Somehow I can’t imagine George W. Bush saying this:

The Holy Quran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.” The Talmud tells us: “The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.”

The Holy Bible tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth.

Two of the more pressing questions since the election in November have been how Obama will respond to the global financial crisis and from what political position he will seek to govern. Both, in a way, have been answered, but hardly definitively. It’s worth observing in passing – and the point is a crucial one for us here in Australia – that the selective invocation of the mantra “there’s only one President at a time” means that we know very little about what the new administration’s stance on global financial regulatory issues and the governance architecture of the world economy will be. Such decisions as are taken – and paths not taken – will probably be of more lasting moment than how effectively and quickly his fiscal stimulus works to turn around America’s domestic economy. But, in that regard, the addition of tax cuts to the infrastructure investment proposed in his domestic package (to corral in some congressional Republican support, or so it’s being framed) reflects a debate about the composition of any stimulus which is important, and to some degree being played out, in our own context as well. Here, I was intrigued to see Andrew Leonard at Salon’s How The World Works blog suggest that a passage in the Inaugural address shows Obama has come down on the Keynesian side of the argument. (And to see Leonard compare Obama’s eloquence with Keynes’, to the former’s detriment.)

Turning to politics, Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian finds solace in Obama’s choice of and approach to themes for the claim that he has indeed set his course on introducing radical measures with conservative appointees. It might equally well be claimed that the repudiation of the Bush era in the speech is part of the post-partisan positioning, so we’ll see. On a related note, Heather McRobbie looks at the influence of the Gaza conflict on Obama’s message to the Middle East and the Islamic world, and isn’t confident words will ring out over the ruins which deeds have recently created. Freedland also examines some of the political pitfalls Obama might face.

On climate change and global warming, Christine Milne sees signs of hope in Obama’s rhetoric of change and collective purpose and his environmental appointments, and writes:

There are certainly a few disappointing nominees in the mix as well, but then there is the factor that, for the first time in living memory, America have a President who, because of the way he campaigned and was elected, is answerable not to the big money and the big corporations, but to the countless millions of individuals who put him where he is. And, furthermore, a President who has built a massive active constituency whom he can mobilise at short notice to campaign on his behalf, spread his message, and bring America with him as he goes.

Again, I hope she’s right, but I think you’d underestimate the power of big business and polluter lobbies – particularly in Congress – at your peril, and I think we also need to wait and see the colour of the Obama administration’s money in global climate negotiations.

Finally, Robert Corr links to an excellent piece from Marc Ambinder on the rhetorical structure of and literary allusions in Obama’s speech.

Update: Some good thoughts from I cite’s Jodi on desperate love for Obama.

Update: As well as writing of his own thoughts on Obama, Andrew Bartlett looks at the fallibility of political predictions, and how few have the good grace to admit when they’ve got it wrong.

Elsewhere: Lyn Calcutt at Public Opinion.

Update: Thread continues here.

As a discussion starter, there’s a wealth of interesting commentary at Open Democracy. Paul Rogers looks at the current situation and how it’s developing, and traces the US’ involvement over the last decade or so with Israeli state policy and the IDF. In another piece, Rogers tries to find some hope amidst the ruins. Vera Gowlland-Debbas examines the role of international law in the conflict, and asks whether the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine is being shown to be mere rhetoric. Daniele Archibugi reviews the role of domestic politics in Israeli decision making. And, finally, Avi Shlaim places the current events within a historical context.

Even when development and enlightenment stare them in the face, their instinct is to destroy them pretending to safeguard their honor, the mechanics of which supersede all else including a happy life of fulfillment and accomplishments.

Ostensibly, the writer, Farid Ghatry, is accusing Hamas and Hizbollah of being ruled by “instinct”, but it doesn’t take him long to elide those organisations with “Arabs” collectively:

Their poisonous rhetoric of violence feeding a frenzied mass of ignorant Arabs leaning on their extreme religion to honor their incapacity to compete with the West is destroying future generations of hopeful saviors of our culture and traditions.

I don’t want to discuss the specifics of this conflict in this post – this thread is still open for those wishing to do so. I do want to observe that peace appears to have few champions at the moment. Endless dissections of history and propaganda claims and counter-claims seem to leave debate stuck in the same morass – of friends and enemies, and the only logic of that cycle – on both sides – is a drive to extermination. It seems to me that since the Cold War ended, the peace movement has more or less disappeared from view – at least in this country – and there are very few voices prepared to prioritise humanitarianism and conflict resolution over picking sides.

