The Reality of the Lesser Evil Is This Child Dead Enough for You? by CHRIS FLOYD
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/09/is-this-child-dead-enough-for-you/ To all those now hailing the re-election of Barack Obama as a triumph of decent, humane, liberal values over the oozing-postule perfidy of the Republicans, a simple question: Is this child dead enough for you? > This little boy was named Naeemullah. He was in his house â maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a meal â when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door. As we all know, these drone missiles are, like the president who wields them, super-smart, a triumph of technology and technocratic expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have repeatedly told us, that these weapons â launched only after careful consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas â strike nothing but their intended targets and kill no one but âbad guys.â Indeed, the presidentâs top aides have testified under oath that not a single innocent person has been among the thousands of Pakistani civilians â that is, civilians of a sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States â who have been killed by the drone missile campaign of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Yet somehow, by some miracle, the missile that roared into the residential area where Naeemullah lived did not confine itself neatly to the house it struck. Somehow, inexplicably, the hunk of metal and wire and computer processors failed â in this one instance â to look into the souls of all the people in the village and ascertain, by magic, which ones were âbad guysâ and then kill only them. Somehow â perhaps the missile had been infected with Romney cooties? â this supercharged hunk of high explosives simply, well, exploded with tremendous destructive power when it struck the residential area, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens. As Wired reports, shrapnel and debris went flying through the walls of Naeemullahâs house and ripped through his small body. When the attack was over â when the buzzing drone sent with Augustinian wisdom by the âPeace Laureateâ was no longer lurking over the village, shadowing the lives of every defenseless inhabitant with the terrorist threat of imminent death, Naeemullah was taken to the hospital in a nearby town. Â This is where the picture above was taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan who has been chronicling the effects of the Peace Laureateâs drone war. Â When the picture was taken, Naeemullah was dying. He died an hour later. Â He died. Is he dead enough for you? Dead enough not to disturb your victory dance in any way? Dead enough not to trouble the inauguration parties yet to come? Dead enough not to diminish, even a little bit, your exultant glee at the fact that this great man, a figure of integrity, decency, honor, and compassion, will be able to continue his noble leadership of the best nation in the history of the world? Do you have children? Do they sit in your house playing happily? Do they sleep sweetly scrunched up in their warm beds at night? Do they chatter and prattle like funny little birds as you eat with them at the family table? Do you love them? Do you treasure them? Do you consider them fully-fledged human beings, beloved souls of infinite worth? How would you feel if you saw them ripped to shreds by flying shrapnel, in your own house? How would you feel as you rushed them to the hospital, praying every step of the way that another missile wonât hurl down on you from the sky? Your child was innocent, you had done nothing, were simply living your life in your own house â and someone thousands of miles away, in a country you had never seen, had no dealings with, had never harmed in any way, pushed a button and sent chunks of burning metal into your childâs body. How would you feel as you watched him die, watched all your hopes and dreams for him, all the hours and days and years you would have to love him, fade away into oblivion, lost forever? What would you think about the one who did this to your child? Would you say: âWhat a noble man of integrity and decency! Iâm sure he is acting for the best.â Would you say: âWell, this is a bit unfortunate, but itâs perfectly understandable. The Chinese government (or Iran or al Qaeda or North Korea or Russia, etc. etc.) believed there was someone next door to me who might possibly at some point in time pose some kind of threat in some unspecified way to their people or their political agenda â or maybe it was just that my next-door neighbor behaved in a certain arbitrarily chosen way that indicated to people watching him on a computer screen thousands of miles away that he might possibly be the sort of person who might conceivably at some point in time pose some kind of unspecified threat to the Chinese (Iranians/Russians, etc.), even though they had no earthly idea who my neighbour is or what he does or believes or intends. I think the person in charge of such a program is a good, wise, decent man that any person would be proud to support. Why, I think Iâll ask him to come speak at my little boyâs funeral!