What Other Country

Max Blumenthal reports from a pro-war rally staged by New York politicians and some local Jewish groups:

Sen. Chuck Schumer highlighted Israel’s supposed humanitarian methods of warfare by pointing to its text messaging of certain Gaza Strip residents urging them to vacate their homes before Israeli forces bombed them. “What other country would do that?”

Todd Gitlin observes that this is pretty ignorant and solipsistic:

The U. S., for one. According to the National Museum of the U. S. Air Force, the U. S. dropped millions of leaflets over North Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder of 1965-68, in which Americans flew over 300,000 sorties, dropping more than one-and-a-half times as many bombs as in the entire Pacific theater during all of WW II. Among other things, the leaflets “warned civilians to stay away from military installations.” (You can buy a sample leaflet from eBay for a little more than $40, including postage.) In 2002-03, the U. S. also dropped such leaflets over Iraq during 2002-03.

Russia, for another, during the first Chechen war. Leaflets, that is, not text messages.

Those inclined to be supportive of what Israel’s doing can make of this what they will. But I would observe that self-deception has rarely done anyone or any nation much good and this kind of thing reeks of self-deception. Meanwhile, it’s a bit unusual to see a US Senator lauding a foreign country as morally superior to his own, and a foreign military as morally superior to America’s armed forces. To do so without checking the facts rigorously first is especially odd.