sylban

"Heil mein Hinter(n)"

I wish I could remember the doctor who said, "The VA is where you're given a second chance to give your life for your country."

Pretty much, yeah. He made sure to clarify that it wasn't a "Don't taze me, bro!" situation, acknowledging her basic civil liberty to behave badly in pubic, but it's not like he spent the rest of the day pondering whatever she was screeching about. Obama is a guy who's been treated badly by congressmen in public, and gets serious death threats just about every day. I don't think he's very impressed by people throwing tantrums in public.

I can tell you the answer my historian mother would have given. King was inspired by Gandhi, but Gandhi himself acknowledged that these tactics only work if the power you are fighting is fundamentally democratic. His tactics worked against Britain because the British people -- the basis of the Britain's power -- were ashamed enough to react and move their government to change its ways.

The U.S. is a democracy, and that allowed King to leverage the better nature of the American electorate to see for themselves the moral wrong in what was going on, and not fight their elected leaders who saw the need to change it.

Israel is a democracy, but a politically complicated one, with some major ideological divisions. I don't know how well those tactics would work there. But it also does not exist in a vacuum; it relies heavily on Western support, and those Western democracies might well be moved to act if they only saw Palestinians being harmed. Those Palestinians who act out violently have some valid political basis for their actions, and it's not difficult to understand their anger and desperation, but those actions probably do not help their cause in the long run.

The world has grown smaller, and it's easier to see things at a distance. If Gandhi was able to shame Britons from thousands of miles away more than half a century ago, I expect Palestinians can do the same now from where they are.

You did do something. Just not what you think you did.