â Is that what you would say if shrapnel from a missile blew into your comfortable house and killed your own beloved little boy? You would not only accept, understand, forgive, shrug it off, move on â you would actively support the person who didit, you would cheer his personal triumphs and sneer at all those who questioned his moral worthiness and good intentions? Is that really what you would do? Well, that is what you are doing when you shrug off the murder of little Naeemullah. You are saying he is not worth as much as your child. You are saying he is not a fully-fledged human being, a beloved soul of infinite worth. You are saying that you support his death, you are happy about it, and you want to see many more like it. You are saying it doesnât matter if this child â or a hundred like him, or a thousand like him, or, as in the Iraqi sanctions of the old liberal lion, Bill Clinton, five-hundred-thousand children like Naeemullah â are killed in your name, by leaders you cheer and support. You are saying that the only thing that matters is that someone from your side is in charge of killing these children. This is the reality of âlesser evilism.â *** Before the election, we heard a lot of talk about this notion of the âlesser evil.â From prominent dissidents and opponents of empire like Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky and Robert Parry to innumerable progressive blogs to personal conversations, one heard this basic argument: âYes, the drone wars, the gutting of civil liberties, the White House death squads, and all the rest are bad; but Romney would be worse. Therefore, with great reluctance, holding our noses and shaking our heads sadly, we must choose the lesser evil of Obama and vote accordingly.â I understand that argument, I really do. I donât agree with it, as I made plain here many times before the election. I think the argument is wrong, I think our system is so far gone that even a âlesser evilâ is too evil to support in any way, that such support only perpetuates the systemâs unconscionable evils. But Iâm not a purist, not a puritan, not a commissar or dogmatist. I understand that people of good will can come to a different conclusion, and feel that they must reluctantly choose one imperial-militarist-corporate faction over the other, in the belief that this will mean some slight mitigation of the potential evil that the other side commit if it took power. Â I used to think that way myself, years ago. Again, I now disagree with this, and I think that the good people who believe this have not, for whatever reason or reasons, looked with sufficient clarity at the reality of our situation, of whatis actually being done, in their name, by the political faction they support. But of course, I am not the sole arbiter of reality, nor a judge of others; people see what they see, and they act (or refrain from acting) accordingly. I understand that.But here is what I donât understand: the sense of triumph and exultation and glee on the part of so many progressives and liberals and âdissidentsâ at the victory of this âlesser evil.â Where did the reluctance, the nose-holding, the sad head-shaking go?Should they not be mourning the fact that evil has triumphed in America, even if, by their lights, it is a âlesserâ evil? If you really believed that Obama was a lesser evil â 2 percent less evil, as I believe Digby once described the Democrats in 2008 â if you really did find the drone wars and the White House death squads and Wall Street bailouts and absolution for torturers and all the rest to be shameful and criminal, how can you be happy that all of this will continue? Happy â and continuing to scorn anyone who opposed the perpetuation of this system? The triumph of a lesser evil is still a victory for evil. If your neighborhood is tyrannized by warring mafia factions, you might prefer that the faction which occasionally doles out a few free hams wins out over their more skinflint rivals; but would you be joyful about the fact that your neighborhood is still being tyrannized by murderous criminals? Would you not be sad, cast down, discouraged, and disheartened to see the violence and murder and corruption go on? Would you not mourn the fact that your children will have to grow up in the midst of all this? So where is the mourning for the fact that we, as a nation, have come to this: a choice between murderers, a choice between plunderers? Even if you believe that you had to participate and make the horrific choice that was being offered to us â âDo you want the Democrat to kill these children, or do you want the Republican to kill these children?