"Red Diaper" goes "Red, White, and Blue"

Take the moral anguish over the use of force in Jewish filmaker Steven Spielberg's movie "Munich."

Contrast that with the muscularly military conservativism of the Jewish "neoconservative" intellectuals and policy makers who helped plan the invasion of Iraq.

This tension is not new.

This writer witnessed it as a graduate student during the "Free Speech Movement" at the University of California, Berkeley more than 40 years ago.

On the one side, along with many who were not Jewish, radical Jewish students and their sometimes youngish professors. On the other a handful of older conservative Jewish scholars, often left in their youth, who turned from diatribe against American culture and capitalism in the 1930's to diatribe against student radicals in the 1960's. One example: sociologist Lewis Feuer.

Back then the left (or "New Left") prevailed -- more critical of anti-communism than of communism, traumatized by the anti-Semitic overtones of McCarthyism. Denouncing American power as imperialism, spurred on by opposition to the Vietnam war and by an alliance with the Civil Rights movement.

In the liberal-radical tradition of Jewish Americana there sometimes seemed a defensive, reflexive "anti-Americanism" critical of gentile values, seeing patriotism as a disguise for anti-Semitism -- sometimes even mocking the American flag. A tendency to apologize for the Soviet Union while criticizing the United States.

It was a tradition which sometimes sought protection from gentile American culture by hiding in the cocoon of abstract European Jewish Marxist thought. A few even spied for the Soviet Union. Apologetics for Stalin in the battle against facism produced a generation of "red diaper babies."

Back then a keen awareness of barriers against Jews in MANY areas of American life. Yet a hungry quest for upward mobility, for respectability and wealth and power in America's law, medicine, cities, suburbs, schools, universities, government and corporations.

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Forty years later a different form of conservative Jewish thought has emerged in the halls of the White House, in the Pentagon and in countless streams of media.

This includes the "neocons" who helped engineer the Iraq war, after first emerging into public prominence in the Reagan era.

Deeply committed to American cultural, and capitalist power. Seeing now dead Soviet power as anti-Semitic rather than as an ideological beacon for international progress.

This tradition repudiates the "anti anti-communism" of "its youth" and favors global American military dominance as a bulwark against anti-Semitic Arab theocratic totalitarianism, as protection for both American interests and for Israel. While the radical Jewish tradition decries American "imperialism," the "neocons" cry out for an American imperial role as a global saviour.

Like the old style left, Jewish conservatives often see the world as a Manichean struggle between good and evil.

But a difference -- for in this time there is keen awareness that Jews thrive in almost ALL fields of American life. Yet still a hungry quest for respectability, for upward mobility and wealth and power in America's law, medicine, cities, suburbs, schools, universities, government and corporations.

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Peter Haas, The Future of Jewish Liberalism
Michael E. Staub, Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism
Irving Kristol, Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea
Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev The Haunted Wood
National Security Agency (NSA) The Venona Story

A moral price to pay? Leave anguish for a later day

Controversy over Steven Spielberg's film Munich?

Most Certainly!!!

For this is a film which dramatizes issues in today's war on terrorism -- as much as it reflects controversy over Israel's secret campaign of assassinations against terrorists held responsible for killing 11 of its athletes in Munich in 1972.

The purpose was not only revenge, to let the world know that there would be a price to be paid for the killing of Israelis -- but also to create a climate of "counter-terror." The aim: that any persons who dared plan terror against Israelis would think twice -- knowimg they might be marked for death. In short, both revenge and deterrence.

Pro Israel zealots such as Charles Krauthammer have sometimes eloquently denounced "Munich" as a film of moral equivalence which puts Israel's efforts at self defense in the same basket as ruthless Arab terrorists who systematically kill civilians to annihilate Israel.

The film clearly "humanizes" the targets of the Israeli assassins. But the charge of moral equivalence makes no sense. Spielberg tells the story from an Israeli point of view and focuses always on Israeli issues and values.

Spielberg gives to Israelis a higher sense of conscience, focusing frequently on how far Jewish assassins went to avoid harming "innocents." He also portrays several Israeli terrorists as plagued by concerns their revenge killing might compromise historic Jewish values. All this clearly puts Israeli fighters on higher moral ground than terrorists who deliberately target civilians.

Central, if subliminal to the movie, is the controversy over George Bush's willingness to adopt Israeli tactics.

At the heart of the Bush approach are both preemptive and retaliatory actions to hunt down suspected terrorists, to kill them with gunfire, bombs or rockets -- or secretly kidnap and imprison them, where they may face torture.

The Bush approach is in part a campaign of "counter-terror" aimed at deterrence. The message to be sent: anyone who picks up the terrorist cause against Americans may pay the ultimate price.

The US has not fully adopted Israeli tactics, but has gone a far way down that road. The President still is subject to congressional and court challenges over just how far he can go. And over whether his actions are compatible with the constitution or with American committments to international law.

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So where does the movie "Munich" leave us?

Fighting back may be necessary -- but "counter-terror" can be costly not only to our enemies but to our moral sensibilities. That is IF we CHOOSE to be anguished when we inflict death and suffering.

There are no free lunches in wars where murder is a tool of state. Even when human beings we kill are not "innocent," they are still human beings.

As someone puts it in the movie: "for every civilization there is a time when it may have to compromise its own values."

