printThe following is from “The Titan Is Tired,” my new WND.COM column:
“… This column has been consistently polite about—but disinterested in—the putative push for freedom across the Middle East.
Dare I say that such a stance, and not slobbering sentimentality, is the proper, libertarian position? I promised, accordingly, that when liberty deprived peoples the world over supported patriots stateside, I’d return the favor.
The same goes for Israel. Israelis want the support of Americans in standing up for their national sovereignty. Fine. But they should respond in kind.
The titan is tired. We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own—be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don’t need our friends looking to us to do so.”
The complete column is “The Titan Is Tired,” now on WND.COM.
UPDATE (April 29): On Facebook, our friend Nebojša Mali writers this: “Ilana, the whole article is well-written, but that last paragraph is simply outstanding.”
Me: “Let me read it. Forgot it. Oh, it’s up there in the excerpt. Thanks, Nebojsa; coming from you, that’s nice. I think it captures how I feel personally: tired. Can’t imagine what some poor marine, or any soldier, must feel as the unarmed armchair warriors here and abroad coax him back to hell for the 1000th deployment. What the hell for? So that Ann Coulter can continue to be the prettiest, most profitable (almost) war profiteer around? Here’s something written about that for your site (antiwar.com), it’s called “LETHAL WEAPONS: NEOCON GROUPIES.”
I have somewhat similar views to yours, Ilana, about the evidential dichotomy between Jews regarding immigration policy, differently for Israel and the United States, but it seems to me more likely to be the divergent collective opinion of two completely different and separate groups of Jews, right-wing pro-Israel Jews, and left-wing anti-American Jews. Unfortunately the large majority of American Jews are left-wing. If only the liberal anti-American Jews could be convinced to become right-wing American Jews regarding the United States immigration policy, as right-wing and restrictive and enforced as strongly as the Israel immigration policy of national and racial survival.
I’m back after two weeks of being “on the road” at Conferences on the Survivability of our Combat Aircraft. I heard a cocky Navy aviator chuckling over how easy it was to take out Gaddaffi’s antiquated Soviet fixed site air defenses (I am sure that Lord Cornwallis guffawed how those colonial rebels ran into the swamps when they saw the shiny redcoats and heard the bagpipes!) during Week 1 of the Libya War. Meanwhile, an Air Force C-130 pilot said that his cargo plane became a “bullet magnet” every time it dipped below 1000 feet in Afghanistan. He would like to be able to locate and “engage” the Afghans. That is the reality of Year 10 in Afghanistan.
[I was wondering where you were; thought you had defected to some other site. Good to have you back; book release is happening any day now, so sit tight.–IM]
Needless to say, we can, of course, “engage” the Afghans by trespassing on their own land – but to what purpose other than playing Whack-A-Mole in a tube of manure? After we kill hundreds, we sit down with the tribal leaders and pay them tribute (e.g. protection money) to stop “engaging us” according to the Washington Post and then we call that piece of Afghan “secure” and move on to another Whack-A-Mole location.
This is how empires crumble…. Ask GORBACHEV!
Hi Ilana,
The above post was well said, we should have pulled out long ago. They said we did not have money to pay down a budget
a week later we were spending 100 million a week. then 25o mill with no
idea when we leave? Was the attack on
Libya for BP or another British company
being told to leave a country?
Or was it so the defense contractors in the wealthy Northern Virginia Fairfax county can hold on the the fame of best place to do business? Low taxes, right to work state
The only reason he DC metro area remains
recession proof and homes are twice the
price outside the markets is the
billions spent by the military industrial complex can grow.
On a final note. Whats up with the
democratic Israel and Messianic Jew
hatred? Yad L’Achim The jewish haters
look more like modren day gestapos..
http://www.maozisrael.org/site/PageServer?pagename=maoz_yad_lachim1_video
Today’s WND offering is a special treat. You’re a rare writer who can properly nuance support for civilization while at the same time not lick the boot of a worldwide garrison state.
[You’re quite rare yourself; Bill. We go back a long way. I’m coming your way for a studio interview/audience to promote book!]
Michael – there used to be a secular party in the Knesset (Shinui) opposed to the mixing of the haredim (Orthodox) with state power – however, the party faded away. Arguably, there is a fear that with so few Jews in the world, conversion and intermarriage will destroy what is left – not an entirely unreasonable view but any action that interferes with human freedom is disgusting to me.
Artfully and succinctly put! Reciprocity, in the case of American-Israeli relations in all areas is long overdue. You are a breath of fresh air in a sea of literary sewage.