Dear America
My reaction when I read David Brooks' column of June 27 was a mixture of affirmation and dismay. What he wrote about Netanyahu and Trump echoed what I had written just a couple of days ago in response to the bombing of Iran. Like him, I am loath to give either one of them credit for anything, but at its root, the action taken seemed at least in the context of recent history both prudent and necessary. However, what I see as the captiousness and myopia that inspired the bombing is a problem looming over every positive aspect of both the decision to engage in it and the prospects for the future.
To start with, Netanyahu's, and for that matter Barrack Obama's apprehension about the Irani nuclear ambition seems plainly justified. But we must consider the fact that the dreaded nuclear bomb Iran agreed not to pursue almost exactly ten years ago in the accords signed with a group of concerned nations indeed was never pursued despite Trump's efforts to sabotage that agreement. And in light of that fact, I can't help but feel that the sagacious step at this moment in time would have been to do what Trump was ostensibly doing before last weekend: trying to reconstitute that agreement, and within its constraints trust the Irani's intentions, but to employ a Reaganesque trope; to verify. But instead, we took the predictable Trumpian step and attempted to preempt the dreaded development of the bomb, which strategy history shows, never works in the end. Remember the embrace of Kim Jong Un by Trump after the threat of Armageddon if Kim dared to act against us just before Kim repudiated Trump's advances and finished building his bomb and the missiles to deliver them, no doubt chortling in demonic delight the whole time.
In that vein, Brooks suggested Reagan and Truman as paradigms for leaders in such circumstances as those leading up to the bombing but it cannot be ignored that the prospects for such strategies as they both pursued seem dim. Fear of Reagan precipitated the taking of American hostages at our Iranian embassy during the year before Reagan assumed office and their release immediately when the perceived warrior president ascended to it. But here we are forty five years later with the same theocratic zealots responsible for the seizure of the embassy and its staff firmly in control of Iran and still the source of our national consternation. As for Truman, his bombing of Hiroshima did abruptly end the war with Japan, but his intervention with the UN in Korea left behind a rived nation, half of which is under the control of a conscienceless megalomaniac of ominous proportions.
But salient among the failures of forced capitulation is the most dastardly one of all. It started with Neville Chamberlain touting "peace in our time" as he got off a plane from a meeting with a hateful lunatic. What ensued was that lunatic's invasion of sovereign nations, and pogroms against the Jews to corral them for herding to, and extermination in death camps, all in the name of what Hitler and his cohorts denominated "the final solution." They failed, but the brutal pandemic war that ensued upon the implementation of those strategies was the harbinger of what we are now looking at. However, the worm has turned. Despite Netanyahu's and his predecessors claim of right to what started out to be Israel but has now become a demand for suzerainty over "the river to the sea," that claim is no more viable than a claim of the autochthonous peoples of America for possession of the conterminous United states would be. The Middle East, including what was called the Levant, has been the object of contention and war both in parts and in its entirety for four thousand years. And while Jewry has been a part of that region all along, so have the Palestinians and for that matter all of the Semitic peoples, of which there are at least several if not many, resulting in internecine wars and incessant pursuit of mutual attrition for millennia. Thus, the tactics in which the Israelis indulge--note I did not say the Jews as Israel is the nation in question while ethnic Jews are just inhabitants of the nation, along with others--look much like the ways in which the Nazis prepared the Jews of Europe for extirpation, from the pogroms corralling the Palestinians to the West Bank and Gaza to the persecution and repression of those living in what used to be called Palestine. The Nazis failed to exterminate the Jews, and the Israelis will fail in their attempt to exterminate or even expel the Palestinians. Likewise, the Iranians will never destroy Israel or the Jews, nor will the Abraham Accords ever amount to anything as long as there is no Palestinian state: a two state solution. Except for Israel, the nations who signed those accords have explicitly said so, but the Israeli government refuses to yield, even though it would be in its self-interest to do so.
My point is that extolling Trump and Netanyahu for taking what seems a bold action is really no more than a wishful thought, as were the aspirations of Truman, Reagan and any others who followed the course of forced capitulation. The devil always rises again, and will continue to do so until humanity realizes that indeed, war is not the answer.
