#American Foreign Policy

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Tim Campbell

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 1, 2024

Today’s story is that in the negotiations to fund the government and pass the national supplemental security bill, MAGA Republicans appear to be losing ground. Biden appears to be trying to weaken them further by making it clear it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are preventing new, strict border security legislation.

The first of two continuing resolutions to fund the government for fiscal year 2024 will expire tomorrow. Fiscal year 2024 began on October 1, 2023, and Congress agreed to a topline budget, but it has been unable to fund the necessary appropriations because MAGA Republicans have insisted on having their extreme demands met in those measures. In this struggle, former president Trump has urged his loyalists not to give way, telling them in September 2023: “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!” 

But a poll from last September showed that 75% of Americans oppose using brinksmanship over a government shutdown to bargain for partisan gain. 

After kicking the can down the road by passing three previous continuing resolutions, House Republicans a week ago expected a shutdown. But today they backed off. The House passed a short-term continuing resolution that pushes back the dates on which the two continuing resolutions expire, from March 1 and March 8 to March 8 and March 22. The vote was 320 to 99 in the House, with 113 Republicans joining 207 Democrats to pass the measure. Ninety-seven Republicans opposed the bill, as did two Democrats who were protesting the lack of aid to Ukraine. 

Tonight, the Senate approved the continuing resolution by a vote of 77 to 13. President Joe Biden is expected to sign it tomorrow. “What we have done today has overcome the opposition of the MAGA hard right and gives us a formula for completing the appropriations process in a way that does not shut the government down and capitulate to extremists,” Senate majority leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said.

Trump opposes helping Ukraine in its fight to resist Russia’s invasion, and under his orders, MAGA Republicans have also stalled the national security supplemental bill, which contains Ukrainian aid, as well as aid to Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and humanitarian aid to Gaza. The measure passed the Senate on February 13 by a strong bipartisan vote of 70 to 29, and is expected to pass the House if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) takes it up, but so far, he has refused.

Today, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) told reporters that “several” House Republicans are willing to sign a discharge petition to force Speaker Johnson to bring a national security supplemental measure to the floor for a vote. A simple majority can force a vote on a bill through a discharge petition, but such a measure is rare because it undermines the House speaker. With Johnson refusing to take up the Senate measure, Fitzpatrick and his colleague Representative Jared Golden (D-ME) have prepared their own pared-down aid measure. Fitzpatrick told CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday that “[w]e are trying to add an additional pressure point on something that has to happen.” 

Speakers from the parliaments of 23 nations wrote to Johnson yesterday and urged him to take up the Senate measure, saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has “challenged the entire democratic world, jeopardizing the security in the whole European and Euro-Atlantic area,” and that “the world is rapidly moving towards the destruction of the sustainable world order.”  

On Tuesday, Johnson met with President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate majority leader Schumer, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to discuss the importance of funding the government and passing the national security supplemental bill. There, he was the odd man out as the other five pressed upon him how crucial funding for Ukraine is for U.S. national security.

Yesterday, Johnson told Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that the leaders told him he was “on an island by myself, and it was me versus everyone else in the room.” He went on: “What the liberal media doesn’t understand, Sean, is that if you’re here in Washington and you’re described as a leader that’s on an island by themselves, it probably means you’re standing with the American people.” 

But an AP-NORC poll released today shows that it is not Johnson but the others at that meeting who are standing with the American people: 74% of Americans, including 62% of Republicans, support U.S. aid to Ukraine’s military. 

The struggle between Biden and Trump for control over U.S. politics played out starkly today as both were in Texas to talk about immigration. Both say the influx of migrants at the southern border of the United States needs to be better managed. But Trump blames Biden for what he compares to a war in which an “invasion” of criminal “fighting-age men” are pouring over the border. (NBC News noted that “there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the United States” and that, in fact, their review of crime data ”shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants.”)

Trump promises he would solve immigration issues instantly with executive orders, although his orders during his term faced legal challenges.  

In contrast to Trump’s promise to dictate a solution, Biden emphasized that the government should work for the people. In Texas, he noted that the federal government has rushed emergency personnel and funds to the state to combat the deadly wildfires there that have burned more than a million acres, and he urged Congress to pass a law to address border issues, as he has asked it to since he took office. 

Such a measure is popular, and earlier this month, Trump undermined a bill that was tilted so far to the right that it drew the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and the U.S. Border Patrol union. Senators from both parties had spent four months hammering the bill out at the insistence of House Republicans, who then killed it when Trump, apparently hoping to keep the issue open for his campaign, told them to. 

