The truth, the Bible says, shall make you free. It is also a psychic necessity, particularly in today's world, which is why we were all better off for several recent moments when truth trumped diplomacy.
One moment came when US President George Bush said that Yasser Arafat, the mass-murderer Europeans love to call "Chairman," is "compromised by terror." That long-overdue, if understated, truth was followed by a refreshing statement on the Middle East by the always wonderfully candid U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who referred to land Israel captured in a war of self-defense as "the so-called occupied territories."
"My feelings about the so-called occupied territories," he said, "are that there was a war. Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started. They all jumped in and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in the conflict."
I could almost feel myself breathing more easily, like after a hard rain, just to hear an expression of that historical truth - that Israel took control of land from aggressor states Jordan and Egypt, not from "Palestinians," the terrorists formerly known as Jordanians. I felt the same sort of relief on reading that, at a Pentagon briefing recently, an advisory board said that Saudi Arabia is an enemy of the United States.
"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," the board said. "Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the board, and is "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" this country faces in the Middle East.
It's not that Americans aren't aware that the majority of the September 11 killers were from Saudi Arabia. Or that that country stands firmly against President Bush?s stated goal of removing terror-supporter Saddam Hussein from power. Or that the Saudis themselves fund Hamas, the thugs who just murdered Americans and Israelis as they sat in a university cafeteria in Jerusalem. It's just that we hear so often that the "moderate" Saudis are our friends. The lie has been repeated so often by the US State Department and even by the president that one could - almost - be numbed into believing it. The administration may have its diplomatic reasons for the deception, but there's a spiritual price. We all know who was behind 9-11, but we have a deep and basic need for that truth to be made explicit.
The rage Americans - and their Israeli friends - felt on and after that day in September has been suppressed by the moral mud that comes from lies. That there aren't nearly as many car flags waiving these days is evidence of the suppression, though the large number remaining remind us that the rage is still there. A debt accrued on September 11 and, the American campaign in Afghanistan notwithstanding, it has yet to be paid. We desperately need the unadulterated expression of that truth.
We got it in a recent interview in The Guardian with 87-year-old Paul Tibbets, the American pilot who dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. About terrorists, Tibbets said: "We've got to get into a position where we can kill the bastards. None of this business of taking them to court, the hell with that. I wouldn't waste five seconds on them." I need to hear that sort of talk more often. I need the world to make sense, and that can only be brought about by lots of truth.
When I read about "peace" groups (the very designation is a lie) in both Israel and the United States vilifying defenders against terrorism in favor of its perpetrators, I descend into a dark world of mendacity and I long to claw out into the light of truth. Which is to say that there's more at stake in the war on terror than military and diplomatic strategy alone. At issue is the fundamental need to distinguish clearly between good and evil and to act and speak accordingly.
The United States needs to remove Saddam Hussein, but not merely because he is a threat to world order, and not merely if a definitive link can be made between his regime and 9/11 or other acts of terrorism. We need to do so because tolerating another Hitler at the head of a neo-Nazi state while trying to maintain a moral universe is a lie (three cheers for the Bush administration?s efforts to foster opposition to the rule of Robert Mugabe). Likewise, Israel needs to put Yasser Arafat on trial, along with his terror accomplice Marwan Barghouti, for reasons independent of such considerations as demonstrating to the world the nature of the Palestinian Authority. Arafat is the world's preeminent fascist. Allowing him to remain free, to parade around with titles such as "General" and "President" and "Chairman" as if this weren't so, is a lie. Whatever its diplomatic purposes, such mendacity and the chaos it spawns exacts a price on all our souls.
I remember such chaos, in a smaller venue, in my own life. When I was seven, another boy began to attack me every day after school. What was frightening wasn't so much the daily threat of physical pain, but that such unprovoked violence contradicted everything I understood about how things work in a moral world. In a universe where pundits and politicians might have weighed in, these obfuscaters would have found all sorts of complexities, explanations and, no doubt, fault all around. The truth was much simpler - I was a victim and he was a thug. My mother understood that. One day, after I had once again run home crying, she told me in unambiguous terms: "Next time, you hit him back or don't come home." When I saw that boy the following day, I bloodied his face with a two-by-four.
That wasn't just self-defense born of a strategy for pain avoidance. It was a moment of truth that set the universe back in alignment. I needed that then, and I think we all - Americans and our friends in Israel - need a good stiff dose of it now.
