Burnt Offerings in Modern America

Aaron Bushnell

Yesterday afternoon, a man identified as an active-duty Air Force intelligence analyst lit himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington. Firefighters smothered the flames and rushed the individual, tentatively identified as Aaron Bushnell, to a local hospital, but Bushnell died of his injuries. According to his manifesto, Bushnell described Israel’s ongoing barrage of Gaza as a “genocide,” and described his military participation as “complicity.”

Two years ago today, I published an essay entitled “War Is Not the Answer, Except When It Is.” I compared Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a war that remains ongoing, with Operation Desert Storm, America’s first military intervention in Iraq. An American response in Ukraine sure looks justified, I wrote, but it looked justified in Iraq, too. We now know the justification for war in Iraq was falsified by PR professionals.

PR surrounding the current conflagrations in Ukraine, Gaza, and Yemen have been spotty. After initial international furor, the Ukraine war has retreated from headlines, except when Republicans withhold funding for military support. America’s decision to jump into Yemen attracted initial outrage, but failed to sustain feelings. Only the Gaza conflict remains a reliable headline-grabber, and not necessarily for the right reasons.

The Gaza death toll threatens to exceed 30,000 this week. As the Netanyahu government forbids Palestinians to leave Gaza, but continues strafing civilian neighborhoods, the conflict increasingly resembles the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. Yet English-speaking journalists find themselves shackled to a pro-Israeli narrative. Public-facing writers for MSNBC and the BBC have found themselves benched, their stories spiked, for criticizing Israel.

Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation makes sense in historical context. From Vietnam to Tunisia, protestors have lit themselves on fire to force change in the public awareness, and to draw attention to widespread government corruption. Thích Quảng Đức’s suicide in Vietnam closely preceded the coup which overthrew President Dien’s illegal regime. Mohamed Bouazizi helped kick-start the Arab Spring, leading to pro-democracy revolutions.

Mehdi Hasan

Yet one cannot help questioning whether either death did any good. American involvement in Vietnam dragged on another decade after Thich’s death, while the Syrian civil war—which, like the Ukraine conflict, has lost Western front-page headlines—is currently well into its thirteenth year. If Aaron Bushnell’s death moves the needle for American public awareness, I applaud his sacrifice, yet I wonder whether it’s actually done any good.

Taken together, these facts force me to question who benefits from the current trajectory in American and world affairs. American silence on the Gaza atrocities has damaged the Biden Administration, but it hasn’t exactly won favor for opposition Republicans, who are aggressively pro-Netanyahu and pro-Putin. Networks losing their star journalists aren’t exactly seeing ratings boosts. Nobody but defense contractors profits from blood and destruction.

American presidents love overseas war. Because presidents also serve as commander-in-chief of the military, American military successes accrue to the President’s reputation, while defeats tarnish his name forever. Flag-waving, naming enemies, and ginning up nationalist slogans, help unify American voters around the state, and the President as head of state. The opposition party knows this, certainly, and will withhold money to deny the other side a win.

Except that hasn’t happened this time. Unlike Operation Iraqi Freedom, which certain candidates famously voted for before they voted against, American commitments in Ukraine and Israel have not produced massive national unity. Nobody’s flying flags and chanting “United We Stand” in facing down dictatorial right-wing regimes in Moscow or Jerusalem. George W. Bush parlayed Iraq into a second term, but Joe Biden is currently watching his coalition shatter.

Like Lyndon Johnson before him, we’re watching the Biden Administration snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A fairly popular president with a relatively successful economic agenda (more on that to come) managed to alienate his own backers by supporting an unpopular war in an anti-democratic state. Just as Johnson’s personal collapse ushered in the manifestly criminal Nixon, Biden is currently holding the door for Donald Trump.

It’s tempting to describe Aaron Bushnell’s suicide as a sacrifice. But we often forget that, in origin, the word “sacrifice” doesn’t mean to give something up, it means to make something holy. Just as many early civilizations relinquished burnt offerings to petty, tyrannical gods as bribes to protect the people, Bushnell’s death represents a cosmic order that doesn’t protect the ordinary people from overwhelming whimsy on high.

For Bushnell’s death to actually sanctify America, we must start by asking ourselves: what in our country requires burnt offerings? What do we hold sacred, and why isn’t it helping?

Continued in Burnt Offerings in America, Part Two