Today, Biden urged Congress to pass the $20.2 billion bipartisan border bill that would, he said, give border patrol officers the resources they need: 1,500 more border agents, 100 cutting-edge machines to detect and stop illegal fentanyl, 100 additional immigration judges to deal with the backlog of cases, 4,300 more asylum officers, more immigrant visas, and emergency authority for the president to shut the border when it becomes overwhelmed. 

Biden spoke directly to Trump: “Instead of playing politics with the issue, instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me, or I'll join you, in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill. We can do it together…. Instead of playing politics with the issue, why don't we just get together and get it done. Let’s remember who the heck we work for. We work for the American people, not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. We work for the American people.”

Trump may not share that perspective. Last night, Maggie Haberman and Andrew Higgins of the New York Times reported that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has undermined democracy in Hungary, will visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago next week as Trump scrambles to find the more than half a billion dollars he needs to pay the fines and penalties courts have ordered. “We cannot interfere in other countries’ elections,” Orbán said last week, “but we would very much like to see President Donald Trump return to the White House.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#GOPutin #political cartoons #Tim Campbell #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #American Foreign Policy #war in Ukraine #Russia #dictators #Orban #government funding #feckless Speaker of the House #National Security

[protoslacker]

The miserable fact is that these scores of deaths are preventable: those from famine and disease, by allowing in aid; those from the ongoing Israeli military assault, by an immediate cease-fire. But the Israeli government has every intention of hastening this cataclysm, and the US government is still, unconscionably, horrifyingly, refusing to stop supporting this accelerating genocide.

Sarah Burch at Jacobin. Rafah May Prove the Most Dire Moment in Israel’s War on Gaza

Sarah Burch is an editorial coordinator at Jewish Voice for Peace. She lives in Brooklyn.

#gaza #american foreign policy #genocide #rafah #israel #jewish voice for peace

[kp777]

#palestine #two state solution #american foreign policy #u.n. security council #united nations

[workersolidarity]

[📹 A clip from Fox News covering the drone strike that killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded 25 others at a U.S. military outpost in northeastern Jordan near the border with Syria.]

🇯🇴⚔️🇺🇸 🚨

💥THREE U.S. SOLDIERS KILLED IN DRONE STRIKE ON U.S. MILITARY OUTPOST IN JORDAN💥

Three United States service members were killed Sunday in an overnight drone strike by local resistance factions targeting a United States Military outpost in Jordan, east of occupied Palestine.

According to a report by U.S. mainstream media organization CNN, three United States Army soldiers were killed and dozens more wounded when a Resistance drone targeted "Tower 22," a U.S. military outpost located in northern Jordan, near the border with Syria.

On Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a statement about the strike, stating that “last night, three US service members were killed – and many wounded – during an unmanned aerial drone attack on our forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border."

“While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq,” the American President claimed.

United States Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed the attack on Tower 22, saying on Sunday that three U.S. military personnel had been killed and another 25 wounded as result of a one-way drone strike that "impacted at a base in northeast Jordan."

In response to the strikes, the United States President swore on Sunday that U.S. authorities would "hold to account" those that launched the strikes, with an investigation now underway, while also claiming that, while the facts are still being gathered, "We know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”

"These service members embodied the very best of our nation: Unwavering in their bravery. Unflinching in their duty. Unbending in their commitment to our country — risking their own safety for the safety of their fellow Americans, and our allies and partners with whom we stand in the fight against terrorism. … [H]ave no doubt – we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing," the American President added.

According to American mainstream media, as of this weekend, there had been a total of 158 strikes of varying types since October 7th, mostly targeting U.S. and Coation forces in the region. Though the latest drone strike marks the first time United States service members were killed in an attack by Resistance organizations.

No comments were issued by the United States military regarding why American air defenses failed to intercept the drone on its way to Tower 22, which U.S. authorities claim is part of an "advise-and-assist mission" in conjunction with Jordanian military forces.

