Month: September 2013

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Witnesses to History

Some events deserve a cheer or at least a deferential nod. Naysayers should hold their tongues. The parade should proceed without rain. Like, for example,  the retirement of the greatest reliever in baseball history or the restoration of communication between two nations after thirty four years of resentful silence.

The appalling end of the New York Yankees season could not dim the joy and honor poured out for Mariano Riviera, completing nineteen years of relentless competition as the most feared closer in baseball.  As the Times  reported on Saturday,

Riviera, the king of saves, was not going to get one more. But he retired four batters, and with two outs in the ninth, Manager Joe Girardi, in a neat gesture, sent Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte–two of Riviera’s teammates in some of the Yankees’ best years–to the mound. Riviera handed the ball over and then buried his head in Pettitte’s shoulder. For a long moment they stood still, as the crowd cheered and cheered.

The tableau of acclamation had been repeated in smaller dimensions in every baseball park which Riviera visited in the 2013 season, fans of every team conveying their appreciation for a paragon of baseball, a paradoxically kind and ruthless competitor for nearly two decades.  If a single “boo” was heard, it was immediately silenced or ridiculed.

Such is the noblesse oblige of baseball and its history-conscious fans.

Such deference has long vanished from the political scene in the United States. “It is particularly unfortunate that President Obama would recognize the Iranian people’s right to nuclear energy but not stand up for their right to freedom, human rights or democracy,” carped Representative Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in response to the news that the President of the United States and the President of Iran had spoken for the first time in thirty-four years. In that interval American hostages were held in Tehran for 444 days, U.S. intelligence had decimated Iranian computer systems, and a Western coalition of nations had nearly strangled the Iranian economy with sanctions. On this day they looked forward to negotiations about preventing the spread of nuclear arms in the Middle East.

Indeed talk is cheap, as countless pundits reminded us during prime time news Friday night.  Words have carried very little weight in negotiations in the Mideast, as countless broken treaties with Israel and Palestine have attested. We’ve seen the Arab Spring decay into Arab Autumn over meaningless words.  Why claim that history can be made over words?

Because of thirty-fours years of failure to communicate, that’s why! When a long-standing feud of neighbors or husbands and wives subsides with a few conciliatory words, we cheer and urge them on to deeper relations. We fan the flicker of hope and wish them well.  We wish for reconciliation, whether it is inevitable or unlikely.  We willingly suspend disbelief and hope against hope.  We are not naive at that moment, but encouraging the faintest prospect of reunion.

September 27 should have been a day of celebration for the United States, as well as Mariano Riviera.  What happened on the next day or weeks after should have been left alone, and the political cheap shots laid aside.  You can wish even your worst enemy a Happy Rosh Hashannah (as President Rouhani demonstrated) or a Happy Retirement without compromising your credibility as a political heavyweight.

When you witness history, you should pay your respect and hold your cynical tongue.

 

 

 

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What’s Ethics Got to Do With It?

When we hear objections about the proposed punishment of Syria by targeted and limited bombing, we hear the litany of isolationism and the dangers of involvement in the Middle East. No one addresses the issue of whether the use of chemical weapons should be punished  or that unprecedented brutality should be opposed.  And we hear recriminations about the war in Iraq and how that has to be avoided at all costs.

You have to be pragmatic about war, and consequences matter, but is it possible that a circumscribed air attack on military targets is the ethical response to the brutal actions of the Assad regime in Syria? No one wants to address this, as if it were the last consideration of going to war. Or some want to make this proposed air strike equivalent to putting boots on the ground in Iraq.

Yes, consequences matter, but an ethical choice usually comes with risk, and the risks of action should be weighed against the risks of inaction. Risk by itself is not an argument sufficient to negate an ethical choice.

We wanted to be left alone prior to 9/11/2001, but then we found out there were  those who would not leave us alone.  We found out isolationism was a myth. So began the war on terrorism, which continues today. In Afghanistan we have tried to respond ethically by the counter-insurgency. We have tried to rehabilitate the political, educational and military institutions of Afghanistan, because we realized it was a breeding ground for our enemies.  History will judge how successful we have been.

But the lesson of this century has been that we are not safe as an isolated country, and we can not rehabilitate societies by our isolated effort.  We are both responsible and not responsible for the abuses beyond our borders, and we have to act and hold back from action with equal discretion.

The proposed attack on military targets in Syria is one such choice, and President Obama has proposed a plan that honors both intervention and restraint.  It is an ethical plan, not a politically expeditious plan, and that is what the opponents don’t seem to get.  They want reduce it to an “Obama-Plan” or “What’s-in-it-for-us?”  Plan. Even the Arab states are holding back, when they should be leading the charge against Assad. There’s not enough in it for them.

We are at a point in history  when nothing gets judged by its potential for good or evil.  We are all about consequences, even consequences we can’t foresee.  It is fine to see this proposed action as unethical, because of its potential for human carnage, but very few in opposition have taken that position.  They are all about preserving our own society and avoiding entanglements. I wish they had felt that way in 2001.

The ethics of opposing an absolute evil are at stake in Syria, and I wish the discussion would focus on that and not the p0litical agendas of opposing President Obama or the illusion of isolationism.  Refusing to get the point of the argument is to dodge the responsibility to act ethically.