Exhibit "A"

 

CounterPunch (for some reason) saw fit to post a piece of analysis that is the epitome of the way that liberals (or however you want to describe a certain strain of half-assed progressive) tend to describe issues as "complicated" to rationalize their inevitably doomed attempts to please both decent people AND [their more important constituency] powerful psychopaths.  It's an essay called "Biden's Choices" by Professor Mel Gurtov.

Let's check it out!

Presidents always face uncomfortable choices: supporting human rights versus providing weapons to governments that consistently violate human rights; adding to the nuclear weapons stockpile versus spending money on social well-being; sanctioning an adversary or working with it.

"Uncomfortable choices" between being decent and being disgusting.  It's "complicated."  Of course, if one dispenses with the ridiculous fiction that US presidents want to support human rights one finds their support for "governments that consistently violate human rights" becomes more explicable.  If one posits that US presidents don't give a shit about the "social well-being" of ordinary US-Americans (witness their sky-high incarceration rates/soaring economic inequality/tens of thousands of medical bankruptcies annually) then their devotion to raising military spending every year starts to seem less of a mystery.  There's a lot contained within the words "sanctioning an adversary or working with it."  Why is a country an "adversary" of the United States?  Because it's "evil"?  Because it won't always do what the USA ruling elites want?  Why does the USA resort to [illegal] sanctions against places like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Russia?  Because of "human rights"?  That can't be.  Because as Gurtov said, the USA so often provides weapons and money to incorrigible human rights abusers like Honduras, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and others.  The USA sanctions other countries because it is ruled by hypocritical assholes who do whatever they want when circumstances permit, international law or no.

Word

In the Middle East today, Joe Biden’s choice is between wholeheartedly supporting Israel and doing all he can to protect the innocents in Gaza. He’s trying to do both, but he is not satisfying advocates of either policy.

This is ridiculous.  It assumes that Biden wants to "protect the innocents in Gaza."  Biden doesn't give a shit about the Palestinians.  Because of the vestiges of decency and concern for human rights among some of his supporters in the USA, and because of the need for image management and "plausible" deniability for world consumption, Biden has to make noises about concern for Palestinians.  But his entire career has been dedicated to aiding and abetting Zionism.  And, as with most psychopaths, Biden doesn't really give a shit about Israelis, or Jewish people or anyone.  Israel serves (or is seen to serve) US interests in the Middle East, which are all about control of the oil resources there, which includes the Petro-Dollar.  And Biden cares for the interests of the USA's elite because he serves them.  And he serves them because it gives him access to power and prestige and (lately) wealth.  And that's important for his narcissism, which is probably the biggest aspect of his spiritually-shrivelled sense of self.

In Israel, Biden’s pressure on the Netanyahu government to avoid a full-out invasion of Gaza, provide humanitarian aid, and avoid unnecessary civilian casualties are resented by the Israeli far right. It wants 100 percent support, period, and it has a powerful argument: It has been attacked, many innocent lives have been lost, and there are well over 200 hostages.

The self-pitying whining of the Israeli far right is a "powerful argument" if one forgets about their decades of racist violence against the Palestinians and their persistent violations of international law and their illegal theft of Palestinian land.  If they don't want to be attacked they should do everything in their power to defuse Palestinian anger and (at least) respect the Two-State Solution of the Oslo Accords and get the fuck out of the West Bank and grant Gaza its freedom.  Until then, their delusional self-righteousness and hypocrisy should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

Nor is Biden’s approach appreciated in Palestinian circles, in Arab countries, in the UN leadership, or by US human rights groups, progressives in Congress, and some officials in his own State Department. They all see his policy as impossibly contradictory: You can’t have an “ironclad” pro-Israel policy and expect to moderate Israel’s actions in Gaza.

That's because IT IS "impossibly contradictory"!  This is a dilemma self-created by Biden himself.  (Or any narcissistic psychopath who aspires to the US presidency.)  Just how the Palestinians could find it within them to "appreciate" Biden's approach is left unsaid by Gurtov.  Probably because the premise is so nonsensical.