#source1

#source2

@WorkerSolidarityNews

#jordan #jordan news #drone strike #middle east #middle east news #us military #us forces #us news #us politics #us foreign policy #foreign affairs #american foreign policy #centcom #us wars #us occupation forces #us occupation #war #syria #syria news #politics #news #geopolitics #world news #global news #international news #breaking news #current events #gaza #palestine #israel

[doctorslippery]

#lady of the lake #kings #swords #american foreign policy #damn

[the-funtime-autocrat]

Many Americans go hungry or lack medical care while Washington lavishes money on these two pet causes. Biden’s aid proposals have unmasked the secret alliance between Israel and Ukraine. Some Israelis even speak of Ukraine as a ‘second Israel.’ America’s Israel lobby is the prime motivator of intense support in Congress and the media for the Ukraine War. The two conflicts are merging into one very expensive pre-election campaign.

-Eric Margolis, "Jolly Little Wars" (October 26th 2023).

#american foreign policy #geopolitics #Palestine #Israel #Gaza #Syria #Ukraine #Iran #Russia #People's Republic of China #israeli palestinian conflict #current state of affairs

[betweenthetimeandsound]

"Despite all we know about the Iraq War and the War on Terror, despite the fact that we live with the repercussions every day, foreign policy remains a fuzzy, distant concern. For much of the rest of the world, in contrast, South Africa’s case has been an intervention and an inspiration, a confirmation of their longtime understanding of reality. They are asking Americans to see their foreign policy as non-Americans do: the thing about America that matters the most."

A very interesting article about the United States, American exceptionalism, and foreign policy. What piqued me was their indifference towards the rulings of the ICJ and the ICC, including with withdrawing from the latter. There's also a referendum on the current rules-based international order, of which this case lays on the balance.

I wonder what it would mean to be in a multi-polar world--would that accelerate hopes for peace, or lead to war?

#united states #israel #israel palestine conflict #i/p #icj #american foreign policy #american exceptionalism #peace now #palestine #gaza #american politics #international politics

[stopthewoke]

What about Haiti, a country ruined by American foreign policy? Oh, the people are too dark for y'all.

#president biden #biden administration #american foreign policy #democrats #republicans #progressives #liberals #conservatives

[geekysteven]

Oh, you're an American? Yeah, right.

Name 5 disastrous foreign policy decisions.

#american history #american foreign policy

[bunnyhugs22]

(Jacobin Article)

#american foreign policy #imperialism #colonialism #american empire

[eretzyisrael]

Israel should stick to its commitment to withhold military technology from China, while proactively exploring collaboration with China in agricultural, environmental, medical and other non-military fields.  It should monitor but not necessarily exclude Chinese investment in Israeli companies, and find new ways of using the soft power of its technology sector to influence China’s perception of Israel.

After nearly a decade of discussion with Chinese officials about the Middle East, I am convinced that China remains unsure about its prospects in a region where American willingness to commit blood and treasure is diminishing. China is rethinking its position. Israel should make China a diplomatic priority, rather than an afterthought.

Washington won’t like this, any more than it liked Israel’s refusal to provide arms to Ukraine this year,  but its authority to dictate policy to Jerusalem has well-defined limits. The main fact on the ground is that America doesn’t need Persian Gulf oil and China does. That presents opportunities as well as risks for Israel, and Israel should put its own security interests first.

#israel #china #technology #american foreign policy

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Stephen Brodner

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 18, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 19, 2024

It seems to me that the news tends to be slow on weekends during the Biden administration, while Mondays are a firehose. (In contrast, Trump’s people tended to dump news in the middle of the night, after Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity’s show was over, which may or may not have been a coincidence.) 

So, lots going on today as the Biden administration continues to make the case that a democratic government can work for ordinary Americans while Trump and his supporters insist that a country run by such an administration is an apocalyptic nightmare. 

First, economic analyst Steven Rattner reported today that according to The Economist, since the end of 2019 the American economy has grown about 8%, while the European Union has grown about 3%, Japan 1%, and Britain not at all. Rattner and economist Brendan Duke reported that entrepreneurship in the U.S. is booming, with 5.2 million “likely employer” business applications filed between January 2021 and December 2023, more than a 33% increase over those filed between 2017 and 2019. 

Economists Justin Wolfers and Arin Dube noted that, as Wolfers wrote, “[f]or the first time in forever, real wage gains are going to those who need them most.” Wages have gone up for all but the top 20% of Americans, whose wages have fallen, reducing inequality. 

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) head Lina Khan announced that after the FTC challenged a set of AstraZeneca inhaler patents last September as being improperly listed, today AstraZeneca said it would cap patients’ out-of-pocket costs for its inhalers at $35, down from hundreds. Earlier this month, Boehringer Ingelheim did the same.

