President Trump commenced “Operation Epic Fury” this morning, a joint military action with Israel against Iran. He did not receive authorization from Congress and was not responding to “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” Therefore, he has violated the War Powers Resolution (WPR) and should be impeached.
Given that Congress has already impeached Trump twice during his previous term for far less egregious reasons, if they were valid at all, it would seem uncontroversial to suggest that for illegally and unconstitutionally taking the nation to war, impeachment would be a slam dunk. But it isn’t, and not just because Republicans control the House of Representatives.
The truth is presidents are far more likely to be impeached for trivial violations that don’t affect the lives of their constituents than for egregious flouting of Congress’ most important laws. It would be to hard argue there is a more important statue than the one defining the circumstances under which the president can initiate military action. The War Powers Resolution is very clear on this:
(c) Presidential executive power as Commander-in-Chief; limitation
The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.
That’s it. Simple. There is no ambiguity here. None of the three conditions the law stipulates have been met. Therefore, President Trump’s action this morning was illegal. Period. And nobody cares.
The law goes on to impose reporting requirements on the president and sets a 6-day limit on any military action the president has taken without Congressional authorization. But all that only applies after condition 3) above has been met.
No, the law does not authorize the president to undertake any military action he wishes for sixty days. Many people get confused about this because they want to be confused. The law does not allow the president to initiate military action for a day or even an hour if one of the three conditions aren’t met.
Trump’s statement regarding his reasons for the attack does not even attempt to justify them under the WPR. He cites Iran’s 1979 seizure of U.S. hostages without mentioning it being in retaliation for the U.S. overthrowing the Iranian government in 1953 and propping up a dictator over them for the next twenty-six years. He then lists a series of attacks on the U.S. military Iran is alleged to have funded on U.S. military in the Middle East, where they shouldn’t be stationed in the first place. He ends with alleged Iranian funding of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which is irrelevant to any justification of U.S. military force.
One can debate the veracity of the various accusations against Iran, whether any of them rise to justification for war, and what the U.S. response should be. And that’s just what the Constitution calls for – a debate. The members of Congress certainly have the constitutional authority to consider everything Trump has cited and decide whether to declare war on Iran or authorize a military response that falls short of war.
Even the latter option for Congress is constitutionally dubious. In fact, a compelling case can be made that the declaration of war power doesn’t even give Congress the power to start a war. It gives it the power to declare one. And one can only declare something that already exists.
President Trump said on Tuesday that in addition to the airstrikes on Venezuelan boats suspected of trafficking drugs to the United States, the U.S. military would begin hitting targets on land. Not only are all these strikes unconstitutional by any construction, but they are also unprovoked acts of war against a country that poses no threat to the United States.
Since September, the administration has carried out at least twenty-one attacks on civilian vessels in the Caribbean, resulting in eighty-three deaths. Not one of those killed by American forces was charged with a crime in any court, much less convicted at trial. This behavior wouldn’t pass muster under Magna Carta, written by barbarians by our standards today, much less the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
This doesn’t require any fanciful 20th-century reading of the Bill of Rights, like the one that produced Roe v. Wade. That this is impermissible is firmly rooted in constitutional interpretation dating to the man who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights himself.
There were several reasons for the War of 1812, not all of them legitimate. A certain faction among the war hawks of the day just wanted to steal Canada from the British empire. But foremost among the legitimate grievances cited by James Madison in asking Congress for a declaration of war, and frankly the only one most people remember, was the impressment of sailors on American ships into service in the British Navy.
It is important to understand the complaint was not against returning true deserters from the British Navy to Great Britain. As Madison said in his address, “And that no proof might be wanting of their conciliatory dispositions, and no pretext left for a continuance of the practice, the British Government was formally assured of the readiness of the United States to enter into arrangements, such as could not be rejected, if the recovery of British subjects were real and sole object.”
The problem the Madison administration had was that, in addition to disrespectfully boarding American ships by force, the British “so far from affecting British subjects alone, that under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of American Citizens, under the safeguard of public law, and of their national flag, have been torn from their country and from everything dear to them.”
That’s the whole point of due process. The government not only has to prove a crime was committed, but that they have indeed arrested the right person, which they frequently haven’t. This is why the mobbish retort, “narco-terrorists don’t deserve due process” is so counterintuitive. Without it, we don’t even know if the government has arrested the person they believe they have, much less whether this person committed a crime.
