Dear DNC Protesters...

 

To all the “activists”, “organizers” and “influencers” descending on Chicago to protest the Biden Administration’s positions on the war in Gaza,  allow me to clue you in on something…

You are idiots…  All of you.  Complete Morons.

And I say that with love.  Your desire for peace in the Middle East is not the problem.   I’m with you there.     

But your completely delusional idea that disrupting the Democratic National Convention is going to move that part of the world closer to peace, OR ‘force a change in US policy’ again,  just shows how incredibly dumb you are.

Before I go any farther down this road, I want to take a minute to address the “Queers for Palestine” crowd.    Or as you should more accurately be described as; “Chickens for KFC”. 

 A 2021 report on LGBT acceptance by UCLA’s Williams Institute examined  175 countries/territories. Israel ranked 44^th Palestine came in at 130 , behind Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Georgetown University likewise placed Palestine 160th out of 170 countries on their women’s peace and security index. 

Amnesty International’s 2020 report on human rights highlights the fact that, in Gaza, male same-sex relationships are punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment and points out complete lack of legal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination and harassment.

This lack of civil rights has led hundreds of gay and bisexual Palestinians to flee to Israel to escape persecution. One such refugee, Ahmad Abu Marhia, a 25-year-old gay Palestinian man, was living under asylum in Israel when, in 2022, he was kidnapped and beheaded in the West Bank city of Hebron. His murderers uploaded footage of the killing to social media.

When confronted with the glaring contradiction of your  support for Hamas and condemnation of Israel (the ONLY nation in the middle east where it is safe to LGBTQ)  you proudly stick your  fingers in your  ears and yell; “LA! LA! LA! NOT LISTENING! PINKWASHING!  LA! LA! LA!”  

Again…  Idiots.   Complete Morons.

Sorry to splash the cold water of reality on your other favorite response to facts you don’t like, but to point all these things out is NOT to be in favor of the suffering currently being endured by the people of Gaza or to be in support of   the policies and actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the idea that yelling your way through downtown Chicago this week, waving your “Ka-Bomb-ala Harris “signs   is going to do anything to help the people of Palestine is so obtuse as to boggle the mind. Let’s examine the choice you seem to be desperate to ignore.    The choice between Kamala Harris and the Democrats and  Donald Trump and the Republicans.

Back in May 2018 then President Trump took the unilateral action of moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  An action which at the time was done for two reasons.  The first, to give Donald Trump something to Tweet about that didn’t 't involve Russia., and in Israel, shift the news cycle away from the growing corruption scandals that were surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu.

It is worth noting at the embassy opening ceremony back in 2018, sitting right in the front row was the late Sheldon Adelson.   

A man who had recently written a 30-million-dollar check to the GOP and was a major donor to  the "Temple Institute" An organization that actively advocates the destruction of Islamic holy sites to build the "third temple" on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and whose widow Trump just praised at a campaign fundraiser as being better than soldiers who received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Add into this mix Conservative Christian Evangelical Pastors John Hagee and Robert Jeffress. Both spoke at the embassy opening and are counting on Trump to deliver a really big war between Israel and the Arab world.  Because they think that will trigger the "end of days” so they can get  beamed up to White Jesus' magical gated community in the sky.

These lunatics not only oppose a two-state solution, but also oppose ANY idea of Palestinian self-determination.     And under a second Trump Presidency, US support for continued Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and military action in The West Bank and Gaza would go on completely unchecked.

But sure, Kamala Harris is who you are protesting…  Idiots.

The Democrats lack of clear aggressive opposition to Netanyahu and his policies is rooted in the political reality of America’s divided government.   You want change?  ELECT PROGRESSIVES TO CONGRESS especially in the United States Senate.  All your DNC street tantrums will do is give Fox News and the Trump Campaign a great set of visuals and talking points to use with undecided voters in the swing states.   

The other set of morons in this equation..

Your delusional denial of this doesn’t change the reality of it.   You ARE essentially campaigning for Donald Trump and the GOP and against the cause of the Palestinians you claim to be “solidarity with’. Your mindless determination to make the perfect the enemy of the good will however, accomplish one thing.   It will definitely feed the GOP swing state narrative that “It’s the radical leftists at the 1968 DNC all over again!”    

