A War is a War is a War... (*bump*)

One of the benefits of having a decently assembled personal library is the vast collection of resources at your fingertips.  Sure, some rely solely on electronic research now, but it's better perhaps to read independently, in private, and not to simply swallow the latest offerings online.

America's foreign policy boils down to this:  We will support our friends and allies in the Middle East region, and fight on their behalf whenever they are threatened.

If Israel exists, Israel is threatened.
If Israel is a prime ally, then America will be perpetually at war due to Israel's precarious demographic and geopolitical fate:  they are surrounded by enemies and have no interest, it seems, in working toward a negotiated peace in the region, a realistic compromise that would ensure their survival via working toward meeting the survival needs of their neighbors.

Many political commentators have acknowledged the short-term vision of the Israeli people:  100 years, perhaps, then the Jews again will be forced by circumstances to pack their tents and move along...  Israel today is simply not a long-term, self-fulfilling, independent state.

She relies on the U.S. taxpayer money for defense, for offense, for simple survival.  When the nationalistic Jews supporting Israel teamed with the Evangelical Christians, supporting their version of End Times, America lost.

The truth lost.
American values lost.

Now, America imprisons people without charges in Guantanamo.  We kill, indiscriminately, thousands of women, children and elderly, escaping responsibility because our people do not see the carnage that air-dropped destruction delivers.

We don't even see the daily pricetag of the costs of these "missions"...

As Jeffrey Goldberg, American Jewish pundit who admits himself to the abuse by Israeli soldiers he witnessed while serving in the IDF, puts it:  Syria is now devoid of chemical weapons that would threaten the Jewish citizens of Israel.

Israel is free to continue amassing land in disputed territories, to continue building in the non-Jewish parts of Jerusalem, to continue breaking promises and grasping for more, more, more...  because they have an American superpower unconditionally backing their actions.

We are all Israel now.
Expect more of the same:  special legal rights for special citizens while the workers who toil to build and maintain our country here at home are denied recognition...  detention without trial or charges....  assassination first with thoughts of justice secondary, splitting hairs over the dead body.

The truth is, America has indeed been at war since early August, when once again we ramped up our military and began bombing Iraq for not behaving as the good democracy we implanted.  We might not want to admit it, but we are again at war.

Recall, we were at war first, and then, the hostage killing videos began to be released.  The terrorists acknowledging that they too would fight and kill, and reminding the West that lives of value were at stake.

Cleverly, the hostages were dressed in orange, a nod to the Guantanamo prisoners locked up, but never charged, convicted nor accessing any semblance of justice.  Killing is the thing, it seems.  The only way to win.

The thing is, Jeffrey Goldberg, like David Brooks and so many Jewish-American political pundits, are not thinking about America as a whole.  In fact, I think they are more concerned with the safety and security of America's prime ally, over the costs to the entire body of the American people, of which the Jews -- believe it or not --  are a small minority.

It's almost laughable.  Definitely incoherent, much like Stein's work in The World is Round (a Rose is a Rose is a Rose...)...

We're at war, but we deny it.
America's national security is not threatened, but it could be!
We believe in truth and justice and the American way, but ... terrorists!  If we don't continually kill them, who will?  If not now, when?  If not America, who?

Nevermind the costs, nor the military leaders who tell us there will be boots on the ground, if the war plans are to succeed.  It took us this long to even admit that what we are doing over there is warring.  Soon, we'll admit too that these are not defensive actions, nor is it wise for a country to continually go on the offensive attacking, with the barn door left wide open here at home.

I'm sure men like Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Brooks will invent an answer, when the moment calls.  They have been chosen, genetically by faith, to fulfill the birthright blessings of their people.  As terrorized peoples once again turn toward the faith of their fathers, and religious nation-states again plague the globe, pretty much those storybook promises are what we are building this country's foreign policy around....

The Jewish-Evangelical connection.  Is it strong enough to lead the country out of the morass into which we have been delivered?  Or will the majority of the American people eventually choose to return to the nation our forefathers intended, devoid of religious alliances or fealty to foreign powers, where all men are created equal and what you do, not who your mother was, counts more in the end than all the promises the keepers make?