GOP Terrorism - Flag and the Flame

There are men who sit in clean offices, cooled by machines, fed by aides, clothed in the dry confidence of suits that never knew sweat. They speak slow, measured, like preachers, not in sermons of God but of vengeance and wire-guided missiles. They smile when they say the word “ally.” They mean Israel. They smile when they say the word “terror.” They mean the children in Gaza.

The Republican man—he talks of strength like a hired hand talks of rain. Either it comes, or you make it come with a bomb. He walks proud through the halls of Congress, chest out, boots silent. He shakes the hand of every butcher, so long as the butcher waves the right flag. And the Israeli flag, white and blue, bloodied on the edge—that flag gets the biggest handshake of all.

They call it defense, what Israel does. But it’s a strange kind of defense that buries schools, shatters legs, powders babies into dust. And the GOP man claps. He claps in the morning, when the bomb hits. He claps at noon, when the bulldozers eat homes. He claps at night, when mothers scream into dark. He calls it civilization. He calls it necessary.

He does not see the boy on crutches, the girl without a face. He sees strategy. He sees votes in Florida. He sees a donor’s hand full of promise and gold.

And the Democrats, they whisper objection and shuffle their feet, but the Republican man stands loud. He stands proud. He says, "We support Israel." He does not say: "We fund the bullets." He does not say: "We watched the wheat fields burn." He does not say: "We called it democracy when it was a firing squad."

They come from the towns with flags on every porch. They come from churches where the preacher tells of holy land, and never once mentions the stolen soil. They come from the kind of America that thinks tanks are peacekeepers and silence is diplomacy. And they vote, again and again, for the man who calls it self-defense when a drone eats a family.

Somewhere, a boy in Khan Younis draws the American flag on a scrap of newspaper, just before the house caves in. Somewhere, a woman names her daughter after the last ceasefire, because that’s the only thing left to name.

And in Washington, the GOP man clears his throat. He folds his speech. He says the war must go on.

He says nothing about the children.

Because to him, they were never really there.