MAGA is riding high these days, convinced they’ve finally exorcised the neoconservatives who controlled the Republican Party for decades. Supposedly gone are the days of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the trillion-dollar boondoggles sold as “spreading democracy.” Trump promised to drain that swamp, and his base believes he’s done it—putting America First and mocking the old guard like John McCain and Liz Cheney.
I hate to burst that bubble, but the neocons are far from dead. At best they’re playing possum. And President Trump’s looming military action against Venezuela could be their golden ticket back to power, co-opting the very movement that thought it had buried them.
Let’s start with the obvious: the demise of the neocons has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, their poster boys like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney couldn’t win a presidential primary at the moment. But look who has staffed both Trump’s administrations. Mike Pompeo, the quintessential neocon hawk, served as Secretary of State the last time, pushing regime change agendas from Iran to North Korea.
Now we’ve got Marco Rubio in the same spot, a guy who’s never met a foreign entanglement he didn’t like. Rubio’s been a darling of the interventionist crowd since his Senate days, advocating for arming Syrian rebels and toppling dictators throughout the Middle East. Trump himself has been more restrained—no full-scale invasions on his watch yet—but that’s a far cry from the drastic change some in MAGA envisioned.
Trump hasn’t decreased overseas troop deployment on net whatsoever and the Pentagon budget has risen significantly in both of his administrations. As for Rubio, he’s trying to sound as America First as he can while serving the current boss but make no mistake: the push for action in Venezuela reeks of his influence, along with other holdovers like Elliott Abrams, who’s been knee-deep in Latin American meddling since the Reagan era. Throw in unconditional support for Israel’s wars, and you’ve got essentially a new Bush administration disguised as America First.
There is significant infighting among the American right concerning the priorities of the Trump administration. Elected on an America First” platform, Trump’s conservative critics argue the administration is far too concerned with foreign policy in the Middle East and not concerned enough with domestic priorities. They attribute this to the outsized influence of Israel, achieved through the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Trump has responded in his usual manner. You bring a knife, I’ll bring an ICBM. He has called for Rep. Thomas Massie to be primaried and imbued Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene with the dreaded Trump nickname. “Marjorie Taylor Brown,” meaning the grass has turned rotten, as Trump helpfully explained.
But despite Trump’s efforts to isolate a few legislators, there is evidence of a significant divide among his base. “MIGA,” standing for Make Israel Great Again and such mockery of Trump’s key slogans have trended on social media.
It is true that AIPAC is highly influential, although it is not among the top ten lobbyists representing foreign governments. Firms representing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt outspend them. Still, when campaigning, American politicians don’t make it a point to express their devotion to the welfare of those countries as they do to the State of Israel. More importantly, the U.S. government hasn’t gone to war on behalf of any of those countries who spend more lobbying as it has for Israel.
Critics point to AIPAC and simply say “follow the money.” Not only do these politicians depend upon AIPAC’s support to get elected; they fear AIPAC’s wrath should their support for the foreign government waver.
But that alone does not explain AIPAC’s outsized influence. Politicians depend on contributions from all sorts of special interests. Why is this one so effective? Why does the Republican Party in particular seem almost fully controlled by this lobby?
For a tiny minority on the right, the answer is “the Jews,” in the same sense Hitler said, “the Jews.” They view people of Jewish descent as a global conspiracy to rule the world surreptitiously through control of financial institutions and behind the scenes political machinations. This fringe element made enough noise for AIPAC to label anyone who opposes pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy as antisemitic.
But as for the other 99.99% of critics of U.S. foreign policy, including prominent politicians and media like Tucker Carlson, Thomas Massie, Megyn Kelly, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, antisemitism is not the explanation. In fact, some of those named have had to overcome a predisposition for U.S. government support for Israel to arrive at their current positions. Regardless, they make legitimate arguments for why Washington should not be involved in any foreign conflicts nor provide any foreign aid with over $38 trillion in debt and trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future.
But still, none of these critics seem to acknowledge the reason AIPAC holds such sway with American politicians. They either feign or express genuine confusion as to why U.S. elected officials would prioritize a foreign country over their own. But there is no mystery here.
