History is busting out all over this week, as students around the nation are displaying the results of research projects in judged competitions that may lead on to regional and state-level academic glory later this spring. In Becker the freshmen crop of story-boards in the BHS media center this year told the stories of Al Capone and organized crime in the Roaring 20’s, physicist Leo Szilard and his opposition to the atomic bomb he helped to build, and Dr. Martin Luther King and the March on Washington were popular themes.
And there was another historic march on Washington this week as well, culminating with an address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu to a (more or less) joint House of Congress in which he urged a wildly cheering group of mainly Republican solons to reject any and all diplomatic solutions to the growing problem of the nuclear capability of Iran. War, he seemed to be saying, was preferable to any solution involving diplomacy.
Philosopher George Santayana said: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This is the same Netanyahu who, in 2003, advised many of these same enthralled officials that the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein would result in greatly increased stability in the Middle East. The two men apparently never met.
Visiting Prime Ministers are nothing new to Washington D.C., as several have addressed the Congress over the years. Winston Churchill springs to mind, though he came with the full knowledge and support of then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Netanyahu, however, came in through the tradesman’s entrance, invited by a group of second-stringers led by House Speaker John Boehner and including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (more on him later). Overall, it was a historic, if somewhat cheesy, chapter in our political history.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar attended, but Sen. Franken and most of the other state Democrats were pointedly elsewhere, while the Minnesota Republicans joined in the palm-numbing frenzy of applause “en masse.”
Netanyahu comes by his warrior credentials honestly, it must be said. He has served his nation in many capacities along with other members of his family. His brother led the famous “Raid on Entebbe” to rescue Israeli hostages held by dictator Idi Amin in Uganda, and he was the only Israeli soldier killed in that action.
And the prime minister may well be correct in his depiction of the Iranian government as less that totally trustworthy when it comes to nuclear weapons. While doing business as the Persian Empire, the ancestors of modern-day Iran under King Darius the Great attempted to enslave the democracy of Athens and the rest of Greece, only being dissuaded by the bronze-clad Greek heavy infantry known as the phalanx that powered through the lightly-armed Persian hordes like the proverbial knife through butter. (The battle location gave us the 26.2 mile distance of the modern marathon, the distance run by the Athenian herald Phidippides, who gasped out his one-word message: “Nike,” the Greek word for victory, before dropping dead of exhaustion in the Athens town square. Consider that the next time you pull on your running shoes.)
Senator and erstwhile Presidential candidate Rand Paul just can’t seem to catch a break in all of this. Even though he was one of the legislators who invited Netanyahu to speak in Washington, and he has co-sponsored a bill that would require Congressional approval of any agreement with Iraq over their nuclear programs, he was still castigated by several right-wing news organs when he was caught applauding the Israeli premier’s speech with what was deemed “insufficient vigor.”
I have spoken to citizens even older than myself (Imagine!) recently, and none can remember a time when an American politician was ever criticized for their speech-applauding abilities. Like shaking hands and kissing babies, it is a skill the natural politician is born with, never been a problem before.
In Russia, it was a most serious matter if one was caught being the first one to stop applauding the entrance of Joseph Stalin at the opening of a Communist Party Congress or similar event. Under the dictator’s baleful eye, attempting to save one’s blistered and bleeding palms was often literally a death sentence, as Stalin’s paranoia found disloyalty in the slightest gesture and punished accordingly, or more so.
More recently in North Korea, Kim Jong-un’s secret police studied video tapes of citizens along the route of the funeral procession of the late dictator Kim Jong-Il. Those who were judged to have displayed “insufficient sorrow” or who were filmed while not weeping copiously enough were arrested and sentenced to six months hard labor to contemplate their “crimes.”
Looks like Sen. Paul got off easy, just being crucified by the right-wing press