Your friend,
Mike
My reaction when I read David Brooks' column of June 27 was a mixture of affirmation and dismay. What he wrote about Netanyahu and Trump echoed what I had written just a couple of days ago in response to the bombing of Iran. Like him, I am loath to give either one of them credit for anything, but at its root, the action taken seemed at least in the context of recent history both prudent and necessary. However, what I see as the captiousness and myopia that inspired the bombing is a problem looming over every positive aspect of both the decision to engage in it and the prospects for the future.
To start with, Netanyahu's, and for that matter Barrack Obama's apprehension about the Irani nuclear ambition seems plainly justified. But we must consider the fact that the dreaded nuclear bomb Iran agreed not to pursue almost exactly ten years ago in the accords signed with a group of concerned nations indeed was never pursued despite Trump's efforts to sabotage that agreement. And in light of that fact, I can't help but feel that the sagacious step at this moment in time would have been to do what Trump was ostensibly doing before last weekend: trying to reconstitute that agreement, and within its constraints trust the Irani's intentions, but to employ a Reaganesque trope; to verify. But instead, we took the predictable Trumpian step and attempted to preempt the dreaded development of the bomb, which strategy history shows, never works in the end. Remember the embrace of Kim Jong Un by Trump after the threat of Armageddon if Kim dared to act against us just before Kim repudiated Trump's advances and finished building his bomb and the missiles to deliver them, no doubt chortling in demonic delight the whole time.
In that vein, Brooks suggested Reagan and Truman as paradigms for leaders in such circumstances as those leading up to the bombing but it cannot be ignored that the prospects for such strategies as they both pursued seem dim. Fear of Reagan precipitated the taking of American hostages at our Iranian embassy during the year before Reagan assumed office and their release immediately when the perceived warrior president ascended to it. But here we are forty five years later with the same theocratic zealots responsible for the seizure of the embassy and its staff firmly in control of Iran and still the source of our national consternation. As for Truman, his bombing of Hiroshima did abruptly end the war with Japan, but his intervention with the UN in Korea left behind a rived nation, half of which is under the control of a conscienceless megalomaniac of ominous proportions.
But salient among the failures of forced capitulation is the most dastardly one of all. It started with Neville Chamberlain touting "peace in our time" as he got off a plane from a meeting with a hateful lunatic. What ensued was that lunatic's invasion of sovereign nations, and pogroms against the Jews to corral them for herding to, and extermination in death camps, all in the name of what Hitler and his cohorts denominated "the final solution." They failed, but the brutal pandemic war that ensued upon the implementation of those strategies was the harbinger of what we are now looking at. However, the worm has turned. Despite Netanyahu's and his predecessors claim of right to what started out to be Israel but has now become a demand for suzerainty over "the river to the sea," that claim is no more viable than a claim of the autochthonous peoples of America for possession of the conterminous United states would be. The Middle East, including what was called the Levant, has been the object of contention and war both in parts and in its entirety for four thousand years. And while Jewry has been a part of that region all along, so have the Palestinians and for that matter all of the Semitic peoples, of which there are at least several if not many, resulting in internecine wars and incessant pursuit of mutual attrition for millennia. Thus, the tactics in which the Israelis indulge--note I did not say the Jews as Israel is the nation in question while ethnic Jews are just inhabitants of the nation, along with others--look much like the ways in which the Nazis prepared the Jews of Europe for extirpation, from the pogroms corralling the Palestinians to the West Bank and Gaza to the persecution and repression of those living in what used to be called Palestine. The Nazis failed to exterminate the Jews, and the Israelis will fail in their attempt to exterminate or even expel the Palestinians. Likewise, the Iranians will never destroy Israel or the Jews, nor will the Abraham Accords ever amount to anything as long as there is no Palestinian state: a two state solution. Except for Israel, the nations who signed those accords have explicitly said so, but the Israeli government refuses to yield, even though it would be in its self-interest to do so.
My point is that extolling Trump and Netanyahu for taking what seems a bold action is really no more than a wishful thought, as were the aspirations of Truman, Reagan and any others who followed the course of forced capitulation. The devil always rises again, and will continue to do so until humanity realizes that indeed, war is not the answer.
Your friend,
Mike
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