The reason AIPAC is so influential is not “the Jews,” but “the Christians,” meaning American Christians. Tens of millions of Christian U.S. citizens who turn out to vote at very high rates in U.S. Elections. It is the votes of these Christians and its ability to affect them that makes AIPAC powerful.
We’re not talking about all Christians, or even most, but rather a significant minority who believe not only that the “end times” as they call them are imminent, but that U.S. foreign policy will literally influence how those end times turn out. Based upon a novel and relatively recent understanding of the New Testament, this group of Christian Zionists believe, in short, that the U.S. government must support the modern state of Israel for the prophecies in the Book of Revelations to come true.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told NBC’s Kristen Welker of Meet the Press that no meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is currently in the works. The Russian diplomat indicated his government is not interested in such a meeting until a “presidential agenda” was agreed upon that included certain Russian demands, including an agreement Ukraine will not seek membership in NATO and will discuss ceding some territory to Russia.
“When President Trump brought … those issues to the meeting in Washington, it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything,” said Lavrov.
Trump has positioned himself as an arbitrator, a peacemaker between two warring governments. And therein lies the problem. As Daniel McAdams pointed out several months ago in an interview with this writer, Washington can’t be an arbitrator in this conflict because it is a party to the conflict. “It’s like having a boxing match and the referee starts punching somebody,” quipped McAdams.
Indeed, I said the same thing just days after the war started. It has been clear from the beginning to anyone being honest with himself this war was never between Ukraine and Russia. It was a war between Washington and Russia, fought by Ukrainians on their land but funded and directed by Washington. It began in 2014 when Washington overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government and installed a Washington puppet, who immediately tried to take away Russia’s naval base at Sevastopol.
President Trump confirmed a major foreign policy shift in dramatic fashion on Friday when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to leave the White House after a heated public argument that included both presidents and U.S. Vice President Vance. Zelensky was in Washington to sign a mineral deal with the U.S that was aborted, at least for the moment, after both Trump and Vance took exception to Zelensky’s criticism of the Trump administration’s position regarding negotiations with Russia.
The incident was cheered by Trump’s supporters and condemned by all the usual suspects among his detractors, expressing outrage and embarrassment that a foreign head of state would be treated this way. But the real question it raises is whether it will mark the beginning of Washington’s return to the foreign policy bequeathed by the man whose name it bears.
No American alive today has known firsthand any other foreign policy than the one the U.S. government maintained throughout the 20th century, which is active involvement, both military and by other means, in the affairs of foreign nations, especially in Europe. Washington’s worldwide standing army of over 200,000 troops deployed overseas has become a norm taken for granted, as has the so-called “special relationship” with the United Kingdom and the “alliance” with Israel (the U.S. has no formal treaty with that country).
But it wasn’t always this way. Most Americans would be surprised to learn that their country became rich and powerful enough to be capable of affecting global geopolitics with precisely the opposite foreign policy. More surprising still might be that 19th century U.S. foreign policy was launched with an incident eerily similar to Friday’s.
“Yesterday, Decembuh seventh, nineteen fawty-one, a date which will live in infamy…”
I first heard that speech on television in the 1970s during a special promoting the official myth. You couldn’t pull it up on your phone whenever you wanted as I did just prior to this writing. My father remembered first hearing the news Pearl Harbor had been bombed and either hearing the speech live on radio or shortly after in a movie theater newsreel.
Like most people, no one in my family had any reason to question FDR’s assessment of the attack as “dastardly and unprovoked.”
It was certainly dastardly, but not unprovoked. Nor was its provocation unprecedented. FDR had employed a strategy with a long tradition among American presidential administrations seeking a casus belli while not wanting to appear the aggressor. Roosevelt wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last to execute this strategy.
“I wish I owned half of that dog…Because I would kill my half.” – Pudd’nhead Wilson
The fictional genius who invented fingerprint analysis to solve a murder case had already cemented his reputation as a fool decades before with a clumsy joke about killing a dog. Neither his apparent talent nor his subsequent accomplishments could overcome the first impression made on the simple townsfolk of Dawson’s Landing. It was decided then and there, on Wilson’s first day in town, that he must be and would thereafter be referred to as a pudd’nhead.
One hundred years later, not much has changed. Kristi Noem’s anecdote about shooting a vicious dog decades ago has all but ruined her political prospects, which included consideration as Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate.