There’s a huge irony here – in an age where humanitarian war and “the responsibility to protect” are both lodestones of political discourse – both options, of course, involving the application of violence. It would appear that the easiest thing to do for many is to demonise those who are seen as “unlike us” – and one of the many cards the cheerleaders for the Israeli state play is to invoke the claim that Israel is “the only advanced democracy in the region”. In fact, Israel is not a secular state (not that it’s a religious state either… but that’s part of the problem). And it’s rarely mentioned that it’s the only nuclear power in the region. But clearly one of the rhetorical effects such a claim has is to increase the identification we are supposed to have with one side of the conflict – or more properly, with the government, political class and military/intelligence apparatus of one side of the conflict, because there is certainly still a peace movement within Israel itself.

One of the difficulties humanitarian impulses have is the gap between abstraction and concrete situations. It’s actually inherent in the whole notion of humanitarian universalism because there’s always going to be a tension between a particular and a universal, and this is where philosophy itself stops being a parlour game or a learned discipline, and shows us something about the very messy world of political violence and making distinctions and judgements. One can rightly be sceptical about violence in the name of humanitarianism, and in fact we ought to be, because it can never be divorced from all the other calculations, strategies and investments which accompany any exercise of political power – and the use of force is the ultimate political decision.

But we can resist the dehumanisation of civilians caught up in conflict zones, or in zones which are subjected to cruel and inhumane blockadesm, or civilians targeted by rockets. They might not all be “like us”, but we need to recognise that humanity itself has ethical claims to make – on all of us. What we need to do is to give up the habit of accepting far too blithely the dehumanisation and thus alienation of others, and begin to look above the parapets of a tragic history and the particulars of political advantage being sought on both sides and refocus our efforts – and our imagination – on the one goal that should be truly paramount – peace itself.

Update: A new post on the ethics of the conflict.

Update: New post here.

One of the many things that makes the Israeli/Palestinian conflict so utterly dispiriting is that it’s impossible to think of anything good coming of any of this. Worse than that, it’s hard to imagine that even the people involved think anything good will come of it.

What, exactly, do the Palestinians lobbing rockets into Sderot think they will accomplish? That the Israelis will look about them and say: Holy Moly, I had no idea this place was so dangerous!, and leave? Do the Israelis think: even though we’ve bombed the Palestinians a whole lot, and it’s never done much good before, maybe this time it will be different! Maybe Hamas will say: heavens, this is a pretty serious round of attacks; maybe we should just sue for peace — ? Or what?

Any form of peaceful resolution to the conflicts in Palestine and Israel has been blocked for a long time by a range of factors – including but not limited to internal Israeli politics and the decomposition of its party system, the legacy of past atrocities, an effective economic blockade of Palestine, the power balance in the Middle East and the hypocritical and empty promises of the Bush administration. If there is a “peace process”, its outlines were frozen in time long ago. Unfortunately, I think it’s probably too much to hope for that there’ll be any sort of progress under the Obama administration, particularly with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Elsewhere: An interesting book review post from SocProf on violence around the world, and how it’s viewed according to essentially domestic priorities:

Virgil Hawkins’s Stealth Conflicts – How The World’s Worst Violence is Ignored is a necessary book that dispels quite a few myths regarding the current world’s conflicts.

While the world is currently focused on the collective punishment Israel is inflicting on the Gaza strip, and as 2008 draws to an end, there is not much mention that we are entering the 11th year of the conflict in the DRC, a conflict, that ,as of January 2008, had caused the death of 5.4 million people, mostly of disease and starvation. This is currently the deadliest conflict in the world, and there is not much of a fuss about it, not about many African conflicts either (with the exception of Sudan, and that came eight years into the conflict).

Read on here.

Elsewhere: Jeff Sparrow at Overland. I think this post is a useful corrective to “official narratives” of what’s occurring, but still needs insertion into a broader analysis of the entire dynamic, of the sort I’ve been arguing we need.

Update: The latest news via Firedoglake:

Overnight, the BBC is reporting that Israel has declared the region around Gaza “a closed military zone” which is seen as sign that a ground invasion is about to begin (no link available yet). The Gaza death toll (at 1:25 PST) is 307, there are unconfirmed reports that kidnapped Israeli soldier Shalit was amongst those wounded by the Israeli attack on Gaza, and the Israeli Navy has now joined the attack.

Update: The comments thread continues on this post.