â â shouldnât this post-election period be a time of sorrow, not vaulting triumph and giddy glee and snarky put-downs of the âlosersâ? If you really are a âlesser evilistâ â if this was a genuine moral choice you reluctantly made, and not a rationalization for indulging in unexamined, primitive partisanship â then you will know that we are ALL the losers of this election. Even if you believe it could have been worse, it is still very bad. You yourself proclaimed that Obama was evil â just a bit âlesserâ so than his opponent. (2 percent maybe.) And so the evil that you yourself saw and named and denounced will go on. Again I ask: where is the joy and glory and triumph in this? Even if you believe it was unavoidable, why celebrate it? And ask yourself, bethink yourself: what are you celebrating? This dead child, and a hundred like him? A thousand like him? Five-hundred-thousand like him? How far will you go? What wonât you celebrate? And so step by step, holding the hand of the âlesser evil,â we descend deeper and deeper into the pit. ---- Chris Floyd is an American writer based in the UK, and a frequent contributor to CounterPunch. His blog, âEmpire Burlesque,â can be found at www.chris-floyd.com <html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div style="RIGHT: auto" id=yui_3_7_2_21_1354478678937_43><FONT id=yui_3_7_2_21_1354478678937_50 size=2 face=Arial><VAR id=yui-ie-cursor></VAR><BR id=yui_3_7_2_21_1354478678937_181></FONT> </div> <DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; FONT-SIZE: 12pt" id=yui_3_7_2_21_1354478678937_45 class=ms__id4247> <DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; FONT-SIZE: 12pt" class=ms__id4255><BR> <DIV id=yiv1604643820> <DIV><FONT face="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><B><I>The Reality of the Lesser Evil<BR></I></B></SPAN></FONT> <div align=center><FONT face="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><B><FONT color=#800000><FONT size=7><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 27pt">Is This Child Dead Enough for You? </SPAN></FONT></FONT></B></FONT> <div><FONT face="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><FONT size=1><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt"></SPAN></FONT></FONT> <div align=center><FONT face="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><FONT size=4><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><B>by CHRIS FLOYD </B></SPAN></FONT></FONT> <div><FONT size=2><FONT face="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><BR></SPAN></FONT></FONT> <div align=center><FONT size=2><FONT face="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><IMG src="cid:[email protected]"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT> <div><FONT size=4><FONT face="Georgia, Times New Roman"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14.5pt"><BR></SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT color=#0000ee><FONT face="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><U><A href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/09/is-this-child-dead-enough-for-you/"; rel=nofollow target=_blank>http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/09/is-this-child-dead-enough-for-you/</A></U></SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT face="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"> <BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><BR>To all those now hailing the re-election of Barack Obama as a triumph of decent, humane, liberal values over the oozing-postule perfidy of the Republicans, a simple question:<BR><BR></SPAN></FONT> <BLOCKQUOTE><FONT face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><B>Is this child dead enough for you?<BR></B></SPAN></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE><FONT face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><BR>This little boy was named Naeemullah. He was in his house maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a meal when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door.<BR><BR>As we all know, these drone missiles are, like the president who wields them, super-smart, a triumph of technology and technocratic expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have repeatedly told us, that these weapons launched only after careful consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas strike nothing but their intended targets and kill no one but bad guys. Indeed, <B>the presidents top aides have testified under oath that not a single innocent person has been among the thousands of Pakistani civilians that is, civilians of a sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States who have been killed by the drone missile campaign of a <I>Nobel Peace Prize Laureate</I>. <BR></B><BR>Yet somehow, by some miracle, the missile that roared into the residential area where Naeemullah lived did not confine itself neatly to the house it struck. Somehow, inexplicably, the hunk of metal and wire and computer processors failed in this one instance to look into the souls of all the people in the village and ascertain, by magic, which ones were bad guys and then <I>kill</I> only them. Somehow perhaps the missile had been infected with Romney cooties? this supercharged hunk of high explosives simply, well, exploded with tremendous destructive power when it struck the residential area, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens.<BR><BR>As <I>Wired</I> reports, shrapnel and debris went flying through the walls of Naeemullahs house and ripped through his small body. When the attack was over when the buzzing drone sent with Augustinian wisdom by the Peace Laureate was no longer lurking over the village, shadowing the lives of every defenseless inhabitant with the terrorist threat of imminent death, Naeemullah was taken to the hospital in a nearby town. <BR><BR>This is where the picture above was taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan who has been chronicling the effects of the Peace Laureates drone war. When the picture was taken, Naeemullah was dying. He died an hour later. <BR><BR><B>He died.<BR><BR>Is he dead enough for you?<BR></B><BR>Dead enough not to disturb your victory dance in any way? Dead enough not to trouble the inauguration parties yet to come? Dead enough not to diminish, even a little bit, your exultant glee at the fact that this great man, a figure of integrity, decency, honor, and compassion, will be able to continue his noble leadership of the best nation in the history of the world?<BR><BR><B>Do you have children?</B> Do they sit in your house playing happily? Do they sleep sweetly scrunched up in their warm beds at night? Do they chatter and prattle like funny little birds as you eat with them at the family table? Do you love them? Do you treasure them? Do you consider them fully-fledged human beings, beloved souls of infinite worth?<BR><BR><B>How would you feel if you saw them ripped to shreds by flying shrapnel, in your own house?</B> How would you feel as you rushed them to the hospital, praying every step of the way that another missile wont hurl down on you from the sky? Your child was innocent, you had done nothing, were simply living your life in your own house and someone thousands of miles away, in a country you had never seen, had no dealings with, had never harmed in any way, pushed a button and sent chunks of burning metal into your childs body. <B>How would you feel as you watched him die, watched all your hopes and dreams for him, all the hours and days and years you would have to love him, fade away into oblivion, lost forever?<BR></B><BR><B>What would you think about the one who did this to your child?</B> Would you say: What a noble man of integrity and decency! Im sure he is acting for the best.<BR><BR>Would you say: Well, this is a bit unfortunate, but its perfectly understandable. The Chinese government (or Iran or al Qaeda or North Korea or Russia, etc. etc.) believed there was someone next door to me who might possibly at some point in time pose some kind of threat in some unspecified way to their people or their political agenda or maybe it was just that my next-door neighbor behaved in a certain arbitrarily chosen way that indicated to people watching him on a computer screen thousands of miles away that he might possibly be the sort of person who might conceivably at some point in time pose some kind of unspecified threat to the Chinese (Iranians/Russians, etc.), even though they had no earthly idea who my neighbour is or what he does or believes or intends. I think the person in charge of such a program is a good, wise, decent man that any person would be proud to support. Why, I think Ill ask him to come speak at my little boys funeral!<BR><BR>Is that what you would say if shrapnel from a missile blew into your comfortable house and killed your own beloved little boy? You would not only accept, understand, forgive, shrug it off, move on you <I>would a</I>ctively support the person who did<I> it, </I>you would cheer his personal triumphs and sneer at all those who questioned his moral worthiness and good inten<I>tions?</I> Is that really what you would do?<BR><BR><B>Well, <I>that</I> is what you are doing when you shrug off the murder of little Naeemullah. You are saying he is not worth as much as your child. You are saying he is not a fully-fledged human being, a beloved soul of infinite worth. </B>You are saying that you support his death, you are happy about it, and you want to see many more like it. You are saying it doesnt matter if this child or a hundred like him, or a thousand like him, or, as in the Iraqi sanctions of the old liberal lion<I>, Bill Clinton, five-hundred-t</I>housand children like Naeemullah are killed in your name, by leaders you cheer and support. You are saying that the only thing that matters is that someone from your side is in charge of killing these children. <B>This is the reality of lesser evilism.<BR></B><BR>***<BR><BR>Before the election, we heard a lot of talk about this notion of the lesser evil. >From prominent dissidents and opponents of empire like Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky and Robert Parry to innumerable progressive blogs to personal conversations, one heard this basic argument: <B>Yes, the drone wars, the gutting of civil liberties, the White House death squads, and all the rest are bad; but Romney would be worse. Therefore, with great reluctance, holding our noses and shaking our heads sadly, we must choose the lesser evil of Obama and vote accordingly.