Untouchable

So now it appears that our “National Security Strategy” is no longer confined to the “War on Terror” the way it was under Bush. All sorts of nice holistic words are being mouthed, implying that the U.S. is going to act less like the lone gun, or like the new sheriff hired to clean up the town. Who knows, charity might begin at home once again! Compared to the gun-slinging absolutism of Bush & Co. I guess things are going to start looking more relativistic, conditional, and open to debate, discussion, and compromise. Except for one thing, that is... the ultimate non-negotiable... namely, our relationship (that is, entanglement) with Israel. My feeling is that nothing else we do anywhere in the world, in terms of sitting down and reasoning together, means anything if we don't at least put the Israel question up for debate (by Congress, and by the American people -- since they have never had the slightest voice in the matter). It is, after all, the ultimate source of our troubles with Islamic militancy, and is the reason (primary, if not sole) we are fighting the “War on Terror”. The “Israel bill”, as I call it, continues to mount – well into the trillions at this point, because it includes not only 9-11 and its aftermath, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We wonder why the EU is distancing itself from us politically, economically, and financially... and why China is getting nervous. The reason is simple. Nowhere else in the world is one country putting all of its resources, and its entire future, on the line for another country – no matter how noble the cause (and the Israel cause is far from noble, in my opinion). The situation, as I've said before, is unprecedented in history... and represents, I fear, a degree of delusion combined with short-sightedness that more than verges on insanity.

So we can talk all we want about “climate change”, education, energy, economic issues, “international institutions”, treaties, and so on... but Israel is the elephant in the living room that we refuse to even acknowledge. But everyone else sees it clearly and, if they're smart, they are acting accordingly. We may be big, and we may be scary, but our powers are limited, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown... so our ability to intimidate and twist arms has suffered some severe blows of late. Plus, it's now seen that, when it comes to finance and the markets, when we sneeze Europe catches pneumonia... and they're going to have to do something about that before long as well. They have their own “foreign entanglement” problem, and its name is America. How long until the U.S. becomes the King Lear of the world? And we thought it was scary when Ukraine and Kazakhstan wound up with nukes...