3rd August 2024
President Trump:
It has been a good while since I wrote, but your seemingly permanent home living off the deep end when it comes to Israel moves me to do so. You must know that in the history of nation-states few have been worse neighbors than Israel. The Israelis have milked the Jewish experience during World War II, and they are still milking it. No matter how many wars it starts or how Muslims — mostly civilians — it kills, Israel gets a pass because of their exploitation of past war time occurrences, which surely were a tragedy but not one that can forever be used to justify the planned murder and mayhem inflicted mostly on civilians, which was the Jewish experience more than eighty years ago. In addition, our relationship with Israel has, since its founding, been entirely one way, with the possible exception of the Jewish-American money acquired by Truman for use in the 1948 election in return for recognizing the state of Israel.
On the latter score, I can say from experience that in the time I spent at CIA running counter-terrorism operations — from 1992 until 1999 — against Islamist groups, especially al-Qaeda, the Israeli intelligence services only once provided a piece of useful intelligence, and they then refused to let us use it to prevent a possible terrorist attack. At the time, we ignored their refusal and used the report anyway. It secured a good operational result. In general, the Israelis were a non-player in assisting the campaign against terrorism that America waged during the period mentioned above, although they may have had a hand in later events that occurred in America.
I am a non-interventionist to the bone, Mr. President, and that — and your frank and combative rhetoric and the rankness of your foes — is why I voted for you the first time around and will again this fall. But, Sir, you really must get head screwed on correctly about what the word “non-interventionist” means. A lengthy session with Dr. Ron Paul and Senator Rand Paul — with no attendees from your among your foreign policy advisers or Congress — would, with respect, do you a world of good and make you considerably smarter, more realistic, and more prone to commonsense on the issue. You also might allow a few hours to read and think about General Washington’s Farewell Address — a sentence form which is quoted in the title — which is the only sure grounding for an American foreign policy that will protect the republic and its people against the unbelievable stupidity of waging any but a defensive war. This use of the word “defensive” refers very strictly to an invasion of the United States or strikes against an imminent threat, as in the case of General Suleimani.
Our country, Mr. President, is full of very well-educated people who scoff at, deride, and generally piss on any fellow citizen who claims the only sound way to construct a foreign policy that benefits the country and protects its security is by applying a deep knowledge of history and unyielding common sense. Sadly, these well-educated people — who bear a quite close resemblance to fools — have been in the American foreign-policy saddle since 1898, and they have driven the republic to the brink of ruin. History is the best and indispensable teacher of all patriots and the greatest of all Americans, General Washington, is one who learned its lessons well. In his September, 1796, Farewell Address, for example, General Washington clearly laid out the life-and-death danger that would accrue to the United States should it a form either a brainlessly friendly relationship or a brainlessly hateful one with a foreign nation or nations.
Let me leave you, then, with a passage from General Washington’s Farewell Address, one that, although published in 1796, describes exactly how our current relationship with Israel is now at the point where it threatens the republic’s existence via our participation in wars that are none of America’s business and by causing domestic disunity.
Following then, Sir, is that passage from the Farewell Address. Read and ponder it Mr. Trump, it may scrape some barnacles from your eyes and allow you to see that our longstanding, one-way relationship with Israel always has been and is now increasingly likely to be fatal to the republic
“… nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?” ( Italics added by author; https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp)
