Friends don’t let Friends Kill Civilians

As a friend of mine, Dave and I sat in a small Italian restaurant in Wisconsin, amid red-checkered table cloths and the smell of garlic; I pitched a book idea to him. He listened intently, but as I spoke I saw a dark look coming across his face. After several minutes I stopped talking, waiting for his response. He sat back looking at the table in front of him, as if trying to decide to say what was on his mind. Finally he took a deep breath, leaned forward, looked me in the eye and said “I would not be your friend if I did not tell you that you are totally f@%&ed up in the head.”

You can imagine my surprise from his verbal slap. I was stunned into silence. Dave then systematically yet sympathetically unraveled all of the logic I had just laid before him. Worst of all, he was absolutely right. I had allowed my thinking to get way out of whack.

I’ll never forget that night when Dave laid that sentence on me, or the moral courage it took to call me on my stuff. I was wrong and he was friend enough to tell me. A lesser friend would have let me continue in my delusion until reality eventually caught up with me.

As I think about the status of the US as a “Friend of Israel,” and a "Friend of Lebanon," I wonder if we will ever have this same kind of courage. Friends don’t let friends get away with misguided thinking. They call them on it.

Yet, based on the events of the last three weeks, I would say that we are no friend to Israel or to Lebanon at all. When the Prime Minister of Iraq dared to speak out, the US Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike howled anti-Semitism. But does criticizing Israel make you an anti-Semite? No more than my friend confronting me made him my enemy. It’s what friends do.
We have the same situation internally within the US. If you dare to challenge the Administration on their misguided thinking, you’re likely to be called a traitor, unpatriotic or even treasonous. Teddy Roosevelt had it right when he said:

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

- Theodore Roosevelt, “Lincoln and Free Speech,” The Great Adventure (vol. 19 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed.), chapter 7, p. 289 (1926)

If we are a friend to Israel, a friend to Lebanon, and a friend to our own government, it’s time that we let them know what we think about the insanity in the Middle East. It’s time for a complete ceasefire.