For all the similarities, though, there are important differences. First, the Dawson’s Landing townsfolk don’t descend into moral panic over Wilson’s remark. Their objection to it was its apparent absurdity. 1830 Missourians understood dogs got shot when they were a nuisance, especially if their offenses included killing livestock and attacking humans. These weren’t people who could afford to be hysterical over killing an animal. They were employed mostly in agriculture, where animals were killed for food on a daily basis, far away from pristine dining rooms where dwelt the few at that time who may have objected.
Neither was this Noem’s first day in town, figuratively speaking. She has been in politics since 2007, serving first as a representative in South Dakota’s State House of Representatives and then as a representative in Congress for several terms. She is halfway through her second term as governor, having won reelection in a landslide after being the one and only governor in the United States who did not lock down her state for even a single day during Coronasteria, a.k.a. “the pandemic.”
It is a mystery how someone with Noem’s wisdom and political experience could commit such a colossal blunder. And let’s be clear, it wasn’t shooting the dog that has sunk her; it was including the anecdote in her book. Had she simply shot the dog and went on with her life, nobody would have known. Even if some opposition researcher had found out in a hypothetical campaign for higher office, nobody would have cared.
Like Wilson, Noem has managed to torpedo a career that featured notable good deeds with the poor choice of a few words.
That words count far more than deeds says more about the American public than it does about Noem. The firestorm that has erupted over poor, vicious “Cricket” (the late canine) certainly includes opportunistic political opponents. No Democrat wants to see Noem picked as Trump’s running mate or otherwise continue to ascend the political ladder. But even conservatives and other heretofore allies have joined her detractors, shrieking their self-righteous indignation on social media under the hashtag #KristiNoemisamonster.
Given the behavior of American presidents just in the years since Cricket met his demise, it is truly terrifying to consider how infantile the American public has become, especially in a democratic republic with most restraints upon the democratic part all but destroyed.
“You asked for miracles, I give you the F.B.I.” So said Hans Gruber, one of the greatest movie villains of all time, played to perfection by the late Alan Rickman. Gruber and his gang are thieves posing as terrorists and need to defeat an electromagnetic lock protecting hundreds of millions of dollars in securities. Although they are unable to do so themselves, Gruber tells his hacker, Theo, not to worry.
What does Gruber know that Theo does not? He knows the U.S. federal government and what local cop Al Johnson calls their “universal terrorist playbook.” The F.B.I. arrives on the scene of the supposed terrorist hostage situation and immediately orders a reluctant city employee to shut down power for ten square blocks of Los Angeles in order to cut off power to the target building. The worker complies and power to the building and the electromagnetic lock protecting the securities is cut off.
One can’t help but laugh as the criminals gleefully charge into the vault to the tune of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But it is no laughing matter that this is a perfect metaphor for U.S. foreign policy in general, and Middle Eastern policy in particular.
In the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden effectively said the same thing as Gruber. Knowing he could never invade or otherwise fight the United States in its own hemisphere, he said he intended instead to provoke the U.S. into invading the Middle East where it could be defeated in a war or attrition, just as he and his fellow Mujahideen had previously defeated the Soviets. That provocation came on September 11, 2001.
It is unclear if Bin Laden was actually involved in the attacks. But they were certainly carried out by likeminded people and Bin Laden had no problem with allowing Americans to assume he was the mastermind. The attacks did just what Bin Laden hoped they would do – get the U.S. to run the “universal terrorist playbook,” meaning going to war in the Middle East where its soldiers could be killed more easily, and its finances drained.
Twenty-three years later, the big, dumb U.S. empire hasn’t learned a thing. In those two decades, federal government debt has skyrocketed from less than $6 trillion to over $30 trillion. Interest on the debt alone is now over $1 trillion per year. And what have American taxpayers, present and future, received for this enormous expenditure? The Taliban has been replaced with the Taliban. Iraq now has a Shiite government that is allied closely with Iran – the same Iran whose “influence in the region” Washington constantly warns against. Libya now has the most vibrant slave trade in African history.
The real tragedy here is success or failure in any of these endeavors doesn’t affect the lives of people living in the United States one way or another. It’s just a giant rip off that funnels trillions to connected defense contractors while allowing lifelong bureaucrats in the Administrative and Deep States to continue in the delusion that they’re running the world when instead they’re running the U.S. into the ground.