The Biden administration is a party to the war but, in fairness, is not at the controls. To be sure, US military aid—jet fighters, drones, and Special Forces—is supporting Israel’s operations in Gaza. But it’s the right-wing government in Tel Aviv that not only wants to decapitate Hamas but also use the war to exert new controls on the Palestinian population, possibly including mass deportation.

What's this talk of "fairness"?  Why should we be "fair" when pondering the "difficult choices" that Biden is being forced to make on the "complicated" question of supporting racist mass-murder while pretending to be opposed to it?  Gurtov goes on to explicitly state the context in which the demented Biden has to operate:

Unless Biden is willing to do what no previous US administration has been willing to do—namely, impose severe restrictions on US economic and military aid and political support, subject to Israel’s behavior in Gaza—the administration has very little leverage.

[Caitlin Johnstone dealt with this stupid argument in her article: "US Says Its Powerless To Stop The Genocide That It Is Directly Funding And Supplying."] What this means is that Biden acting like a decent human being on the issue of Israel vs. Palestine would be unprecdented for a US president.  There is a whole infrastructure built on supporting Israeli apartheid and all of the violence and cruelty needed to enforce it within the USA's foreign-policy apparatus and to go against it just because (at present) ten thousand innocent human beings have been murdered would doubtlessly cause Biden some uncomfortable conversations and maybe even cost him his chance for re-election.  And, being a massive narcissist, when forced to choose between himself and the lives of thousands of innocent men, women and children, Biden chooses himself.

Of course, such selfishness and callousness looks as monstrous as it is in the cold light of day.  So Biden has to pretend that he's all torn-up about the subject.  And for some reason, ass-hats like Gurtov see it as their job to portray Biden's dilemma as a "complicated" wrestling between trying to not be an inhuman monster and being a political "realist."

Unwillingness to use US leverage undercuts Biden’s entire Middle East policy. He can’t expect Saudi Arabia to move on normalizing relations with Israel. He can’t expect support from the region or from developing countries for putting pressure on Iran and Hezbollah not to enter the fighting. Nor, at home, can Biden expect understanding from Palestinian and other Muslim communities—or even from progressive Jews—on his current policy.

All these groups see the glaring contradiction, not the logic, of fully supporting Israel while calling for its restraint. They all are calling on the administration to push for a cease-fire.

But what IS Biden's Middle East policy????  Support for human rights?  Support for Israel?  Military support for anti-democratic, terrorist-exporting Arab autocracies?  Maintenance of US hegemony over the region's oil?  Whatever Biden's policy is, it isn't anything decent people should want anything to do with.  And until Gurtov admits and accepts this ovious reality he will forever be writing lengthy essays pondering the difficulties of squaring the circle of saying one thing while doing another.

I'll skip ahead in Gurtov's essay to get to the part that shows his naivete.

I sympathize with Biden’s situation. I believe he and other top US officials are truly concerned about, perhaps even appalled by, the devastation of Gaza and the civilian deaths there. 

Whereas as I believe no such thing.  Biden doesn't care about these people.  He probably finds the whole thing inconvenient.  Biden has spent his whole career helping the powerful smash the weak.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an impassioned plea for protection of Palestinian civilians in a Washington Post op-ed, saying that “preventing a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is vital to Israel’s security.”

Blinken doesn't feel passion for Palestinian civilians.  He's a racist psychopath like his boss.  

The rest of the essay continues in the same vein.  Biden will have to go against everything he's said and done and claimed to believe for five decades if he wants to save Palestinian lives.  That's true, so far as it goes.  IF he wants to save Palestinian lives.  But he doesn't care about them.  He doesn't care about anything other than himself.  And for Joseph R. Biden to prosper he needs to do what powerful people want.  But he also has to say things that decent people want to hear.  But that could trap him.  Either he says the decent words and acts on them, and loses power, or he says the decent things and doesn't act on them, showing him to be a useless liar which might lose him some votes.  He's therefore face with the complicated" task of making statements with enough ambiguity that they allow him some wiggle-room.  He also has to hope everyone completely ignores the enormous financial and military leverage that the USA has over Israel which puts the lie to his claims of impotence.