Continued: 3. Are these uses in accord with our national and personal values? Not in my view. 4. Do these uses of US aid benefit American taxpayers? While some Israeli actions have served US interests, the balance sheet is clear: Israel's use of American aid consistently damages the United States, harms our economy, and endangers Americans. In fact, this extremely negative outcome was so predictable that even before Israel's creation virtually all State Department and Pentagon experts advocated forcefully against supporting the creation of a Zionist state in the Middle East. President Harry Truman's reply: "I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents." Through the years, as noted above, our aid to Israel has not resulted in a reliable ally. In 1954 Israel tried to bomb US government offices in Egypt, intending to pin this on Muslims. In 1963 Senator William Fulbright discovered that Israel was using a series of covert operations to funnel our money to pro-Israel groups in the US, which then used these funds in media campaigns and lobbying to procure even more money from American taxpayers. In 1967 Israeli forces unleashed a two-hour air and sea attack against the USS Liberty, causing 200 casualties. While Israel partisans claim that this was done in error, this claim is belied by extensive eyewitness evidence and by an independent commission reporting on Capitol Hill in 2003 chaired by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer. In 1973 Israel used the largest airlift of US materiel in history to defeat Arab forces attempting to regain their own land, triggering the Arab oil embargo that sent the US into a recession that cost thousands of Americans their jobs. During its 1980s Lebanon invasion, Israeli troops engaged in a systematic pattern of harassment of US forces brought in as peacekeepers that created, according to Commandant of Marines Gen. R. H Barrow, "life-threatening situations, replete with verbal degradation of the officers, their uniform and country." Through the years, Israel has regularly spied on the US. According to the Government Accounting Office, Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the United States of any ally." Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard: "It is difficult for me to conceive of greater harm done to national security," And the Pollard case was just the tip of a very large iceberg; the most recent operation coming to light involves two senior officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's powerful American lobbying organization. Bad as the above may appear, it pales next to the indirect damage to Americans caused by our aid to Israel. American funding of Israel's egregious violations of Palestinian human rights is consistently listed as the number one cause of hostility to Americans. While American media regularly cover up Israeli actions, those of us who have visited the region first-hand witness a level of US-funded Israeli cruelty that makes us weep for our victims and fear for our country. While most Americans are uninformed on how Israel uses our money, people throughout the world are deeply aware that it is Americans who are funding Israeli crimes. The 9/11 Commission notes that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "animus towards the United States stemmedfrom his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." The Economist reports that " the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the most powerfully recurrent theme in bin Laden's speeches." The Bottom Line In sum, US aid to Israel has destabilized the Middle East; propped up a national system based on ethnic and religious discrimination; enabled unchecked aggression that has, on occasion, been turned against Americans themselves; funded arms industries that compete with American companies; supported a pattern of brutal dispossession that has created hatred of the US; and resulted in continuing conflict that last year took the lives of 384 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, and that in the past seven and a half years has cost the lives of more than 982 Palestinian children and 119 Israeli children. By providing massive funding to Israel, no matter what it does, American aid is empowering Israeli supremacists who believe in a never-ending campaign of ethnic cleansing; while disempowering Israelis who recognize that policies of morality, justice, and rationality are the only road to peace. It is time to end our aid. Alison Weir is Executive Director of If Americans Knew. For more information on the US-Israel relationship she especially recommends the books by Donald Neff, Paul Findley, Kathleen Christison, Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, Grant Smith, Stephen Green, George Ball, and John Mulhall.
i am confused, wee all know that Israel is the closest friend of USA, they control USA and it is the most important country in the world. We know that Jews and Catholics hated each other for very long time and now Jews pushing the Anti-hate law http://www.truthtellers.org/ to shot up Catholics critics. So how pop can run the USA?