“Big Johnson” from Die Hard exemplifies these would be masters of the universe perfectly. He displays the precise combination of unbridled arrogance and cluelessness as he condescends to the local rubes while being played like a fiddle by Gruber as do the Tony Blinkens and Victoria Nulands of real-world D.C. Every faction in the Middle East has played the empire for its own ends while the empire stumbles around the region like a drunk looking for a brawl. Both Israel and its regional enemies have done so, often simultaneously. So have Washington’s supposed Islamic allies. The empire sees itself as James Bond; in reality its more like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Puppies and pretty girls beware.
Just as it was becoming impossible to deny the empire’s proxy war in Ukraine is lost, along comes another one.
How convenient.
Of course, we heard the usual pronouncements from U.S. politicians about their commitment to “our close ally Israel,” meaning their commitment to send billions of dollars to them, most of which will be spent with American defense contractors.
Anyone familiar with my writing over the past two decades can probably guess my position: no, not a penny. However, I also expressed my opposition to the empire dictating to Israel about how to respond. That’s the real reason for the foreign aid, besides enriching defense contractors. The empire buys compliance with its wishes.
For expressing these opinions, I was immediately called “antisemitic” on social media. If the source of this smear was the shrieking neocon harpy, Nikki Haley, or anyone of her ilk, I wouldn’t even bother to respond. But since some of this is coming from friends, both of the real world and social media variety, I thought I would write about this from a personal perspective.
I consider myself first and foremost an American. But like every American who ever lived, including “native Americans” [sic], my ancestors came from other countries. As you may have surmised from my surname, the ancestors on my father’s side came from Ireland.
So, how could an Irish American possibly understand having your country violently attacked by terrorists? Those of you with historical knowledge beyond three weeks ago are already chuckling. For the rest, Ireland was embroiled in a violent civil war for a large part of the 20th century. A religiously inspired, non-governmental paramilitary group launched frequent terrorist attacks on both government officials and civilians alike. They assassinated people. They kidnapped people. They bombed parades. You may remember a U2 song about one such incident. Good tune.
Peace was finally established in the 1990s, before I had formed much of a political philosophy. But were it still going on today, I would oppose any aid by the U.S. government to either side of the dispute and any U.S. intervention into the internal affairs of Ireland.
I suppose that makes me “anti-Celtic” to the terminally limbic currently parroting the empire’s “antisemitic” slur against me or anyone else who opposes U.S. involvement in the current conflict in Israel.
Let me say for the record that I do not hate my fellow Irishmen. That does not follow from my mere opposition to taxing Americans to subsidize them. Nor does my criticism of the Irish government’s abysmal Covid policies translate to hatred for the Irish people. One would think this goes without saying. Apparently, it doesn’t.
I can imagine there are some who consider my analogy a poor one. After all, Ireland is a “western” country of “white people” and can’t compare to what the Israelis are facing in the Middle East. While I don’t share that view, I will respond to it.
Perhaps I’ve buried the lede, but my mother’s ancestors came from Lebanon. Specifically, they were part of the Maronite Christian majority of that country before large influxes of Palestinian Muslims in 1948 and 1967. Some of my mother’s ancestors had already come to America to escape Ottoman rule before WWI. Her own parents came in the late 1920s after a financial crisis cleaned out my industrialist grandfather. But many are still there.
Beirut was once called, “The Paris of the Middle East.” It was a breathtakingly beautiful city in a country with a 5,000-year history of advanced civilization. It was all but destroyed by the same people the Israelis are fighting today.
I have relatives who were killed or displaced during the bloody civil war that raged in Lebanon 1975-90. Violence continues in Lebanon to this day thanks to the presence of Islamic paramilitary groups like Hezbollah (which is also a political party). It is not an exaggeration to say that Lebanon’s and Israel’s problems are virtually identical.
Still, I disapprove of the previous U.S. interventions in Lebanon and would oppose any new subsidies or interventions there in the future, even if ostensibly to rid Lebanon of the violent fanatics who have destroyed it. This doesn’t mean I hate my fellow Lebanese any more than I hate the Irish or the Jews, for that matter. It’s simply a political position. And it’s the right one, for several reasons.
