Once again the United States of America has managed a peaceful transfer of power without the shedding of a single drop of blood. 

George Washington feared it could never happen.  But it can, and it does.

When Barack Obama stepped to the microphone he wasn’t smiling.  Neither was the sea of humanity arrayed before him.  As he spoke, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in free fall on more bad news from the banking industry and the nation was bogged down in two unwinnable wars.  What could a new president say that hadn’t been said before?

With the dexterity of a skilled seamstress, Obama wove the themes of responsibility and inclusion into a single strand.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

American immaturity, the president seemed to suggest, was rooted in an ancient tendency of distinguishing between “us,” (the “real Americans”) and “them,” (the folks who don’t qualify for full citizenship). 

The us-them distinction expounded formally in the dreadful DredScott decision.  For the purposes of political calculus, evern African American resident of the United States was equal to three-fifths of a person.  In the wake of the civil rights movement the full citizenship of non-whites was recognized, but there has always been an unspoken assumption that, while all are equal, some (to quote George Orwell) are more equal than others.

Instead of arguing for the full inclusion of non-white Americans, President Obama introduced an alternative assumption: all the folks who have crowded the American stage from the earliest days of our history have been full-fledged American making equally important contributions to our greatness as a nation.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. 

Did you notice how the phrase “endured the lash” was inserted into a long paragraph celebrating the manifold achievements of our forebearers?  Those who lived under the lash, Obama suggests,  were fully American.  The oppressed didn’t just suffer for their own children and grandchildren; their agony has enriched us all.  Former slaves are the spiritual descendents of every American, not just those of African ancestry.  They bore our sins and suffered vicariously on our behalf. 

Obama’s words were  reminiscent of the “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah 53 who was “wounded for our transgressions”, “bruised for our iniquities”.  By the stripes of former slaves, Obama was saying, we all are healed.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

Through the power of skilled oratory, former slaves and “white trash” share croppers became one with soldiers, politicians and business moguls. 

Since all Americans share an equal dignity and bear an equal responsibility, our new president suggested, any relapse into us-them thinking threatens the integrity of the American experiment.  We cannot have one standard of justice for Americans and a much lower standard for the rest of the world.

 As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

As the president spoke, Israeli defense forces were hurriedly pulling out of Gaza.  Over 1500 Palestinians, most of them women, children and innocent civilians, had perished and everyone was expecting the death toll to climb even higher as the full enormity of the Israeli incursion came to light.

In this ZNet article, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky argues that the United States has never regarded Palestinians as fully human and he doubts much will change under Barack Obama.  In Chomsky’s view, an enormous gulf is fixed between presidential rhetoric and political reality.

Chomsky believes that  American commentary on the Middle East is shaped by the apriori assumption that the rights of the rich and powerful are more important than the rights of the poor and oppressed.  

Sentiments of this sort (at least here in America) are frequently dismissed as Marxist drivel.  This may indicate that Chomsky is on to something.

Conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.

Chomsky is over three-quarters of the way through a very long article before he acknowledges that Israel’s incursion into Gaza wasn’t completely unprovoked.  He introduces the subject by quoting America’s new president:  “If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.” 

Chomsky notes that President Obama “is referring to Israeli children, not the many hundreds being torn to shreds in Gaza by US arms.” 

Does this mean that Israeli children are “us” while Palestinian youngsters fall into the “them” category?  Chomsky thinks it does.

While no one denies that scores of innocent Gazans have perished in recent days, Israeli apologists deny the carnage was intentional.  Chomsky doesn’t care.

The claim that “our side” never targets civilians is familiar doctrine among those who monopolize the means of violence. And there is some truth to it. We do not generally try to kill particular civilians. Rather, we carry out murderous actions that we know will slaughter many civilians, but without specific intent to kill particular ones.

Mercifully, America’s most famous leftist doesn’t try to justify Hamas rocket attacks.  “The rocketing is criminal,” he admits flatly, “and it is true that a state has the right to defend itself against criminal attacks. But it does not follow that it has a right to defend itself by force. That goes far beyond any principle that we would or should accept.”

Really?  As professor Chomsky surely knows, nation states, past and present, have assumed the right to repay violence with even more violence.  An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  Or maybe a thousand eyes and a million teeth must be be extracted.  Whatever it takes to keep the peace!

