jmoiron.net

Politics isn't dead, public service is dead. Selfless acts are dead. When John F. Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage, he wanted to pay tribute to unsung (political) heroes who risked (and quite often sacrificed) their careers by taking a position they deemed necessary regardless of becoming political pariahs. In some of his chosen cases, the public servant was cornered into his decision. Others actually risked (and lost) everything for what they did.

But gone are the days where you have brilliant orators in congress. Gone are the days (if they ever even existed) when you even have meaningful debate in congress, or in the public view at all. Even at the fringe, people don't often get it.

One of the best tools that we have to keep track of our congress members is Thomas. Named after Thomas Jefferson, it is a searchable online repository of recent bills and resolutions from the United States Congress. Many of the search results link directly to PDF's of the congressional record. If you search Thomas for records from the 109th congress matching the term hezbollah, you find many results. Virtually all of them condemn hezbollah for their actions, and virtually none of them similarly condemn Israel for their escalation (although most of the other G8 countries saw fit to censure).

The members of the House typically get 1 minute of floor time to speak about whatever it is they are wanting to speak about, and it is very illuminating to see what they speak of and how well they speak of it. The recent condemnation (across the board) of hezbollah has been markedly low brow and entirely unconvincing, usually leaving out any mention of any Israeli retaliation except by claiming that they have the "right to defend themselves."

The bald political pandering is sometimes too much to bear. Note Rep. Wilson of South Carolina's remarks:

Madam Speaker, on June 25, Hamas terrorists from Gaza carried out a cross-border attack into Israel, killing two soldiers and kidnapping a third. Shortly thereafter, Hezbollah terrorists from Lebanon attacked Israeli soldiers, killing three and capturing two.

Note that the fact that Israeli retaliation for the kidnapping of Shalit had resulted in the death of dozens of palestinian citizens is conspicuously absent, and that Mr. Wilson apparently believes that the situation is one of unlimited and multi-lateral unprovoked agression against Israel. Furthermore:

I agree with President Bush when he said yesterday "The root cause of the problem is Hezbollah." President Bush further said that Israel has a right "to defend herself from terrorist attacks." The kidnapped Israeli soldiers need to be released. Hamas and Hezbollah need to turn away from the current path of terror, violence and intimidation. We must stand with Israel in her fight against misguided religious extremism and those who glorify death over life. We must stand with Middle Eastern allies to establish peace.

In conclusion, God bless our troops, and we will never forget September 11.

In conclusion, indeed. (Note that the Lebanese prisoners of war whom Israel has admitted exists, which number 3, need not be released, nor do the whereabouts of the hundreds of other known detainees resultant from the 18 year Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Nor do the Muammar brothers. These people simply do not exist.)

In another somewhat telling display, the record shows Dennis Kucinich (for those of you caught in the memory hole, he was a democratic candidate for president in 2004; among the most liberal) speaking directly before Rep. Poe from Texas. Kucinich's statement, titled This is the Time For Peace, is summed up by the middle paragraphs (both in elegance and in content):

Now is the time to stop the disintegration into a worldwide conflict. Now is the time to show the world that the United States is strong enough to be a leader in peace, not war. Now is the time to call for an immediate cessation of violence in the Middle East. Now is the time to commit the United States diplomats to multiparty negotiations with no preconditions. Now is the time to reaffirm our support for Israel by showing leadership and diplomacy.

Unilateralism breeds unilateralism. And then the awful dialectic of conflict moves as a force beyond our control and takes its deadly toll. One hundred civilians a day are being killed in Iraq. Things are spinning out of control. The war on terror has become a war of errors. We must bring a halt to this march of folly.

Poe follows, showing off his profoundly small mind and exceptional ability to create analogies in which he does not understand the original situation nor the one towards which he refers entitled Israeli Cowboys v. Hezbollah Outlaws:

There is a basic human right to selfdefense. There is a basic right to shoot back when shot at. You don’t have to duck, run or hide. And there is a further right to keep on shooting back until the bad guys stop shooting.

This is taking place in the gunfight with Hezbollah outlaws and Israeli cowboys, just like the Old West. Hezbollah, a fancy name for a gang of terrorists, are kidnappers and killers, and they are hiding out in the hills of southern Lebanon. They are a state within a state. They are spreading terror.

That’s what terrorists do. They started shooting at Israeli citizens, kids and soldiers, and they won’t stop no matter what we do. The outlaws have fired 1,100 rounds, and they will shoot thousands more because they preach death to Israel.

So, Madam Speaker, what’s a cowboy to do? Well, shoot back and keep on shooting until the Hezbollah gang stops, gives up, or is rounded up and locked up.

It is a basic human right to defend yourself and take out the outlaws. And that’s just the way it is.

Poe's world is painted with white water and black oil with little opportunity for a gray. Things are simple to him: Identify the bad guys (brown people), shoot them, and then ride off into the sunset. Even with Kucinich, we're a long way from Eugene Debs, but at least we have something. Our endless anti-intellectual spiral has never been so painfully evident to me... to have a recitation of a cartoon depiction of history as justification for the murder of hundreds of citizens by a foreign state on the floor of congress. Indeed.