A major factor in what seems to be the terminal decline of the United States lies in the reality that most Americans appear to have little or no pride in their country or any understanding of its need for an independent, flexible, and largely neutral foreign policy.
They elect, for example, presidents like George W, Bush, a good man who surrounded himself with greedy, war-wanting advisers and who, with them, invaded Iraq and thereby opened what is apparently an unstoppable slide toward bankruptcy and a war without end with the Muslim world. Or like Barack Obama, a decidedly ungood man who defines his party’s compassionate, humane, and equal regard for the well-being of “all Americans” by repeatedly interfering on the side of Black Americans in ongoing judicial proceedings, by continuing a violence-promoting presidential tradition of working against democratically elected Muslim governments, and by hiring 16,000 presumably armed IRS agents to grind every last penny out of the citizenry for a health plan he and they know will complete America’s bankruptcy. How any American proud of his county could elect either man — especially Obama — is hard to understand.
But let us leave aside presidential politics for the moment and look at the single issue that defines the mendacity, cowardice, and lack of respect for America and its independence that is harbored by the U.S. bipartisan governing elite — America’s relationship with Israel. In no other area of Washington’s foreign and domestic policies is there such a clear lack of concern and respect for genuine U.S. interests shown by the governing elite and those who vote them into office.
Now, before the U.S.-citizen-run-and-funded Israel-First thugocracy issues its traditional, lying, and debate-silencing description of the foregoing as anti-Semitic, let me say that personally I do not care what Israel does or not do in the Middle East. While neither Israel, the United States, the Maldives nor any other nation-state has a right to “survive” — this bit of fantasy was crafted by Israel and its Western apologists — Israel, like every other nation, has a legitimate, unquestionable right to defend itself via whatever means it decides are needed to try to ensure national survival, and this regardless of whatever that increasingly delusional farce known as “international law” has to say. If Israel’s national security requires that it must steal Palestinian land on which to build ever-expanding settlements, treat Palestinians as colonists, or even wage war until the Palestinians are convincingly defeated and pliable or are driven out of Palestine altogether, so be it. The Palestinians and their co-religionists, of course, have an equal, reciprocal right.
Nor am I offended or surprised with what Israel’s intelligence services, and its thousands of fifth column U.S. citizens and dozens of mouth-piece media pundits, do in the United States, where their activities include corrupting our political system; facilitating and paying for media lies about the “mutually beneficial” U.S.-Israel relationship; suborning U.S. citizens to spy for Israel; stealing U.S. military, nuclear, and industrial secrets; and openly making our last three presidents (Clinton, Bush, and Obama) and most members of the Senate and House appear to be — please pardon the expression — Israel’s bitches.
All of the foregoing activities are part of the age-old intelligence game which every nation-state plays. The only reason for Americans to complain is that any nation-state with an ounce of self-respect and the goal of maintaining its independence would do its best to eradicate such nefarious, national-security damaging operations conducted by an enemy nation — and Israel, just like Russia, China, or Iran, stands self-indicted as enemy of the United States because it conducts these intelligence activities in America. (NB: For an excellent, fact-based description and analysis of the extent and cost of the anti-U.S. activities conducted by the Israeli government and their U.S. citizen fifth-column, based on U.S. government documents acquired via the FOIA process, see the publications of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP, http://www.irmep.org).
The tragic rub for America, therefore, does not come from the state of Israel doing what all nations have a right to do — self-defense — or from Israel conducting the intelligence operations which are part and parcel of each nation-state’s national-defense strategy. Indeed, this entire discussion has very little to do with the small, inconsequential, and probably transitory state of Israel.
Rather, it has everything to do with the devastating impact of the U.S.-Israel relationship on America, an impact which can only be attributed to the craven and venal readiness of our bipartisan governing elite, other nominal U.S. citizens, and a media that largely is Israel-First’s cat‘s paw, to grovel and accept from Israel and its U.S.-citizen supporters any kind of degrading insult and economic or national-security damage and not respond with any effective campaign by U.S. counter-intelligence forces. A nation with self-respect and a concern for its posterity would labor mightily to halt such actions, and to arrest, try, convict, and, pray God, execute the perpetrators — especially those who are U.S. citizens — who are found guilty of espionage and/or treason.
Regarding the hellish predicament in which elected U.S. officials have put America, one must note, for example, Sunday‘s announcement by the Israeli government that it will build 1,200 new houses in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. There is no argument here that Israel lacks the right to build those houses, but it must be recognized that the timing of the announcement amounts to an attack on the United States and its all-but-dissipated international prestige and reputation for even-handedness. It also is an Israeli government reminder to the world that the current U.S. government is its reliable, bought-and-paid-for toady.
Israel’s decision comes on the eve of another U.S.-instigated round of Israel-Palestine peace talks, and just days after the U.S. Senate-cum-Knesset members McCain and Graham helped solidify the power of Egypt’s new, Israel-protecting military dictatorship by helping that military justify the exclusion from power of the legitimately elected Muslim Brotherhood. (NB: One wonders how much U.S. taxpayer money the Israel-First operatives McCain and Graham spent — with Obama’s approval — to bribe Egypt’s military to conduct Sunday’s helicopter strikes on the mujahideen operating near the Sinai-Israel border?)
It is hard to imagine how many more U.S. military and intelligence-service lives will be lost, how many more years of war the U.S. will wage against the mujahideen, and how many more hundreds of billions of dollars will be wasted because, in fortnight, McCain, Graham, Rice, Kerry, and Obama have knowingly done all in their power to reinforce the correct perceptions of America’s Islamist enemies; namely, that the U.S. governing elite will swallow and then smilingly acquiesce in any public degradation that issues from the Israeli regime and (b) that it will keep taking any and all actions that protect Israel even though such actions incite the Muslim world’s steadily deepening hatred for America, and ensure that American kids will be fighting and dieing in an endless war with Islam.
When Osama bin Laden was alive he argued that the leaders of the United States, its Western allies, and Israel regarded “Muslim lives as cheap” as compared to the worth of their own citizens’ lives. What he could not imagine, I think, is that at least U.S. leaders and those who vote for them have little or no regard for the lives of U.S. citizens, considering them cheap and expendable as long as the status quo in U.S.-Israel policy can be maintained and Israel-First kept happy and contributing money to Republican and Democratic election campaigns.
At day’s end, the U.S. governing elite and those who elect it have knowingly sacrificed America’s foreign-policy independence by committing the country to a set of pro-Israel policies drafted by multiple Israeli governments and paid for by U.S.-citizen Israel-Firsters, policies which motivate and multiply America’s Islamist enemies. This is a great, signal, and even enviable victory for the Israeli nation-state and its U.S. fifth column, but it is one that primarily is attributable not to those entities but to the near-traitorous behavior of America’s bipartisan governing elite, its media supporters, and voters who take no pride in their country and appear to care not a whit about whether it recovers the foreign-policy independence that is a sine qua non for survival in this increasingly Hobbesian world.
Amidst all the demands for harsh treatment for Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden — demands which I support — perhaps it is time to consider similar treatment for those presidents, senators, congressman and media pundits who eagerly act as the agents of a foreign power and not as the servants and defenders of our now fading Republic. What, after all, will cause the greatest damage to America, leaked intelligence programs or an endless, bloody, and bankrupting war against 1.5 billion Muslims fought overseas and, inevitably, inside the United States? The U.S.-citizen behaviors that lead to both disasters can only be described as disloyalty bordering on treason.