On what grounds does Chomsky argue that the revenge of princes and presidents should be restricted to expressions of moral outrage? 

You could use Jesus of Nazareth as an authority here, but there is little indication that the MIT linguist is moved by that kind of impulse.  But what other philosophy or religion has historically argued against the proportional use of retributive violence?

Christian theologian N.T. Wright argues that neither Judaism nor Islam views forgiveness of the enemy in a positive light.

In the Middle East both the main protagonists embrace religions where forgiveness has never been seen as a duty, let alone as a virtue, but rather as a kind of moral weakness-and by ‘moral weakness’ I don’t just mean a failure to keep a moral law but a deficiency in the implicit moral code itself.  The main moral standard for the main participants in the Middle East conflict is justice.  People should be paid back for wrongdoing.  To forgive people, they will say, means going soft on justice, by which they mean the full recompense and punishment which both sides believe they are owed because of atrocities committed by the other.  It’s not just that they don’t want to forgive or that they find it difficult.  They believe passionately that it would be immoral, totally wrong.  It would belittle the evil that has been done.

For an alternative take on Jewish teaching consider this.

In theory, Christians stand ready to turn the other cheek; but few disciples of the lamb that was slain have applied this teaching to kings, princes and presidents.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.   Chomsky doesn’t want to talk about “proportional response” so long as an alternative to violence exists. 

Israel has a straightforward means to defend itself: put an end to its criminal actions in occupied territories, and accept the long-standing international consensus on a two-state settlement that has been blocked by the US and Israel for over 30 years, since the US first vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a political settlement in these terms in 1976.

According to Chomsky, a two-nation solution could have been achieved decades ago were it not for US and Israeli intransigence.  “The Arab League has gone even beyond the consensus,” he insists, “calling for full normalization of relations with Israel. Hamas has repeatedly called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus. Iran and Hezbollah have made it clear that they will abide by any agreement that Palestinians accept. That leaves the US-Israel in splendid isolation, not only in words.”

In short, “Israel could have security, normalization of relations, and integration into the region. But it very clearly prefers illegal expansion, conflict, and repeated exercise of violence . . . ”

In a January 8th opinion column in the Washington Post, ex-president Jimmy Carter came close to endorsing Chomsky’s position.  “I know from personal involvement,” Carter wrote, “that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.”

Carter condems Hamas rocket attacks as acts of terrorism, but Hamas, at the urging of Egypt, had expressed a willingness to stop the rocket attacks if the flow of food and medicine into Gaza was allowed to resume.  This was unacceptable to Israel because tunnels used to bring needed supplies into Gaza were also being used to import weapons. 

Carter and Chomsky would ask why it’s okay for Israel to import weapons but not okay for the Palestinians to follow suit.  Is this not another example of us-them thinking?

A more mainstream perspective on the conflict is reflected in today’s New York Times.  Following the “fair and balanced” policy of American journalism, the Times article lines up quotations on both sides followed by no conclusion or resolution whatsoever. 

A Hamas spokesman, Ismail Radwan, told the crowd that Israel had not achieved its goals. To several questions, the crowd roared a response. “Have they killed Hamas?” he asked. “No!” “Have they killed the government?” “No!” “Have they dismantled the resistance?” “No!”

On the other hand:

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, said Israel had achieved its objectives in the war and had sent Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, and Iran a message that it would respond if attacked. She opposed any dialogue with Hamas, adding, “It is a terrorist organization.”

The popularity of Hamashas has been greatly enhanced by an invasion supported by a solid majority of Israelis. Will Barack Obama hold both sides to the same standards, or will the us-them divide continue to frustrate the peace?

Closer to home, will Obama’s assault on the us-them divide be applied to the American criminal justice system?

Yesterday, two million people were plastered between Congress and the Lincoln Memorial; precisely one person for every American inmate.  Will all Americans, the wall street shyster and the mean street hustler, be held to the same legal standard?  Will all Americans be accorded the same due process protections?  Will prosecutors have to meet the same level of evidence to convict a low-status defendant that it takes to convict a defendant of higher status?

Is President Obama serious about the us-them divide or is he just talking?

All we can do is watch and hope; but one thing is certain: if Barack Obama’s rhetoric is translated into policy, at home or abroad, a revolution is afoot.