Just as we must affirm the right of the Palestinians, and the Lebanese, to sovereignty, and self-determination, we must fight for the right of a Jewish state to exist in the Middle East. Just as it was appropriate for former President Jimmy Carter to meet with Hamas, and to acknowledge the second-class citizenship of Arabs in the occupied territories, it is right for Barack Obama to be willing to talk with Iranian leader Ahmadinejad. Behind every flag is a human being, and human beings don't deserve to be desecrated, either.
Leadership whose default position is search and destroy, raid and attack, the politics of pre-emption, has already taken the planet to the verge of collapse. Those who confuse pre-emptive with pro-active are those who deliberately blur the boundaries between civilization and chaos.
Those who look for scapegoats, not solutions, are the problem; they always were, and they still are. It is the height of naivete to think that peace can ever be accomplished through warfare, or that the role of commander-in-chief involves knowing how best to deploy the military. To the contrary, the most effective leader is one who knows how to avert the military option through diplomacy, and discourse.
As for the presidential race, the candidate who is most capable of seeing the world not in black and white, but in shades of gray, ironically, just happens to be a black man---Barack Obama. The only one who has dared to address the plague of hate, and race, is not Ron Paul, not Dennis Kucinich, not Ralph Nader, but Barack Obama.
But, who wants to elect someone capable of seeing things in more than one dimension at a time? Instead, folks like our friend Anna prefer a "progressive" version of George W. Bush whose jihad isn't against Radical Islam, or "Islamofascists," but AIPAC instead.
After all, why would we want to elect someone who, like Hannah Arendt, thinks that "Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom?," someone who recognizes that bombs and discourse just don't mix; someone who courts steelworkers and not members of the National Rifle Association?
Those who, through dedicated oversimplification, mistake target practice for toubleshooting, and feel that their overfed insecurities are at heightened risk from pesky minorities, whether they be Jews, African-Americans, or Mexicans, may yet live to see a Final Solution, in the form of nuclear holocaust, for they are putting us on the fast track to the apocalypse..
Leadership whose default position is search and destroy, raid and attack, the politics of pre-emption, has already taken the planet to the verge of collapse. Those who confuse pre-emptive with pro-active are those who deliberately blur the boundaries between civilization and chaos.
Those who look for scapegoats, not solutions, are the problem; they always were, and they still are. It is the height of naivete to think that peace can ever be accomplished through warfare, or that the role of commander-in-chief involves knowing how best to deploy the military. To the contrary, the most effective leader is one who knows how to avert the military option through diplomacy, and discourse.
As for the presidential race, the candidate who is most capable of seeing the world not in black and white, but in shades of gray, ironically, just happens to be a black man---Barack Obama. The only one who has dared to address the plague of hate, and race, is not Ron Paul, not Dennis Kucinich, not Ralph Nader, but Barack Obama.
After all, why would we want to elect someone who, like Hannah Arendt, thinks that "Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom?," someone who recognizes that bombs and discourse just don't mix; someone who courts steelworkers and not members of the National Rifle Association?
Those who, through dedicated oversimplification, mistake target practice for toubleshooting, and feel that their overfed insecurities are at heightened risk from pesky minorities, whether they be Jews, African-Americans, or Mexicans, may yet live to see a Final Solution, in the form of nuclear holocaust, for they are putting us on the fast track to the apocalypse..
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