Every religious or ethnic sect is home to both Good and Evil people. Is Bush a "good Christian"? Lets consider. 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians dead. 15,000 of our own troops, dead. How many thousands more maimed and suffering?? The answer is no, Bush is not a "good Christian". It would be laughable to suggest he is even "Christian", at all. In point of fact, that soulless ghoul is a piece of shit. "You will know them by their fruits." The problem here is unscrupulous people of all stripes hide behind politically convenient labels to shield themselves from any criticism against their character or actions. Fake Christians hide behind the Bible and preach pious mercy while bombing hundreds of thousands. Fake Jews hide behind the Holocaust and praise Godliness while their Central Banks rape entire Countries. The point here is these bad Christians aren't really Christians. And these bad Jews aren't really Jews. These are just Bad People who wear a cross or yammakah because its a convenient tool to scape goat others for their own wickedness. You can't talk bad about the Rothchilds, because thats anti-semitic! Oh, and you can't talk bad about those Neoconned Mega Churches, because they're "Charismatic Christians"!! Yea, sure they are. I think the general beef WASPS have with Jews (and correct me if im wrong) Jews, as a rule, slander with impunity anyone who criticizes Zionism, Israel or Jews -- EVEN WHEN ITS DESERVING. No Jew has committed acts of atrocity or exploitation against his fellow man...... or ever will. SPARE ME, GOY!!! This is really the height of hypocrisy and disingenuity. And people can see right through it. Not to say all Jewish criticism is valid. A lot of it is just pure anti-semitic crap. Most everyday Jews are just as well intentioned, nice and sweet as everyday Christians. The point being - Black, White, Jew, Gentile, bible-thumper, dreidel-twirler, Allah lover, Buddha worship, Godless atheist -- Doesn't matter. The labels mean diddly shit. What matters is the content of ones Character and the ACTIONS that prove it. If some congenital lying "Pastor" eggs on his Congregation to bomb the Middle East back to the Stone Age, sorry, but he's not a real Christian. He's a War Mongering dirtbag. And if some Neocon Hawk Jew eggs on the Country to bomb the Middle East back to the Stone Age, sorry, but he's not a real Jew. He's a War Mongering dirtbag.
One can fight war and be a proper Christian. The christian belief of "just war" allows for a precedure to fight war. Certainly the USA had legal authority based on the requirments of Internatioal treaty. In reality we already had a state of war exsisting with Iraq. If one die or 100,000 die the war is still "just"
Kill 100,000 because Saddam broke the no-fly zone. Is that your definition of "Just War"? Maybe the bogus intel. Bush sold the Country justifies 100,000 dead? How convenient for the Neo-cons. You need to study-up on Christian scholarship. Unprovocated INVASIONS aren't considered "just" anywhere in the Bible. And those measly infractions the Neocons painted as "unforgivable breaches" were engineered directly into the Treaty for just that reason - to give the "Allies" legal fodder to invade Iraq on a whim. Central Banks are legal, too. Does that make them moral?
Oh brother - another Daily Kos nutbar who is clueless... It is estimated that Saddam mass murdered anywhere from 300,000 to over 1 million of his own people during his reign (some claim 2 million). On top of this were the 1 million deaths due to the UN sanctions and the Oil for Food Program where Saddam diverted the money from the purpose of food and medicine to building palaces and buying arms. In fact he himself claimed that 1 1/2 million died because of the sanctions (of course he was placing the blame on the UN to fool Iraqis, but he was only self-indicting himself). So as can be clearly seen, just stopping the mass deaths caused by Saddam was more than enough justification for the invasion all by itself. Many more Iraqis are alive today than would have been had not W invaded Iraq. By far the majority of your "100,000" have been killed in sectarian fighting (and many of those were not "innocent"), which cannot be laid at W's feet. And only just over 4,000 troops have been killed, not "15,000".
Another Neocon ChickenHawk Defends Murder. Hey Gordo - who gave Saddam those Chemical and Biological weapons in the first place? And who stood by while he gassed his own people (And the Iranians)? America did, you goof. When do sanctions ever hurt a Dictator? Before the Oil-for-Food, US sanctions killed half-a-million Iraqi children. It was well worth it, eh Guy? <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lK_QshS2EW8&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lK_QshS2EW8&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> Americas historical involvement in Iraq has been nothing but war and death. Read PNAC lately? The admitted neocon agenda was for long term military presence in the middle east to shore up oil and keep defense spending high. And you claim righteous liberation. Change your tune after the WMD"s didnt show up, eh?
Try 180,000 from coalition forces alone. Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 By David Brown http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. And the 15,000 total body count includes troops that died outside the theater of operations -- usually medical evacs. The 4000 is the "official" Pentagon count that includes only those troops that die INSIDE Iraq. Not flown out for medical treatment then die.
So you think America should have unilaterally invaded Iraq then?!? Your attempt at straight-line logic just took a swerve into the ditch...