We vehemently agree. What are you objecting to?
Also Israel bombs factories that produce WMD in Syria
Very good. My apologies then.
Yes. Their efforts at stopping nuclear weapons in the region (bombing Iraq & Syrias nuclear plants, trying to stop Iran), their efforts to kill terrorists and the fact that they are a democracy with western values mean we should ally with them.
I don’t know if Israeli intelligence is all that helpful…the book "by way of deception " by a former recruit paints them as conniving and self serving when dealing with other countries
one charge from the book was they knew about the beruit bombing plans weeks before it happened but figured it would further their side if it happened …
I think detente with Iran and/or a liberal government in Iraq are both pipe dreams.
The State Department has always been hostile to Israel, and indeed to its own country the U.S.
Well, that’s just brilliant logic there. If Freedonia doesn’t want to accept any Syrian refugees today, they can still be good guys by supporting a resolution that forces somebody else to give half their homeland to them.
Does that work with taxes? Can I write on my tax return, “I don’t want to pay anything, but I support taxing madsircool double the amount he owes?” Would I be an even better citizen if I advocated you paying triple?
If the world wanted to compensate victims of the Holocaust with land, then it should have given them a hunk of Germany. Instead, the Arabs got fucked over, and the Germans who had cheered themselves hoarse for Hitler got more aid of all kinds than Jerry Lewis’ kids. Sounds fair to me.
And what do you think Americans would do if the UN voted to give the southwestern US back to Mexico? Or the entire US west of the Mississippi back to the Native Americans? Both groups have a far better claim to the US than the Jews had to Palestine. And Jews comprised approximately 1/7 of the population of Palestine during WW1, so giving them the best half (with a seacoast) wouldn’t be fair even if their “Promised Land” claim wasn’t religious bullshit, or if their secular historic claim wasn’t over 2000 years old.
Of course, it isn’t practical to give the land back to the Arabs now. But it was practical to take it from them 70 years ago. Because… the UN voted for it?
LOL. That’s exactly what the Arabs wanted (and were promised) in return for their support of the UK during WW1, and the Sykes-Picot and Balfour agreements stabbed them in the back.
Indeed.
I have noticed a notion - among both fanatical pro-Israel supporters and fanatical anti-Israel opponents alike - that America props up Israel to a much greater extent than it really does, and that somehow Israel would collapse like a house of cards without U.S. support.
Cite for this deep state crackpottery?
Without including the historical background, it isn’t possible to answer the question. Because strategic value is determined by everyone’s understandings of threats and dangers, and those in turn, are based on how things came to be as they are.
Another way to look at this, would be to hearken back a bit, to the time period during which the United States (under Jimmie Carter, primarily) worked to gain Egypt as at least a friendly state, and wean it away from the Soviet sphere. That successful effort by Carter, did a lot to reduce the strategic value of Israel, from a necessity, to being just a nice thing.
In response to the Yom Kippur War, although the US did provide aid to Israel, Henry Kissinger also said, “the conditions that produced this war were clearly intolerable to the Arab nations and that in the process of negotiations it will be necessary to make substantial concessions.” It’s hard to imagine a US politician/official saying something like that in the last 15 years. Starting around 2000 or so, American politicians began bending over backwards to make only the most obsequious statements of unqualified support towards Israel, and even mild criticism became somewhat taboo. Or at least it seemed that way. Only recently has that phenomenon started to let up.
Turkey is a very unreliable NATO member. Turkey also refused to allow the 4th armored division to deploy from there in Gulf War II, requiring rapid strategic changes by the American forces. So we already have evidence that Turkey is decidedly unreliable. And it’s only gotten worse as Erdogan has consolidated his power.
That said, Israel’s value is not as a staging area for war.
I know… let’s ask the Kurds how being stateless has worked out for them on the international scene. You could also ask the millions of oppressed stateless people around the world, but you’ve probably never heard of most of them because, well, they don’t have political power.
Start with the link which you posted and to which I responded. That’s a very good start.
The Kurds are a very good reason for Turkey to be lukewarm in its support for US interventions in Iraq. They are an existential threat to the Turkish state, no matter what government is in power. Trying to include both in its intervention in Iraq was never a realistic prospect. Nonetheless Turkey is strategically important, it sits at an important cross roads and it controls access to the Black sea which is important for the Russian fleet to project power.
You seem to be sarcastically attacking me there. Rather rude as well as unwarranted.
In answer to your rather snotty rhetorical statement, I will point out that there are lots of stateless groups in the world, some have a bad time because of it, some don’t. Lots of people WITH a home nation, who are in other countries, have a very bad time of it. Clearly, having an official home state has nothing to do with protecting people from persecution or abuse, unless that state chances to be so powerful and influential that it can directly react when they are. Hence my skepticism about the idea that creating Israel would do anything more than assuage the consciences of some of the world leaders who stood by mute, as the Nazi’s tried to commit genocide.
A more general response to the title question:
For the US, Israel is nowadays a mixed case, strategically and politically. Israel CANNOT afford to be seen as a platform for US intervention in the M.E., for their own sake, and we would not want them to appear to be so, for the sake of our own interests.
The best interests of the United States are served by all the nations (as many of them as possible at least) viewing us as at least friendly-neutral. Retaining that balance is the best way to reduce the ability of extremist groups to use targeting of the United States as a stimulant for their followers to rebel against local authorities; it allows us to trade with those nations peacefully; and reduces the sense in those countries that they have a need to cater to our competitors and opponents (such as Putin’s Russia) in order to remain safe from us.
If anything, for the last two decades, Israel has been more of a side difficulty for us to do that, than a help. That’s why we have struggled for so long with how to solve the problem of the so-called Palestinians. We don’t want to switch sides and entirely DESERT Israel, because deserting any long standing ally or friendly nation is a bad business, and undermines the rest of the world’s faith in US promises and reliability.
As for US politicians here at home, appearing to shift loyalties about Israel I would again point out that many of the ones who do show strong support, rather obviously do so for LOCAL reasons which have nothing at all to do with Israel itself, or with any overall ME policy concerns. They do so either to gain American Jewish voters to their side, or to obliquely attack other American political groups who argue for Palestinian rights.
I’ll give Mr. Stone the benefit of the doubt, and assume he is aware that Gulf War II was NOT a NATO adventure. L’OTAN n’a pas participé à l’idiotie Bush-Cheney. But that begs the question of his paragraph design. Why did he lead with a sentence unrelated to the rest of the paragraph?
When I ask my friend to bring me a gun so I can commit a murder-suicide, and the friend refuses, some of us would NOT label that friend “unreliable.” Mr. Stone’s mileage may vary.
Hope this helps.
Huh? Kurds may be a “territorial threat” (as in trying to get part of Turkey away to be part of a Kurdish state) but they have no designs on the rest of the Turkey territory. Where did you get that idea?