Phyllis Diller says that even into her late 30s, she didn’t understand the significance of a solitary, upturned middle finger. “On the other hand,” she said, “at the time I didn’t know how to drive.”
There are moments in all of our lives as drivers when a jerk cuts us off in traffic or runs a stop sign, but through a magical piece of traffic happenstance, we wind up in front of him (or, increasingly, her). We get to stare, smile and if we’re still feeling angry enough, very slowly flip the bird, while the jerk has to sit there and take it. Sitting in traffic is unpleasant enough without a jackass doing something stupid, so we feel justified venting at one who deserves it. I hope most of us are mature enough to resist the bird-flip temptation, or least mature enough to feel sheepish later if we indulged.
Regardless of the visceral satisfaction flipping the bird may bring, it really doesn’t do any good. I doubt any aggressive drivers have reformed because someone (or several someones) flipped them off. (“Hmmm, that’s the third one this week. Maybe I should take a look at my driving habits.”)
The evidence seems to indicate that bird flipping leads to inter-vehicular cursing and possibly to a full-blown road rage incident. Occasionally I’ll see a piece in the newspaper about traffic competition leading to fisticuffs or shooting. How much time can you save on your commute to be worth dying for?
If we take that kind of stupidity and escalate it to a global level and you arrive at the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times. A photo showed three Israeli soldiers atop an armored personnel carrier. One soldier displayed a lumpish grin on his face, a Lebanese flag in his left hand and a solitary upturned finger – not that finger, the “We’re number one!” index finger – on his right. Israel says it’s fighting Hezbollah, but most of the dead (almost 400) are Lebanese civilians, another 750,000 civilians have been made into refugees, billions of dollars of infrastructure has been blasted to dust and apparently some Israeli soldiers think the Lebanese people are the enemy and their national flags are appropriate trophies of war.
Like the bird-waving driver, Israel has been wronged. It’s unacceptable that Hezbollah fires rockets into Israel, or conducts attacks and abductions. But being the wronged party doesn’t justify disproportionate response, especially when that response is almost absolutely certain to fail to achieve the objective Israel declares it wants to achieve.
Israel says it wants to destroy Hezbollah’s military strength and get its abducted soldiers back. So far, it has achieved neither and the prospects for progress toward its goals are not good. Every nation on Earth is calling for cease-fire except the United States, which is giving its own grand exhibition on how a pre-emptive war of choice turns into an endless quagmire. Israel is an inadvertent sponsor of the Hezbollah. Its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon was perceived as a wrong by the folks who live there. They, in turn, threw their support to Hezbollah and its disproportionate actions toward Israel.
Lebanese democracy, which was advancing until just days ago, is the only real hope for peace on the Lebanese-Israeli border. Now it will be years recovering from current events, if ever. Perhaps Hezbollah wants chaos in southern Lebanon. I can’t imagine how Israel could want what it now has on its northern border.
Israel and the Palestinians have the same kind of justified-complaint-disproportionate-response relationship; neither side seems to have learned anything. The U.S., the only country that could play honest broker in the region, has refused to do so since Bill Clinton left office. Look at the results.
By comparison, look at India’s response to the Mumbai bombings. The terrorists who killed hundreds of commuters were almost certainly linked to Pakistan, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh knows that not only will massing troops on the border not bring back the dead, but by showing restraint, India will be able to claim the moral high ground and the support of the international community. International support, in the long run, will beat a few weeks of bombs and rockets, a lesson Ehud Olmert and George Bush (and Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) are learning the hard way.
The 21st century is far too late in human history to be starting wars just because you’ve been wronged. Settling these disputes is what the UN was supposed to be for and still could be, if we decide to give it a chance.
Being Wronged is Not Enough
Phyllis Diller says that even into her late 30s, she didn’t understand the significance of a solitary, upturned middle finger. “On the other hand,” she said, “at the time I didn’t know how to drive.”
There are moments in all of our lives as drivers when a jerk cuts us off in traffic or runs a stop sign, but through a magical piece of traffic happenstance, we wind up in front of him (or, increasingly, her). We get to stare, smile and if we’re still feeling angry enough, very slowly flip the bird, while the jerk has to sit there and take it. Sitting in traffic is unpleasant enough without a jackass doing something stupid, so we feel justified venting at one who deserves it. I hope most of us are mature enough to resist the bird-flip temptation, or least mature enough to feel sheepish later if we indulged.
Regardless of the visceral satisfaction flipping the bird may bring, it really doesn’t do any good. I doubt any aggressive drivers have reformed because someone (or several someones) flipped them off. (“Hmmm, that’s the third one this week. Maybe I should take a look at my driving habits.”)
The evidence seems to indicate that bird flipping leads to inter-vehicular cursing and possibly to a full-blown road rage incident. Occasionally I’ll see a piece in the newspaper about traffic competition leading to fisticuffs or shooting. How much time can you save on your commute to be worth dying for?
If we take that kind of stupidity and escalate it to a global level and you arrive at the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times. A photo showed three Israeli soldiers atop an armored personnel carrier. One soldier displayed a lumpish grin on his face, a Lebanese flag in his left hand and a solitary upturned finger – not that finger, the “We’re number one!” index finger – on his right. Israel says it’s fighting Hezbollah, but most of the dead (almost 400) are Lebanese civilians, another 750,000 civilians have been made into refugees, billions of dollars of infrastructure has been blasted to dust and apparently some Israeli soldiers think the Lebanese people are the enemy and their national flags are appropriate trophies of war.
Like the bird-waving driver, Israel has been wronged. It’s unacceptable that Hezbollah fires rockets into Israel, or conducts attacks and abductions. But being the wronged party doesn’t justify disproportionate response, especially when that response is almost absolutely certain to fail to achieve the objective Israel declares it wants to achieve.
Israel says it wants to destroy Hezbollah’s military strength and get its abducted soldiers back. So far, it has achieved neither and the prospects for progress toward its goals are not good. Every nation on Earth is calling for cease-fire except the United States, which is giving its own grand exhibition on how a pre-emptive war of choice turns into an endless quagmire. Israel is an inadvertent sponsor of the Hezbollah. Its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon was perceived as a wrong by the folks who live there. They, in turn, threw their support to Hezbollah and its disproportionate actions toward Israel.
Lebanese democracy, which was advancing until just days ago, is the only real hope for peace on the Lebanese-Israeli border. Now it will be years recovering from current events, if ever. Perhaps Hezbollah wants chaos in southern Lebanon. I can’t imagine how Israel could want what it now has on its northern border.
Israel and the Palestinians have the same kind of justified-complaint-disproportionate-response relationship; neither side seems to have learned anything. The U.S., the only country that could play honest broker in the region, has refused to do so since Bill Clinton left office. Look at the results.
By comparison, look at India’s response to the Mumbai bombings. The terrorists who killed hundreds of commuters were almost certainly linked to Pakistan, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh knows that not only will massing troops on the border not bring back the dead, but by showing restraint, India will be able to claim the moral high ground and the support of the international community. International support, in the long run, will beat a few weeks of bombs and rockets, a lesson Ehud Olmert and George Bush (and Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) are learning the hard way.
The 21st century is far too late in human history to be starting wars just because you’ve been wronged. Settling these disputes is what the UN was supposed to be for and still could be, if we decide to give it a chance.
© Mark Floegel, 2006