Netanyahu's Speech

Bibi Netanyahu gave an excellent speech to the American Congress, but it was at its core full of race hatred.  Clearly Jews hate Persians, and their hatred is reciprocated.  Iran wants a nuclear program that would enable it to build a nuclear bomb sometime in the future, and Israel wants to prevent that by all means, including war.  But what Bibi really wants if for gentile American boys and girls to fight that war, rather than Israeli Jews.  Jews don’t fight for America, even with America fights Israel’s wars, as in Iraq, who “weapons of mass destruction” posed a much greater threat to Israel than to America.  High ranking American Jews like Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, and Doug Feith were happy to send Christians to fight and die for Israel in Iraq.  Now Bibi wants a new cohort of American Christians to fight and die in Iran. 

There’s nothing new about this.  Anglophile Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to join Britain in the War against Hitler, but despite his love of the British, he did not do it until Japan invaded the US.  In this case, Bibi wants to stir the US to go to war before there is any direct threat to the US.  The Iranian government hates the US, and has hated it for years, certainly since the US overthrew the Iranian government and installed the Shah.  Iran reciprocated by destroying Jimmy Carter with the hostage crisis and installing Ronald Reagan as President, illustrated by its release of the hostages as soon as Reagan was elected.  Reagan thanked Iran by doing the Iran-Contra deal, giving Iran some weapons it could not get otherwise. 

In his speech, Bibi said that Israel can defend itself.  Let it do so.  We don’t need any more American gentiles to die in Israel’s Middle East wars.  Meanwhile we have American Jews deserting America for Israel.  The last two Israeli ambassadors, Ron Dermer and Michael Oren, were born in the US and renounced their US citizenship.  Many young Jewish Americans serve in the Israeli military, two prominent ones are Chicago mayor Raum Emanuel and NYT columnist David Brooks’ son.  Netanyahu has appealed to Jews in Europe, particularly in recently attacked France in Denmark, to leave Europe and move to Israel.  He implies that Jews cannot be loyal to any country but Israel.   

The article on David Brooks’ son refers to Aliyah, the right of return to Israel for Jews.  It says that you must have at least one Jewish grandparent.  By that standard, Bill and Hilary Clinton’s granddaughter, Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky, has the right of return, although by Orthodox Jewish standards Charlotte is not Jewish, because Jewishness only comes from the mother, and Chelsea is not Jewish.  However, Charlotte’s father and his father and mother are Jewish.   So, Charlotte has three times what she needs for Aliyah.  Her grandfather, Ed Mezvinsky, a former Congressman, was convicted of 31 charges of fraud in 2001 and served five years in prison.  The Clintons are of course friendly with Jews.  Bill Clinton was roundly criticized for his pardon of Marc Rich just before Clinton left office.  Ironically Rich, a Jew, was under indictment for trading with Iran during hostage crisis.  According to Wikipedia, many senior Israeli officials, including some from the Mossad, and Dick Cheney’s Scooter Libby of Iraq War fame, urged Clinton to pardon Rich because of his assistance to Israel.  No doubt the pardon has helped the Clintons raise money from Jewish sources.  Recently there has been a lot of talk about how much money the Clintons have gotten from foreign sources; presumably some of them are Jewish.  

Anticipating Netanyahu's Speech

We will have to see what Netanyahu says in his speech to Congress.  It sounds like he will say that we must go to war with Iran if Iran does not end its nuclear program. 

Implicit in this call for an end to Iran’s program is a call for military force to destroy the nuclear program if Iran does not do so itself.  This military force seems likely to be American, perhaps aided to some extent by the Israelis, maybe some Sunni Arabs, and maybe some half-hearted Western European support.

There are a number of non-Jewish politicians who support Netanyahu, including McCain, Boehner, and a lot of conservative Republicans.  Some are legitimately concerned, but I worry that some are motivated by Jewish political contributions. In return for Jewish money these politicians are willing to send Gentile American boys (and girls) to fight and die in Iran to protect Israel. 

Iran presents some threat to the US, but not nearly as much as it does to Israel.  Pakistan probably presents more of a threat to the US than Iran does, and Pakistan already has many nuclear weapons.  Pakistan is more unstable than Iran and more opposed to American interests.  Taliban training and taking refuge in Pakistan often attack Americans and their Afghan allies in Afghanistan.  So, if we were going to send some American soldiers to die to stop a nuclear threat, it would make more sense to send them to Pakistan than to Iran.  Because of this, I worry that American Jews are incapable of judging the real foreign policy risks to America.  Jews may be willing to see America destroyed in order to preserve Israel. 

