sometimes amorality really is immorality. But at least he's sending Dr. Rice. Of course, he might as well be sending Dr. Phil. This administration couldn't secure the Baghdad museum gift shop. And it turns out, to them, everything is the Baghdad museum gift shop.
I should be more upset about the war raging in the middle east because my mother is Lebanese, her relatives still there, bearing witness to the destruction of their ancestral home. My mother wanted me to take her back to Beirut for her 70th birthday in May. Needless to say, I haven't gotten around to checking Expedia.
In my heart, I feel that Israel has the moral high ground in this conflict, and that Hezbollah can accurately be labeled a terrorist organization. Yes, I am aware of all that Hezbollah has done to help the "Arabs on the street." They build a bridge or a school, but, oh yeah, the price is your soul and your security. Kind of like Halliburton.
But my mother's family is not Arab, they are Maronite Christian, and perhaps that is why, whenever asked about Israel, they all say, "we are all Semites." We "love the Jews." In my family, we are, without exception, mistaken for Jewish. It has been that way my whole life. We "look Jewish," we "act" Jewish. I am invited to more Seders than Easter dinners. My in-laws are Jewish. Most of my friends as well. My mother and sister favor Jewish men above all others. But in the end, obviously, we are not Jewish. We are Americans. And as Americans, we are global citizens, not fake team players like Joe Lieberman. Not phony "independents." Not just out for ourselves. We must have the capacity for empathy, for a desire to diminish human suffering. We are Americans, and at this particular moment in history, shouldn't that mean something?