A reasonable question from Paul Craig Roberts — about American values and Yemen

© 2018 Peter Free

 

01 October 2018

 

 

Regarding this past week's US Senate theater

 

Paul Craig Roberts wrote that:

 

 

The real question before the American people is why are they, the media, the government, MeToo feminists, the Identity Politics Democrats and liberal-progressive-left, and conservatives stone silent while Washington enables Saudia Arabia to murder the Yemeni people to the point that Yemenis have to eat leaves in a desperate attempt to survive.

 

Clearly, the American idiots have no idea whatsoever what a moral issue is.

 

© 2018 Paul Craig Roberts, Where Does Our Attention Belong: Kavanaugh or Yemen?, The Unz Review (28 September 2018)

 

 

Roberts' point (and mine) is that the same ethical motivations that go toward keeping the hyper-partisan Judge Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court — also mandate opposing American-initiated murder abroad.

 

This is not a difficult mental leap. Yet few make it.

 

 

The moral? — On the one hand, this — on the other, that

 

One could conclude that Americans are (generally speaking) innately incapable of doing three "group task" things — knowing facts, thinking critically and acting morally.

 

And worse, if the negatively affected people are brownish, Islamic, and cannot defend themselves — we will not even seriously pretend that we possess any of those skills.

 

Think of us as a peculiarly nasty version of autistic.

 

Alternatively, however, one could also hypothesize that the Imperial Presidency, Deep State and Military Industrial Complex have removed the average person's ability to exert even minute control over American actions abroad. So why try? That is not an entirely unreasonable position to take.

 

Though I share Roberts' outrage about Yemen, I am less blanketly critical of the attention that the "liberal" groups (whom he listed) paid domestic events. At least somebody is protesting something, somewhere, worthwhile.

 

Are these toddler steps?

 

Or just another manifestation of American self-absorption?

 

Meanwhile, Yemenis are dying and suffering (essentially at US hands) for no strategically valid reason whatsoever. If that is not Evil, I do not know what is.

 

That's Paul Craig Roberts' primary point. And in my view (excusing hypothesis or not), a soul-true checkmate.