Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/elizaretsky/page/5/)
Hendrik Hertzberg, in the New Yorker, has described left criticisms of Obama as “pathetic.” According to Hertzberg, quoting Obama, we are about to pass “the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act … and the most important reform of our health-care system since Medicare passed in the nineteen-sixties.” But the left just doesn’t get it. Spoiled children, nothing is ever good enough for them.
What are we to make of this strange tribe, the American? During the day, in their conscious minds, they actually believe that the 1000 military bases they have built throughout the world, the huge nuclear arsenal, the attempts to militarize space, the half million men and women in arms, the aircraft carriers, the drones, the nano-drones, and all the rest are there to “protect” them from the 1-2000 person ragtag band of al queda and affiliates. They cannot imagine any other way to deal with conflicts abroad except through expanding their military. They believe that people don’t like them because they are “free” and not because they are bullies. And they imagine that by hiring a good talker as their front man, no one will notice that their pugilistic culture has not changed.
My fellow Americans, and men and women throughout the world:
Like all people of good will I condemn the actions of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Killing innocent people to make a political point is repulsive to me, whether it is done by individuals or by governments, as I will explain. As President, I am also ordering a full-scale review to be sure that everything that can be done to prevent terrorism is being done. However, I have been rethinking this question and come before you to say that heightened security is not enough. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a student at one of the best universities in the world, the son of a leading Nigerian banker.
In recent days, in response to the disappointing health care and climate change initiatives, several commentators have described Obama as a “pragmatist.” Ross Douthat, for instance, calls him “a doctrinaire liberal,” but one “who’s always willing to cut a deal and grab for half the loaf.” According to Ryan Lizza, “every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them.” For David Axelrod, referring to health care, “The president wasn’t after a Pyrrhic victory — he wasn’t into symbolism. The president is after solving a problem that has bedeviled a country and countless families for generations.”
Given the ubiquitous tolling of church bells, the public spaces swept by Christmas music, the decorations, the stores open late at night on Christmas Eve, and the “good news” on the Christmas Morning Front Page concerning the Senate’s passing of health care reform, this may be a moment in which it is worth reflecting on what it means to be Jewish and, in particular, what it means to be a Jewish intellectual, recognizing that intellectuality is one of the most pronounced traits of the Jewish people. To be Jewish means to be in the minority. It means to oppose the overall consensus and to hold on to certain principles against a dominant consensus, the common sense of one’s time, the overwhelming pressure of public opinion, the group. It is interesting that when Jews go to Synagogue or celebrate together they mark such foundational moments of Jewish history as the Covenant between God and Abraham, and the exodus from Egypt, but they neglect another moment, which was of nearly comparable importance, namely the Jewish rejection of Christ’s message. That rejection was not an easy one.
Character is fate. This is true for nations as it is for individuals. Only when we understand both Obama’s character and America’s will we able to fathom the tragedy — the loss, the unfulfilled promise, the disappointment — that attends his Presidency. Who is Barack Obama? One telling moment can be found in his description of his mother’s death in The Audacity of Hope.
In anticipation of the coming passage of a “Health Care Reform” bill, we are already hearing a great deal about “not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Liberal Senators like Tom Harkin are hawking the idea that we’ll get the public option, or the expansion of Medicare, “next time.” Make no mistake about it. Such homilies are as empty as Obama’s reference to “Fat cats.” The bill marks a turning point in the history of American social reform, and it is a negative one.
Many have praised Obama’s Nobel Prize speech, but few have read it with critical attention. The speech is actually two speeches artfully woven together. One, which is unexceptionable, concerns war in general, its place in human society. The second concerns the USA, its place in the history of war. In equating the US with the world, Obama repeated a trope used by many Presidents (Franklin Roosevelt was an exception).
I felt an enormous sense of sadness watching Obama last night. To begin with, there was the moral disintegration of the United States, the enormous weight of the military it carries: 3,650,000 active armed forces, plus 850,000 men and women on reserve. 1000 bases, spread everywhere throughout the world, many of them secret. Think of all the steel, the barbed wire, the tanks, the aircraft carriers, the mines, the crippled children. Think of the secret services, the drones, the chemical warfare, moles, assassins, double agents.
1) The US Has a Mercenary Army. Since the ancient world conscription has been a fundamental principle for all democratic and republican forms of government. The reason is obvious. When people are going to die for a cause, they should spread the risks evenly. In 1974 the United States abolished the draft, supposedly temporarily, for one reason.