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Steven Zak is a writer and lawyer in California.
One moment came when US President George Bush said that Yasser Arafat, the mass-murderer Europeans love to call "Chairman," is "compromised by terror." That long-overdue, if understated, truth was followed by a refreshing statement on the Middle East by the always wonderfully candid U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who referred to land Israel captured in a war of self-defense as "the so-called occupied territories."
"My feelings about the so-called occupied territories," he said, "are that there was a war. Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started. They all jumped in and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in the conflict."
I could almost feel myself breathing more easily, like after a hard rain, just to hear an expression of that historical truth - that Israel took control of land from aggressor states Jordan and Egypt, not from "Palestinians," the terrorists formerly known as Jordanians. I felt the same sort of relief on reading that, at a Pentagon briefing recently, an advisory board said that Saudi Arabia is an enemy of the United States.
"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," the board said. "Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the board, and is "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" this country faces in the Middle East.
It's not that Americans aren't aware that the majority of the September 11 killers were from Saudi Arabia. Or that that country stands firmly against President Bush?s stated goal of removing terror-supporter Saddam Hussein from power. Or that the Saudis themselves fund Hamas, the thugs who just murdered Americans and Israelis as they sat in a university cafeteria in Jerusalem. It's just that we hear so often that the "moderate" Saudis are our friends. The lie has been repeated so often by the US State Department and even by the president that one could - almost - be numbed into believing it. The administration may have its diplomatic reasons for the deception, but there's a spiritual price. We all know who was behind 9-11, but we have a deep and basic need for that truth to be made explicit.
The rage Americans - and their Israeli friends - felt on and after that day in September has been suppressed by the moral mud that comes from lies. That there aren't nearly as many car flags waiving these days is evidence of the suppression, though the large number remaining remind us that the rage is still there. A debt accrued on September 11 and, the American campaign in Afghanistan notwithstanding, it has yet to be paid. We desperately need the unadulterated expression of that truth.
We got it in a recent interview in The Guardian with 87-year-old Paul Tibbets, the American pilot who dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. About terrorists, Tibbets said: "We've got to get into a position where we can kill the bastards. None of this business of taking them to court, the hell with that. I wouldn't waste five seconds on them." I need to hear that sort of talk more often. I need the world to make sense, and that can only be brought about by lots of truth.
When I read about "peace" groups (the very designation is a lie) in both Israel and the United States vilifying defenders against terrorism in favor of its perpetrators, I descend into a dark world of mendacity and I long to claw out into the light of truth. Which is to say that there's more at stake in the war on terror than military and diplomatic strategy alone. At issue is the fundamental need to distinguish clearly between good and evil and to act and speak accordingly.
The United States needs to remove Saddam Hussein, but not merely because he is a threat to world order, and not merely if a definitive link can be made between his regime and 9/11 or other acts of terrorism. We need to do so because tolerating another Hitler at the head of a neo-Nazi state while trying to maintain a moral universe is a lie (three cheers for the Bush administration?s efforts to foster opposition to the rule of Robert Mugabe). Likewise, Israel needs to put Yasser Arafat on trial, along with his terror accomplice Marwan Barghouti, for reasons independent of such considerations as demonstrating to the world the nature of the Palestinian Authority. Arafat is the world's preeminent fascist. Allowing him to remain free, to parade around with titles such as "General" and "President" and "Chairman" as if this weren't so, is a lie. Whatever its diplomatic purposes, such mendacity and the chaos it spawns exacts a price on all our souls.
I remember such chaos, in a smaller venue, in my own life. When I was seven, another boy began to attack me every day after school. What was frightening wasn't so much the daily threat of physical pain, but that such unprovoked violence contradicted everything I understood about how things work in a moral world. In a universe where pundits and politicians might have weighed in, these obfuscaters would have found all sorts of complexities, explanations and, no doubt, fault all around. The truth was much simpler - I was a victim and he was a thug. My mother understood that. One day, after I had once again run home crying, she told me in unambiguous terms: "Next time, you hit him back or don't come home." When I saw that boy the following day, I bloodied his face with a two-by-four.
That wasn't just self-defense born of a strategy for pain avoidance. It was a moment of truth that set the universe back in alignment. I needed that then, and I think we all - Americans and our friends in Israel - need a good stiff dose of it now.
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Steven Zak is a writer and lawyer in California.