See how that works out for everyone.  Oh wait… We HAVE seen how that works out.  Back in 2016 when Hillary wasn’t “progressive enough” for many of you.    You held firm to your “our way or no way” convictions which I’m sure felt really good at the time. Then over half a million Americans died because of the incompetence of the choice you saddled the rest of us with.   And Benjamin Netanyahu got a green light to expand settlements in the occupied territories and ignore the peace process.  Which obviously helped fan support for Hamas in Gaza

But hey, well done you… 

So go ahead, run amok through the streets of Chicago making demands that a second Trump Administration will just laugh at.    As long as you look good on Tik Tok doing it, right?

Idiots.

The limitations of hindsight....

 79 Years ago this week, the United States and Japan both earned singular places in world history. The U.S. as the first and only nation to ever use atomic weapons in war, and Japan as the first and only country ever to be attacked with such weapons .

It has become rather fashionable in some quarters to debate the decision by President Truman to drop the Atomic Bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In recent years it has even become commonplace to hear the bombings referred to as “American War Crimes”. The arguments range from saying Japan was already defeated and the bomb was dropped partly as some grotesque military science experiment, and partly as a geo-political shot across the bow of Soviet Russia. A warning to Stalin to mind his manners and place in the world.

How much of that is true, and how much of that is ideological historical revisionism, we will never know. The only man who can truly answer those questions is Harry Truman, and from the day the first bomb fell to the day he died Truman maintained that his decision was the correct one.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/X-aXwokBdL8

Truman's statement after the Hiroshima bombing

To say that by August 1945, Japan was defeated is both accurate and overly simplistic. The question was not was the Japanese military defeated. but rather would Japan stop fighting in spite of the reality of that defeat The overwhelming evidence at the time, including statements by the Japanese high command clearly indicated the answer to that question was No. Japan would fight on, and a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands would be inevitable.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HKD-0mJ94B4

BBC Documentary "Hiroshima"

I often tell the story of friends of mine in Europe and in Asia and the different questions they have asked me about this moment in American history. German friends of mine will ask with genuine curiosity why did the US drop the atom bomb? While friends in Korea, Thailand and Philippines will ask with equally genuine curiosity why The United States only dropped two atomic bombs?

The argument that use of the Atomic Bomb was immoral and inhumane is something of a straw-man. ALL acts of war, even those that can be militarily justified are immoral and inhumane. The firebombing of Japan by American B-29’s had already killed more Japanese civilians than would die in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks combined. Japan had already killed more Chinese civilians than Jews killed by the Nazis in Hitler’s death camps.

The atomic bomb was not dropped to win the war, but to end it. Ending it without having to invade Japan,. The best estimates held that the invasion of Japan would cost 268,000 casualties. Personnel at the Navy Department estimated that the total losses to America would be between 1.7 and 4 million with 400,000 to 800,000 deaths. The same department estimated that there would be up to 10 million Japanese casualties. As opposed to the roughly 200,000 deaths from the atomic attacks on both cities

I find this perennial argument flawed on so many levels. NOBODY thinks dropping the Atomic bombs on Japan was a GOOD thing to do. The issue is was it the correct choice at the time.? To employ hindsight driven hypothetical scenarios is remarkable easy in 2024 and blithely dismisses what the otherwise inevitable invasion of Japan would have cost in lives on both sides.

The desire by some to cloak this debate in terms of were the bombings “justified” or moral is an overly simplistic attempt in hindsight to avoid the more relevant and complex hypothetical questions of what were the real alternatives at the time? War is not a moral act. The causes that compel nations to war have underpinnings of morality. Be it to end slavery or, free an oppressed people, or even self-defense. But war itself is killing on a mass scale. There is no getting around that.

To try to view Hiroshima and Nagasaki solely in that one dimension, and to frame it as a critique of the 40 years of an atomic arms race that followed, may be ideologically satisfying to some, but it is both intellectually lazy and factually dishonest.