Equivalence and Perspective
US Foreign Policy
The death of Alexie Navalny while in a Russian prison is tragic and is an indication of the dictatorial rule of Putin. We all mourn the death and excoriate Putin as an evil dictator. Meanwhile, Netanyahu in Israel continues his slaughter of the civilian population of Gaza causing 30,000 deaths, probably a third of them children and probably another 70,000 wounded. Gaza already being an occupied area restricted, walled off without hope of aid, without hospitals, or social networks, or schools, or mosques, while journalists and doctors and intellectual leaders are targeted and killed, while the Biden administration not only supplies Netanyahu with weapons and economic aid but runs interference for him preventing any UN action and threatening any who are opposed to his actions.
And there is, of course, the war in Ukraine, primarily a war between Russia and the NATO nations, including the US. As tragic as it is, it is a war between armies and not an army against a defenseless civilian people who have been walled-in by an occupying army. There are, of course, civilian death and suffering but not to the degree of what is happening in Gaza. And there are ways out. They are not walled in, and they can receive humanitarian aid.
All are tragedies but one Navalny, or even the tragedies of Ukraine, are hardly equivalent to all those defenseless casualties in Gaza, not to mention the inhumanity of the entire process. What seems to be the difference?
Russia is always depicted as our mortal enemy, from the time of the Russian Revolution when Western Capitalism saw Russian Communism as a direct threat to capitalism’s previous dominance. And even after communism is dead and buried, now replaced by a kind of state-run capitalism, we still retain our idea of Russia as the great Satan threatening the free-market capitalism of the west. Even as socialism is now being replaced by right-wing nearly dictatorial leaders in much of Europe, we seem to retain our Cold War stance against Russia. Perhaps we need to have a foreign enemy to distract from our own dysfunction and loss of democracy.
Meanwhile, we have been connected to Israel at the hip since its beginnings, supporting its versions of Zionism and supporting its growth and development, making it the powerhouse of the Middle East, even allowing it to have nuclear weapons while denying such weapons to everyone else in the Middle East. And, at present, it appears that Israel, being our friend and ally, can do no wrong. If any other nation did what Netanyahu did, we would have labeled them as a rogue state, far outside the pale of any decent and human modern democratic society.
I am not sure how to make any sense of those glaring inconsistencies, inconsistencies that the whole world sees and mostly condemns and that much of our citizenry condemns. It seems that the Biden administration has taken off the gloves and exposed the unforgiving iron fist beneath it for all the world to see, and I suppose to quake before our raw power.
I am amazed at the mass media who so blatantly continue to emphasize the inhumanity of Russia with the death of Navalny and the war in Ukraine while, on the same newscasts, justifying Netanyahu’s orgy of death and destruction in Gaza.
I can no longer watch the hypocrisy. It cannot be simply a matter of our enemies, simply because we have labeled then enemies, being seen as evil, while our friends can do no wrong. Where is the balance, where is any sense of equivalencies or perspective. If we lose that too, all is lost in the sea of spin and manipulation, and sheer power-politics.
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I hate to catch myself thinking this, but this lack of equivalency and perspective you are concerned about may be explained by looking at the performance of the publicly traded stock in companies that are part of the "military-industrial complex" - like General Dynamics, for example, then look at their expenditures for lobbying Congress and their direct and indirect campaign contributions.
Looking through this "follow the money" lens will likely resolve those illogical inconsistencies.