There is, of course, little sign the Bush Administration shows anguish.

There is plenty of anguish in Spielberg's "Munich." Still, the challenge for every generation is to "get on with it," to do the killing as quickly and as efficiently as possible so that the values of peace can be restored.

Even when a cause seems righteous, there is a cost. In today's world, as in the past, a moral price must be paid.

Leave anguish for a later day.

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See:
"The Munich Syndrome," Weekly Standard
"War on 'Munich,'" Spiegel
Charles Krauthammer, "Terrorists Win in 'Munich,'" Real Clear Politics
George Jonas, Vengeance (book on which the movie is based)
"An Action Film About the Need to Talk," The New York Times
Spielberg calls his film "a prayer for peace" (BBC)
Spielberg hires a key Sharon aide to promote his film (BBC)

A Nation Blogs Hugh Thompson, Jr. - Departed Hero

More than 3000 blog entries have been posted since the January 6 passing of Hugh Thompson, Jr., the military helicopter pilot who landed his bird in the midst of the March 1968 "My Lai Massacre." He is credited with helping to stop the killing.

The blogs are from Left, Right, Center. They show a national grassroots outpouring over the death of little known 62 year old Thompson. The new blog technology allows a national ceremony of grief and admiration for a man rarely honored in the mainstream media.

For a partial listing of these blogs see Hugh Thompson, Jr.: Blogging on a Hero. (Image above from Culture of Life Breaking News Blog).

The blogs celebrate in a new technology something philosophers and theologians, movies and novels have been honoring from ancient beginnings -- appreciation for those special individuals who answer the call of the moment to risk all -- to do what must be done -- whatever the cost.

Thompson ordered his gunners to shoot American soldiers if the killing of civilians continued. G.I.'s had ran "amuck" to kill more than 500 Vietnamese civilians in the hamlet known as "Pinkville" -- herding them into ditches, raping and shooting young women in what was later described as "a Nazi kind of thing."

Few, if any, shots had been fired that morning at American forces. But the destruction at My Lai was carried out by stressed, poorly led soldiers who had suffered numerous sniper and booby trap attacks -- and viewed civilians in the village as part of the communist war effort.

Here is a more detailed account of what happened.

A 1989 "Frontline" PBS documentary hosted by Judy Woodruff moved Thompson into the spotlight. A gripping on camera interview with the sometimes weeping ex soldier relived the moments when he moved into action. One result was lobbying to get official recognition for his deeds

Thompson's story touched many of us in different ways.

I taught a unit on media and My Lai at University of Rhode Island -- showing the "Frontline" documentary to a class of 300 as part of a case study of how a scandal seeps into the mainstream press after military whistle blowers force an internal investigation. Freelancer Hersh had seized upon the story to create a national scandal which helped force the United States out of Vietnam.

The "Frontline Documentary" helped inspire my research and writing for the website "American Human Rights Reporting as a Global Watchdog."

Thompson's life moved on in obscurity while the anti-establishment whistle blowing journalist Seymour Hersh moved on to fame. Only in the 1990's did the story get fuller play when Thompson finally received military honors.

American Apartheid: the "Blue State" Blues

There is an irony in this land.

The "Blue States" of America, whose voters often adhere to liberal "favor the underclass" values, all too often close their doors to all but the wealthy. They often segregate the underclass in black urban ghettos or distant white "bantustans" reachable only by long highway commute.

Indeed for those not wealthy, life is often preferable in the "Red States," dominated by traditional conservatism, with relatively little ideological lip service to the underdog. Jobs may not pay as much, there may be plenty of poverty, but the basics of life can be purchased by the less well heeled, even sometimes by the poor.

Take a most extreme "Blue State" case, that bastion of "economic apartheid:" the highly "liberal" San Francisco Bay area.

In northern California houses routinely sell for more than one million dollars, even in the distant regional environs miles from San Francisco. An additional bedroom or bath may add more than one hundred thousand to the price.

Minimum wage minorities may have public housing and subsidized public services in urban ghettos. Students and other youth may bundle up in shared rooms or houses.

Working class non minorities may commute in by car one hundred miles or more. Huge sections of northern California "bar" new immigrants -- unless they are wealthy. The one exception is illegal immigrants from Mexico who are actively recruited into menial jobs while living in crowded low cost rooming houses or apartments -- with no need to commute the vast highway distances which a low income American citizen might need to travel.

The danger is that in milder form the San Francisco phenomenon is spreading: that "economic apartheid" can spread as Blue Staters help establish in Red States the "economic apartheid" they left behind.

As Blue State retirees migrate to retire into Red States with their lower prices and sometimes milder climates, they drive up Red State prices by using the nest eggs they gain from from selling their Blue State houses to buy and drive up the prices of Red State houses.

And that raises the cost of living for Red State folks, "stuck" as they often are on lower Red State wages.

Of course "Economic Apartheid" is nothing new. The songwriter Woody Guthrie picked it up in the 1930's when he wrote of California:

Do Re Mi

You want to buy you a home or a farm, that can't deal nobody harm, Or take your vacation by the mountains or sea. Don't swap your old cow for a car, you better stay right where you are, Better take this little tip from me.

'Cause I look through the want ads every day But the headlines on the papers always say: If you ain't got the do re mi, boys, you ain't got the do re mi, Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.

California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.