First, I am in a political relationship (whether I like it or not) with 330 million or so other Americans, most of whom do not have familial relationships with people in Ireland or Lebanon. Said political relationship does not give me the right to force them to defend the countries of my ancestors any more than it gives them the right to do likewise to me.
I would consider it especially bad behavior on my part to try to shame other Americans into involving themselves in the affairs of other countries because I happen to have relatives there. And it would be foolhardy of them to allow me to do so.
Second, we already have quite a bit of data on the results of U.S. interventions in the Middle East and those data are not difficult to interpret. Every intervention has been an unmitigated disaster, without exception yielding results precisely opposite of the stated goals. Every. Single. One. And in return for this long train of debacles, American taxpayers have received nothing but $30 trillion in debt and an economy disproportionately skewed towards producing weapons of war that add nothing to their quality of life.
There is no reason to believe it’s going to be any different this time.
Lastly, for those naïve enough to believe the U.S. government’s involvement in this affair is humanitarian or based on any sympathy for the Jewish people, it isn’t. This is pure imperial politics, nothing more. The empire wishes to maintain its hegemony and this conflict will help it do that. It never stopped fighting the Cold War against Russia, despite the fall of the USSR.
Operating under the “Whoever controls Eurasia controls the world” thesis, the empire has done everything it can to keep Russia from establishing economic relationships with Europe or the Middle East. Thus the “humanitarian” regime-change operations in Syria and Ukraine throughout this century, in countries which “coincidentally” are home to Russia’s only warm water ports on this side of the world.
This is also the reason for the disproportionate hatred of Iran. Were Iran and Syria to form a “Shiite corridor” in the Middle East, Russia would have an opportunity to exert enormous influence in the region. That the Iraq War made this corridor far more possible by handing Iraq to the Iran-friendly Shiites is proof that the empire can be both evil and stupid at the same time.
Were Russia still supplying Europe with most of its energy through the Nordstream pipelines, the empire’s control over Eurasia would be seriously threatened.
So, the empire badgered the Russians into invading Ukraine and now has a proxy war in the Middle East to, at the very least, keep that region in a state of chaos, making it difficult for Russia (or China) to strengthen relationships there.
It’s also an opportunity for another large scale rip off of the American taxpayer. Notice that the media are already preparing the American public that this will be a “long war” that will require America’s full support. Translation: we’re about to lose Ukraine as a funding vehicle and we’re going to pivot back to the Middle East.
The empire will send billions to Israel because it wants Israel to respond to the Hamas attack in a way that will benefit the empire, not the Israeli or American people.
This not a binary choice between U.S. support or the destruction of Israel as a nation. Israel is a rich country with a modern military, including over 200 nuclear warheads. It could crush the Palestinians in Gaza in a single day and is capable of defeating every hostile nation in the region.
The empire doesn’t want that. It wants its “long war,” meaning years of funding, with complicated rules of engagement for the Israelis so that everyone can tell themselves the lie that they are not killing civilians. Meanwhile the empire can go on sucking the lifeblood out of both Israeli and American taxpayers for the benefit of its corporate partners.
One might be tempted to think it is at least a good thing that the empire restrains Israel. After all, no one wants to see the whole region turned to glass, no matter how heinous the attacks on Israel may have been.
Neither does Israel. When the war is over and the enemy defeated, Israel still has to go on existing in the region. It does them no good to create a desert around their country. Absent U.S. involvement, Israel would have to tailor its response to its consequences. It must do enough to eliminate the threat, if possible, while not going so far as to alienate the rest of the region.
Contrary to neocon talking points, Israel is not “surrounded by enemies bent on its destruction.” Egypt tried to warn Israel about the Hamas attack. Its government has no more love for the Palestinians than Israel does. Much progress has been made between Israel and its Muslim neighbors in the past decade. It is not in Israel’s nor its neighbors’ interests to return to 1967.
It is not in American taxpayers’ interest to be involved in this conflict. Americans are constantly told Israel is a “key ally” but are never told how they benefit from this alliance. They don’t. The empire benefits. And like every other empire in human history, its interests run contrary to those of its citizens.
Like Great Britain before it, America became the richest country in the world with a limited government and a free market economy. Also like Great Britain, it is bankrupting itself trying to maintain a global empire. Adding a proxy war in Israel to the debacle in Ukraine might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back (no pun intended).
