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(updated below - Update II [Tues.])
A co-founder of the right-wing blog RedState (and former Bush speechwriter) created a mini-controversy over the weekend when he issued a sociopathic endorsement of Israel's possible shooting of his fellow unarmed citizens on a flotilla currently sailing to Gaza; that flotilla is trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gazans and protest the ongoing Israeli blockade:
When asked by Israeli-American journalist Joseph Dana -- who is covering the flotilla for The Nation -- whether that sentiment applies to the shooting of journalists on board the ships, this was the reply:
Condemnation of this outburst was pervasive but also easy: cheering for a foreign army to shoot unarmed protesters -- one's fellow citizens -- is self-evidently warped; that this came from a right-wing war-cheerleader-from-a-safe-distance with endless pretenses to uber-patriotism just added a layer of irony (Dear Foreign Nation: go ahead and shoot and kill Americans).
But over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also gave her views on the flotilla, and while her rhetoric was somewhat more restrained than that quoted above, she also seemed to endorse possible violence by this foreign nation against her own country's peacefully protesting citizens:
Well, we do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza. Just this week, the Israeli Government approved a significant commitment to housing in Gaza. There will be construction materials entering Gaza and we think that it's not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves.
Though Clinton's language was draped with the subtleties of
diplomatese, there is little doubt that she, too, is justifying a
potential attack by a foreign government on unarmed American protesters
(ironically, Clinton's remarks came at the same Press Conference where
she impugned the patriotism of others -- namely, critics of the Libya War -- by branding them as "on Gadaffi's side").
Read the rest of this article at Salon