The Environmental Protection Agency today announced it was banning asbestos, which is linked to more than 40,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and was already partly banned, but which is still used in a few products. More than 50 other countries already ban it. 

Also today, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to advance women’s health research to integrate women’s health into federal research initiatives, strengthening data collection and making funding available for research in a comprehensive effort to equalize attention to men’s and women’s health across their lifespans. The federal government did not require women’s health to be included in federally funded medical research until 1993. In a speech today, First Lady Jill Biden recalled that in the early 1970s, researchers studying estrogen’s effect in preventing heart attacks selected 8,341 people for the study. All of them were men. 

Last month, First Lady Biden announced $100 million in funding for research into women’s health, and last Thursday Vice President Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood clinic that provides abortion care in addition to breast cancer screening, fibroid care, and contraceptive care. She noted that women’s reproductive health has been in crisis since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, with women in some states unable to access the care they need.

Former president Trump, who is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, prompted some of the economic reporting I noted above when he tried to spark attacks on President Joe Biden by asking on social media if people feel better off now than they were four years ago. This was perhaps a mistaken message, since four years ago we were in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Supermarket shelves were empty, toilet paper was hard to find, healthcare professionals were wearing garbage bags and reusing masks because the Trump administration had permitted the strategic stockpile to run low, deaths were mounting, the stock market had crashed, and the economy had ground to a halt. 

On this day four years ago, I recorded that “more than 80 national security professionals broke with their tradition of non-partisanship to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden for president, saying that while they were from all parties and disagreed with each other about pretty much everything else, they had come together to stand against Trump.”

Here in the present, Trump appears to be getting more desperate as his problems, including his apparent growing difficulty speaking and connecting with his audience, mount. Last week, in an interview, he echoed Republican lawmakers and pundits when he suggested he was open to cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, something Republican lawmakers try to avoid saying to general audiences because it is hugely unpopular. Trump has since tried to repair that damage, for example, when he insisted on Saturday that it was he, rather than Biden, who would protect those programs. (In fact, Biden has called for expanding the social safety net, not contracting it, and last year forced Republicans to back off from proposed cuts.)  

Saturday’s speech illustrated the degree to which Trump’s rhetoric has become more profane and apocalyptic as he vows revenge on those he sees as his enemies. Campaigning in Vandalia, Ohio, for his chosen Senate candidate, Trump suggested that certain migrants “are not people.” Then he said he would put tariffs of 100% on cars manufactured in Mexico by Chinese companies for sale in the U.S., “if I get elected. Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country.”

By Sunday, Trump’s embrace of the word “bloodbath” had created a firestorm. Surrogates insisted that he was talking about the auto industry alone, but as scholar of rhetoric Jen Mercieca and legal commentator Asha Rangappa note, Trump is a master at giving himself enough plausible deniability for his supporters to claim that, as Rangappa put it, “he wasn’t saying what he was saying. I know what he meant. He knows what he meant. You know what he meant.” In the same speech Saturday, Trump called those convicted of violence on January 6, 2021, “hostages” and “patriots,” and has said he would pardon them, appearing to endorse violence to return him to power.

This morning, Trump’s lawyers told a court that Trump cannot come up with either the money or a bond for the $454 million plus interest he owes in penalties and disgorgement after he and the Trump Organization were found guilty of fraud in a Manhattan court earlier this year. The lawyers say they have approached 30 different companies to back the bond, and they have all declined. They will not issue a bond without cash or stock behind it. Trump's real estate holdings, which are likely highly leveraged, aren’t enough.

Last year, Trump said under oath that he had “substantially in excess of 400 million in cash,” and that amount was “going up very substantially every month.” Apparently, that statement was a lie, or the money has evaporated, or Trump doesn’t want to use it to pay this court-ordered judgment on top of the $91.6 million bond he posted earlier this month in the second E. Jean Carroll case.

Timothy O’Brien of Bloomberg notes that Trump’s desperate need for cash makes him even more of a national security threat than his retention of classified documents made it clear he already was. “[T]he going is likely to get rough for Trump as this plays out,” O’Brien writes, “and he’s likely to become more financially desperate with each passing day,” making him “easy prey for interested lenders—and an easy mark for overseas interests eager to influence US policy.”

This morning, Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post reported that Trump is turning to his 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort to advise him in 2024. Dawsey notes that the campaign’s focus appears to be on the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, which suggests Trump’s people are concerned that his nomination will be contested. Manafort has been known as a “convention fixer” since 1976.