Maybe Netanyahu, or some Jewish-American politician will say something that will ease my concerns about Jews putting Israel’s interests ahead of America’s, but I am not expecting it.  I find this whole dustup over Netanyahu’s speech deeply disturbing, particularly because things seem to be heating up with Russia, but Russia is no threat to Israel; so, Jews don’t worry about a potential nuclear way, except to the extent that it may affect Jews in Ukraine.  

Nemtsov and Maidan

If Putin is behind the murder of Boris Nemtsov, it may be because he does not want a repeat of the Ukrainian Maidan Square protests in Russia.  Putin appears to have been blindsided by the speed with which the Maidan protests ousted Ukrainian Premier Yanukovych, leading to the low grade war going on now.  Putin does not want to see something similar happen to him in Russia.  By killing Nemtsov, he made sure that the Russian protests would not get out of hand. 

I don’t know whether Putin order Nemtsov’s murder, but I doubt that he was disappointed by it.  It is unlikely that it would have happened if Putin has been strongly opposed to it, or even highly concerned about Nemtsov’s safety.  Putin could have provided security for him that would have made his assassination impossible. 

The fact that Putin is so closely linked to the murder raises serious human rights issues for Russia, and security concerns for many Russians unhappy with Putin.  It will make it more difficult for the US to do business with him, in particular getting Russian cooperation on Iran nuclear matters.  There is an outside chance that Putin might be more cooperative on Iran to ease some of the pressure resulting from the Nemtsov murder.  

Curse You for Your Service

David Brooks’ column from the NYT ten days ago has been bothering me ever since.  He purports to be concerned about the PTSD that soldiers are subject to after combat.  Generally people think that soldiers suffer from PTSD because horrible things were done to them in war – they were shot, they saw their friends shot, etc.  Brooks seems to think that they suffer from PTSD because they have done horrible things in war; they return from war overwhelmed by the horrible, immoral things that they have done.  Brooks believes that America would be a better place if we just shot each veteran in the head as war criminals when they get off the plane from Iraq or Afghanistan.  Brooks’ column is based on the book, “The Evil Hours,” and therefore may not exactly represent Brooks’ personal thoughts on the subject. 

Brooks says, “[W]ar … is always a crime….  It involves … tainted situations where every choice is murderously wrong.”  He goes on, “The self-condemnation can be crippling.”  Veterans “often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness.”   People don’t suffer from PTSD after natural disasters, but only after “moral atrocities.”  

Brooks apparently believes that self-defense is immoral.  If ISIS wants to murder his children, he should let them.  To kill the ISIS terrorist would be immoral and would subject him to the same self-hating PTSD that soldiers returning from the Middle East face.  But Brooks confounds two issues, a soldier’s individual, moral choices, and a nation’s moral choice to go to war or not.  If immoral acts were committed in the Middle East, it was because the United States waged an immoral war on rag-headed Arabs and Muslims just because they were Arabs and Muslims, not because they were a threat to the US that our soldiers needed to stop.  In Brooks’ opinion, everyone who volunteers to serve in the military is a war criminal, because war against anyone is immoral. 

I think Brooks is dead wrong.  I have felt for years that Republicans are unpatriotic cowards, and Brooks is firmly in that camp.  It was brought home to me personally when Newt Gingrich shut down the government on the day I was being transferred as a Foreign Service officer from Warsaw to Rome.  The shutdown left my wife and me homeless in Warsaw.  Fortunately a friend in Rome worked out a deal under which we were allowed to travel to the embassy in Rome, although the Republicans had technically made it illegal to travel during the shutdown, which would have left us on the streets of Warsaw, or more likely in a hotel in Warsaw at our own expense.  I was serving the US government, and the government walked away and said in essence, “We don’t care if you die.”  I care, and I will never forgive this government for abandoning those it sent out to do its work, whether military or diplomatic.  Brooks is firmly in the Newt camp abandoning those who defend this country, and denigrating their serve.  Brooks doesn’t say, “Thank you for your service.”  He says, “Curse you for your service.”