CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Radical Empathy: A Force Beyond War

Boys will be boys. Just ask the president.

At a gathering of Republicans a few days ago, Donald Trump talked nonchalantly about the recent sinking of an apparently unarmed Iranian frigate by the U.S. Navy – in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from the Persian Gulf. A total of 104 crew members were killed and 32 more were injured.

The president proceeded to make this more than merely another brutal, pointless act of war. He turned it into a glaring – shocking – revelation of truth . . . about the American-Israeli war on Iran and, quite possibly about all wars: about war itself. He was upset at first, he told the crowd, that the Navy sank the frigate rather than capturing it. But when he expressed this to the military officials, one of them responded: “It’s more fun to sink them.”

And the crowd laughed. Uh . . . are we “playing” war or waging it, with that trillion-dollar annual military budget America has? No doubt we’re doing both, but normally the “fun” part of war – the dehumanization of the enemy, the abstraction of people’s deaths (including those of children) – is airbrushed from public discussion by politically correct strategic and political blather. But this is Trump, spouting the quiet part out loud – in the process, causing the global infrastructure of nation-states, borders and militarism to tremble. Could it be that war is based on the least of who we are, the least mature aspect of human nature?

In contrast, I quote from a recent essay written by my........

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