Manafort is also the key link between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Manafort worked for many years for Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovich, who was closely tied to Russian president Vladimir Putin. When Ukrainians threw Yanukovich out of office in 2014, Manafort was left with large debts to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. In 2016, Manafort began to work for Trump’s campaign. An investigation by a Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee into the links between Trump’s campaign and Russia determined that Manafort had shared polling data from the Trump camp with his partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, who the senators assessed was a Russian operative.  

In 2018, as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Manafort was found guilty of hiding millions of dollars he had received for lobbying on behalf of Yanukovych and his pro-Russian political party, then getting loans through false financial records when Yanukovych lost power. A judge sentenced him to more than seven years in prison.

Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020, shortly after losing the presidential election.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters from An American #Heather Cox Richardson #normalizing pathology #Election 2024 #Manafort #Stephen Brodner #bloodbath #economic news #social safety net #american foreign policy #TFG's money woes

[protoslacker]

As the United States continues to use its veto power to block the UN Security Council from calling for a ceasefire, war crimes and crimes against humanity are rife, and the risk of genocide is real. States have a positive obligation to prevent and punish genocide and other atrocity crimes. The ICJ’s examination of Israel’s conduct is a vital step for the protection of Palestinian lives, to restore trust and credibility in the universal application of international law, and to pave the way for justice and reparation for victims.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International. ICJ hearings over Israel’s alleged breaches of the Genocide Convention a vital step to help protect Palestinian civilians

Amnesty referenced a November 2023 call by UN Experts to prevent genocide.

US obligations to prevent genocide are not dependent upon future determinations. The UN Experts point out that the obligation to prevent genocide extend beyond states: "[N]ot only States but also non-State actors such as businesses, must do everything it can to immediately end the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people. "

#israel #genocide #icj #law #american foreign policy

[kp777]

By Ralph Nader

Common Dreams - Opinion

Dec. 26, 2023

Congress is poised to send $14.3 billion to Israeli militarism—a “genocide tax” on U.S. taxpayers—without public hearings. What can be done to stop this madness?

The unstoppable Israeli U.S. armed military juggernaut continues its genocidal destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians. The onslaught includes blocking the provision of “food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” openly genocidal orders decreed by Netanyahu and his extreme, blood-thirsty ministers.

The stunning atrocities going on day after day is being recorded by U.S. drones over Gaza and by brave Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army. Over 66 journalists and larger numbers of their families have been slain. Israel has excluded foreign and Israeli journalists for years from Gaza.

This no-holds-barred ferocity came out of the Israeli government’s slumber on October 7th which allowed a few thousand Hamas and other fighters to take their smuggled hand-held weapons and attack soldiers and civilians before being destroyed or driven back to Gaza.

Seventy-five years of Israel military violence against defenseless Palestinians and fifty-six years of violently and illegally occupying their remaining slice of the original Palestine provides some background for Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion’s candid statement: “We have taken their country.” (See, his full statement here).

The overwhelming military superiority of Israel – a nuclear armed nation – in the Middle East has produced a more aggressive Israeli government. Being more secure than ever before doesn’t seem to temper the expansionist missions of right-wing Israeli colonies in the West Bank.

Presently, the narrow Netanyahu majority in the Parliament believes that “nothing can stop us.” Presently, they are right.

Joe Biden and Congress are vigorously enabling the annihilations. The UN is frozen by the Joe Biden administration’s vetoes in the Security Council against ending the carnage in Gaza. The Arab nations either lay in ruins – Syria, Iraq – or are too weak to cause Israeli generals any worry. The rich Arab nations in the Gulf want to do business with prosperous Israel and, other than Qatar, care little about their Palestinian brethren.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are no obstacle. Israel, along with Russia and the U.S. do not belong to the International Criminal Court. The Palestinian Authority is a party, but the practical difficulties of investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza and apprehending the accused are insurmountable. The ICJ’s jurisdiction requires a country to bring Israel before the Court for war crimes or genocide. In any event, the Court’s lead-footed procedures trespass on eternity. So much for international law and the Geneva Conventions. Netanyahu rejects the moral authority of seventeen Israeli human rights groups, including Rabbis and reservist soldiers. Their open letter to President Biden in the December 13, 2023 issue of the New York Times on “The Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Gaza Strip” was ignored by the media despite the truth and courage it embodied.