<BR></B><BR>I understand that argument, I really do. I dont agree with it, as I made plain here many times before the election. I think the argument is wrong, <B>I think our system is so far gone that even <FONT color=#800000>a lesser evil is too evil to support in any way</FONT>, that such support only perpetuates the systems unconscionable evils.</B> But Im not a purist, not a puritan, not a commissar or dogmatist. I understand that people of good will can come to a different conclusion, and feel that they must reluctantly choose one imperial-militarist-corporate faction over the other, in the belief that this will mean some slight mitigation of the potential evil that the other side commit if it took power. I used to think that way myself, years ago. Again, I now disagree with this, and I think that the good people who believe this have not, for whatever reason or reasons, looked with sufficient clarity at the reality of our situation, of what<I> is </I>actually being done, in their name, by the political faction they support.<BR><BR>But of course, I am not the sole arbiter of reality, nor a judge of others; people see what they see, and they act (or refrain from acting) accordingly. I understand that.<I> <B>But </B></I><B>here is what I dont understand: the sense of triumph and exultation and glee on the part of so many progressives and liberals and dissidents at the victory of this lesser evil. </B>Where did the reluctance, the nose-holding, the sad head-shaking go?<I> Should </I>they not be mourning the fact that evil has triumphed in America, even if, by their lights, it is a lesser evil?<BR><BR>If you really believed that Obama was a lesser evil 2 percent less evil, as I believe Digby once described the Democrats in 2008 if you really did find the drone wars and the White House death squads and Wall Street bailouts and absolution for torturers and all the rest to be shameful and crim<I>inal,</I> <B>how can you be happy that all of this will continue?</B> Happy and continuing to scorn anyone who opposed the perpetuation of this system?<BR><BR><FONT color=#800000><B>The triumph of a lesser evil is still a victory for evil. </B></FONT>If your neighborhood is tyrannized by warring mafia factions, you might prefer that the faction which occasionally doles out a few free hams wins out over their more skinflint riv<I>als; b</I>ut would you be joyful about the fact that your neighborhood is still being tyrannized by murderous criminals? Would you not be sad, cast down, discouraged, and disheartened to see the violence and murder and corruption go on? Would you not mourn the fact that your children will have to grow up in the midst of all this?<BR><BR>So where is the mourning for the fact that we, as a nation, have come to this: a choice between murderers, a choice between plunderers? Even if you believe that you had to participate and make the horrific choice that was being offered to us <B>Do you want the Democrat to kill these children, or do you want the Republican to kill these children?</B> shouldnt this post-election period be a time of sorrow, not vaulting triumph and giddy glee and snarky put-downs of the losers?<BR><BR><B>If you really are a lesser evilist if this was a genuine moral choice you reluctantly made, and not a rationalization for indulging in unexamined, primitive partisanship then you will know that <FONT color=#800000>we are ALL the losers of this election.</FONT></B> Even if you believe it could have been worse, it is still very bad. You yourself proclaimed that Obama was evil just a bit lesser so than his opponent. (2 percent maybe.) And so the evil that you yourself saw and named and denounced will go on. Again I ask: where is the joy and glory and triumph in this? Even if you believe <I>it was una</I>voidable, why celebrate it? And ask your<I>self</I>, bethink yourself: <B>what are you celebrating? This dead child, and a hundred like him? A thousand like him? Five-hundred-thousand like him? <I>How far </I>will you go? What wont you celebrate?<BR></B><BR>And so step by step, holding the hand of the lesser evil, we descend deeper a<I>nd deeper into the pit.<BR><BR>----<BR><FONT color=#000080><B>Chris Floyd</B></FONT></I> is an American writer based in the UK, and a frequent contributor to <I>CounterPunch</I>. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at www.chris-floyd.com <BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT size=4><FONT face="Georgia, Times New Roman"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14.5pt"><BR></SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV></DIV><BR><BR></DIV></DIV></div></body></html> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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