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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 — 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.
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, the president’s 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 the 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 — 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 kill 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.
As Wired
reports, shrapnel and debris went flying through the walls of Naeemullah’s 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.
This is where
the picture of above was taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan
who has been chronicling the effects of the Peace Laureate’s drone war. When the picture was taken, Naeemullah
was dying. He died an hour later.
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 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 won’t 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 child’s 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: “What a noble man
of integrity and decency! I’m sure he is acting for the
best.”
Would you say:…
“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 I’ll ask him to come speak at
my little boy’s funeral!”
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 would actively support the person who did it, 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 doesn’t 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,
Bill Clinton, five hundred thousand 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. This is the reality of “lesser evilism.”
***
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: “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.”
I understand
that argument, I really do. I don’t 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 “lesser evil” is too evil to support in any way, that
such support only perpetuates the system’s unconscionable evils. But I’m 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 is 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 don’t 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.” 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 “lesser” evil?
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 criminal, how can you be happy
that all of this will continue? Happy — 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 — “Do you
want the Democrat to kill these children, or do you want the Republican to kill
these children?” — shouldn’t this post-election period be a time of sorrow, not
vaulting triumph and giddy glee and snarky put-downs of the
“losers”?
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 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 — 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 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 won’t you
celebrate?
And so step by
step, holding the hand of the “lesser evil,” we descend deeper and deeper into
the pit.
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