The "who's the bad guy" game in discussions of the Israel-Lebanon escalation was predictable, but discouraging. It is the latest example of the intellectual cul-de-sac that so many in our country find themselves in due to the fallacious way we approach the abstract concepts of
blame and
responsibility.
It's hardly breaking news that we live in a market culture. But more than that, we live in a culture that views the market as a moral, not just an economic infrastructure. As such, whether we realize it or not, we tend to consider even intangibles in terms of
economics, of
supply and demand. Market economics come down to math games that deal in commodoties, and commodities are finite,
measurable variables. If America
consumes a quarter of the market's oil supply, that leaves only three quarters for everyone else. It's easy to understand and morally evaluate such figures.
But we dont stop with true commodities. That perspective is so pervasive throughout our culture (people are "human resources," children are our "most precious natural resource") that we do it reflexively when faced with the need to make even an abstract evaluation, such as a moral one. This leads to the strange, useless, and ultimately counterproductive arguments we see flying around the Middle East conflict.
Consider: During our saner, more considered moments, we would all agree that an unprovoked missle launch into a civilian population would be morally unacceptable. yet Ritter at DailyKos responds this way to the suggestion that Hezbollah should be condemned for their actions:
What Israel is doing now is executing a plan that has been in the making for a long time.
Nice real estate in South Lebanon, but in order to plant settlements you first of all have to occupy with the military and then plant settlements, as in the Golan Heights and the West Bank.
If Hezbullah hadn't resisted and eventually expelled Israel from South Lebanon in 2000 there would now most certainly be Israeli settlements in South Lebanon, just like, as said before, the Golan Heights and the West Bank.
Forget about 'proportionality', this is all about land-grab. The invasion will follow shortly. They are not going to give up, especially with the US encouraging them.
We would also agree that breaking a promise to hold fire to allow civilians to escape and UN Humanitarian aid to those who need it would also be worthy of moral criticism. And yet this is how RichardR responds to the criticism of Israel's actions:
And of course, the Anti-Semites see nothing wrong with Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia feeding sophisticated weapons to the terrorists who use them to murder Israeli civilians on a fairly routine basis, and in some case New Yorkers, Washingtonians and Londoners.
Like any sovereign nation, Israel has an obligation to secure and protect the safety and well-being of its people. Hezbollah and Hamas need only stop the attacks and peace will be secured. Israel will withdraw from Lebanon and live in peace with a Palestinian state. To argue against that is simply nonsense and nothing but Anti-Semitism.
Odd? Not really. Both are looking at moral responsibility as a finite commodity - as though "blame" were a pie that there were only so many slices of to choose from. From both of their perspectives, the "other side" long ago performed actions so morally egregious, that they became full owners of all the pie, leaving none left for themselves or any others - ever. Not only is this a simple and easy way to approach the concept of responsibility, it frees one up to employ any actions one wants, without having to worry about getting any of that pie in the face.
Now when you think about it this way, it becomes ludicrous, but this is hardly the only example of the way we commodify blame. The moral crimes of the Soviet Union were constantly used to justify anything and everything the US might do in fighting its influence in the world. Republicans refer to the left as the "blame America first" crowd because, in their eyes, any attempt to accept responsibility for ills in the world is to diminish the responsibility of others, as there is only so much responsibility-pie to go around.
And we don't stop there. Frighteningly, we commodify even our most basic rights as well. How many times have we heard in response to liberal concerns about the death penalty and the rights of the accused countered with "what about the victim's rights?" In a sense, this is an attempt to establish a "right of vengeance" for the aggrieved, but it's based on the argument that there is a finite "rights-pie", and that by giving a slice to a bad guy, you leave fewer slices for the good guys.
At some point, we must acknowledge that approaching abstractions such as blame and human rights as commodities is not only wrong, it quickly perpetuates and enflames conflict. One person's rights do not diminish another's, and those real points where individual rights come into conflict, the rights of the community also come into play and must be dialectically reconciled, which is a very different thing than doling out shares of dessert.. The concept of trading off our rights for security and peace of mind should be considered a logical absurdism given that we're clearly not talking about livestock or stock shares.
And responsibility is responsibility. It is not cattle futures. Sure, we make mitigating judgments of a given situation based on other factors, but those judgments are in the context of the blame we assess for a specific action, not whether or not there are still enough "blame credits" in circulation.
Hezbollah is responsible, and should be morally condemned for lobbing rockets into Israel, killing civilians.
Israel is responsible, and should be morally condemned for a disproportionate response that is killing children.
...and as we go back in the long, revolting history of the Israel-Arab conflicts, each side should bear the full moral condemnation of the world community for each objectively immoral act they have committed. Until we step back and start making these clear, moral assessments, untethered by ridiculous notions of who is "more awful" or how many bodybags one side is now morally allotted to fill based on the transgressions of the other, it is going to get worse and worse and worse... and we will ALL bear some of that responsibility.
(Crossposted at Green Mountain Daily)