In the U.S., protests and demonstrations are everywhere. Many are organized by Jewish human rights groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Standing Together, Veterans for Peace and various student organizations. Everywhere Biden travels there are people from all backgrounds protesting.

A few days ago, the first protests by labor union members occurred in Oakland, California. Union activists could turn their attention to why, for years, union leaders put billions of dollars into riskier lower-interest Israeli bonds rather than U.S. Treasuries or bond funds investing in America. Like U.S. weapon deliveries, purchases of Israeli bonds by states, cities and unions have surged since October 7th.

Pope Francis, informed of the Israeli attack on the only Catholic Church and Convent in Gaza, which housed people with disabilities, killing and injuring Christians sheltering there, sorrowfully said: “Some would say, ‘It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”

In 2015, over 400 Rabbis from Israel, the USA and Canada called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes as being contrary to international law and Jewish tradition. Their successors Rabbis for Human Rights are being ignored by the regime.

The Head of the U.S. Bishops Conference and the National Council of Churches, representing millions of parishioners, condemned the bombings but received little coverage.

There is only one institution that could stop Netanyahu’s mass military massacres of the Palestinian people. That is the U.S. Congress. As long as over 90% of the politicians there automatically support AIPAC, the Israeli Government Can Do No Wrong Lobby, even a peace-loving Joe Biden cannot deter Netanyahu. Bibi (his nickname) could simply say to a hypothetically transformed Biden “Joe, take it up with OUR Congress.”

How has AIPAC achieved such domination on Capitol Hill? By years of relentless lobbying and the smear of “anti-semitism” to anyone defying them. AIPAC and its chapters don’t bother with marches or demonstrations. They personally focus on the legislator – one by one. Carrots or sticks. Praise, PAC money and junkets are the Carrots. The Sticks are smears and money for selected primary challengers in their Districts or States. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) called AIPAC “a Hate Group.”

There are about 300,000 citizens spending significant time back in the states working Congress in AIPAC’s favor. They know the doctors, lawyers, accountants, clergy, local politicians, donors, golf champions and other friends of the Senators and Representatives, and forcefully promote Israeli expansionism backed to the hilt by the U.S. government.

AIPAC is proficient in part for lack of any organized opposition. It is also practicing state-of-the-art non-stop grassroots lobbying.

Congress is poised to send $14.3 billion to Israeli militarism—a “genocide tax” on U.S. taxpayers—without public hearings. While growing public opinion in the U.S. is against unconditional backing of the Israeli regime, it has not changed a single vote in Congress. Someday, more organized support for America’s national interest will.

(For calls to your legislators, the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.)

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

#israel hamas war #war crimes #genocide #gaza #benjamin netanyahu #american foreign policy #aipac #ralph nader

[thenamesofthings]

Bombing Iraq Is Not Enough

Reprinted with permission of the New York Times, January 30, 1998

Saddam Hussein must go. This imperative may seem too simple for some experts and too daunting for the Clinton Administration. But if the United States is committed, as the President said in his State of the Union Message, to insuring that the Iraqi leader never again uses weapons of mass destruction, the only way to achieve that goal is to remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power. Any policy short of that will fail.

The good news is this: The Administration has abandoned efforts to win over the Iraqi leader with various carrots. It is clear that Mr. Hussein wants his weapons of mass destruction more than he wants oil revenue or relief for hungry Iraqi children. Now the Administration is reportedly planning military action - a three- or four-day bombing campaign against Iraqi weapons sites and other strategic targets. But the bad news is that this too will fail. In fact, when the dust settles, we may be in worse shape than we are today.

Think about what the world will look like the day after the bombing ends. Mr. Hussein will still be in power - if five weeks of heavy bombing in 1991 failed to knock him out, five days of bombing won’t either. Can the air attacks insure that he will never be able to use weapons of mass destruction again? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Even our smart bombs cannot reliably hit and destroy every weapons and storage site in Iraq, for the simple reason that we do not know where all the sites are. After the bombing stops, Mr. Hussein will still be able to manufacture weapons of mass destruction…

—Robert Kagan

Mr. Kagan is the son of Neocon movement founder Donald Fagan, an academic known for realpolitik analyses of the ancient Greek world with strong implications for American policy. He is also the husband of Under Secretary of State Vicky Nuland.

#these people need to go #neoconservatism #WMD #American foreign policy

[millionmovieproject]

#socialism #us politics #american foreign policy #capitalism #fuck capitalism #capitalism kills #we live in hell #socialism now #abolish capitalism #peoples union