Grow a new vocabulary of possibilities – the new state will be the dawn of humanity's great reconciliation. Muslims, Christians and Jews living together in Palestine as they once did.
The phrase “right to exist” entered my consciousness in the 1990s just as the concept of the two-state solution became part of our collective lexicon. In any debate at university, when a Zionist was out of arguments, those three magic words were invoked to shut down the conversation with an outraged, “are you saying Israel doesn’t have the right to exist??”
Of course you couldn’t challenge Israel’s right to exist – that was like saying you were negating a fundamental Jewish right to have…rights, with all manner of Holocaust guilt thrown in for effect.
Except of course the Holocaust is not my fault – or that of Palestinians. The cold-blooded program of ethnically cleansing Europe of its Jewish population has been so callously and opportunistically utilized to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab nation, that it leaves me utterly unmoved. I have even caught myself – shock – rolling my eyes when I hear Holocaust and Israel in the same sentence.
What moves me instead in this post-two-state era, is the sheer audacity of Israel even existing.
Dina Rasor and Pierre Sprey have collaborated on an important and informative piece on the F-22. It expands the publically available thinking about the nature of the toxicity problem facing F-22 pilots, and–just as importantly–it probes the nature of one of the prime suspects for the problem: the F-22's “stealth” coating. Note at the end of the piece: for all the astronomic cost, low sortie rates, and aerodynamic mis-shaping of aircraft those stealth coatings have caused, they bring little meaningful tactical advantage against an enemy who knows how to deal with them. Case in point: not mentioned in the brief but important discussion of radars that see “stealth” aircraft is the antiquated Soviet era radar and SA-3 missile system that was used by the Serbs in the 1999 Kosovo air war to shoot down one “stealthy” F-117, as was widely reported, but also damaged a second F-117 seriously enough that it never flew again in the conflict–giving the F-117 the highest casualty rate of any US aircraft in that conflict.
Consider also, as Rasor and Sprey make clear, the values of a system that places the continued operation of a hardware system above the health, well-being and confidence of the pilots operating it. It literally reminds me of Upton Sinclair's “The Jungle” when nothing, not even workers' severed body parts, were permitted to stop the sausage machine.
(WASHINGTON DC) – As news about Israeli political parties merging dominates headlines, this one is being overlooked. The US House of Representatives Defense Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday approved almost $1 billion for Israel’s anti-missile defense programs.
The expensive systems are called Arrow 3. The American politicians propose spending this exorbitant amount in order to upgrade the current Arrow system, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome.
The names are fancy, unlike the missiles they say they are defending themselves from. The munitions fired from Gaza are al Qassam rockets and they are little more than unguided fireworks.
Israeli and American media portray the ‘rocket attacks from Gaza’ as a serious danger and they claim that the large U.S. tax payer contributions are necessary in order to ‘defend’ Israel. The Gaza rockets have in all time, killed a total of 28 Israeli citizens. Some place the number at 29.
The total appropriation is the highest ever approved for the four programs; it reflects the willingness of the United States to back yet another racist, apartheid government that uses American investments to send Israeli youth to college, and to kill Palestinians; Muslims and Christians, who have few rights under a system that Israel created, offering one set of laws and punishments to Jews, and a different set for all other human beings.
Last week I circulated a piece discusing an eight page advertising special in The Washington Post, paid for by Lockheed-Martin and Boeing (and a credit union). The huge ad commemorated the 100th anniversary of Marine Corps aviation. (My piece with a link to the advertisement is at the end of this message.) In the special advertising sectionthe Marine Corps' Commandant and Deputy Commandant for Aviation, among others, proclaimed that Marine air was wholly focused on supporting “ground troops,” especially while engaged in combat–thereby demonstrating the Marines' warrior ethic and devotion to one of its proudest traditions. Unsurprisingly, the ad also loudly touted Boeing's V-22 and Lockheed's F-35B as the contemporary embodiment of the Marine air tradition.<
David Evans is a retired Marine. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, after which he worked as a widely respected journalist for the Chicago Tribune. When I sent him my piece on the Marines' self praise, paid for by Lockheed and Boeing, he immediately responded that the proclamation of a focus only on air support for troops in combat rang hollow. I asked him to write up his concerns; the following 1,500 word analysis was the result. It makes important and informative reading. It exposes the sophistry of the ad's assertions, and it is an excellent explanation of how technology proclaimed to be a leap ahead can in reality be a step backwards–at great additional cost. The discussion of the V-22 and F-35 compared to cheaper, more effective systems–available earlier–is very instructive.
For sheer sophistry, deception and delusion, it is hard to top the status report “100 Years of Marine Corps Aviation” that appeared as an advertising supplement arriving in this former Marine's Washington Post newspaper on 2 May 2012 (located at http://issuu.com/wpcustomcontent/docs/usmc). My view is that Marine aviation is now broken, riven by exploding costs, starkly troubled development programs and, above all, the triumph of technical wants over tactical needs.
The Marine Corps could have had superior flying machines at dramatically less cost to acquire and maintain. There is an old aphorism about “pride goeth before the fall” that certainly applies. The country cannot afford these habits and the junior Marines at the “pointy end” deserve better for tactical support.
The eight-page supplement was dominated by breathless paeans to the Marines' two dominant aircraft modernization programs, the V-22 tilt-rotor, a troop hauler which takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like a turboprop airliner, and the F-35B, a jet that will similarly be capable of short take-offs and vertical landings but fly to the battlefield at supersonic speed.
Neither machine will deliver on its heady promises.
This represents one of the dishonorable acts a politician can commit. Using other people's lives to win an election…….a clear indication of the lack of integrity of an individual who holds the highest office of the land….and the speech sounds like it was modeled after LBJ's equally incoherent speech in the closing days of Viet-Nam. The second article is pure propaganda, witless and without merit.
WASHINGTON — The 10-year security compact that President Barack Obama signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai contains promises the United States and Afghanistan cannot guarantee they will keep, and loopholes for both nations.
The deal signed Tuesday also allows either nation to walk away on a year's notice. That could allow the next U.S. president, or the next Afghan leader, to scuttle a deal negotiated by his or her predecessor.
For Obama, the agreement represents a compromise with Karzai after messy negotiations over U.S. military detention of Afghan suspects and raids on Afghan homes that offend Afghans.
Dozens of US and allied forces' military installations dot the region, from Oman, UAE and Kuwait to Turkey and Israel.
Doha, Qatar – US military bases continue to form a strategic envelope around Iran, although the American withdrawal from Iraq at the end of 2011 may have changed the regional balance somewhat towards Iran's favour. While US forces are scaling back in many parts of the globe due to budget cuts – and have begun a gradual depature from Afghanistan to be completed by 2014 – their international presence remains vast.
From an active-duty force of 1.4 million soldiers, the US has deployed some 350,000 troops to at least 130 foreign countries around the world. Some are at Cold War-era installations, but many are in or near combat zones in the Middle East. At more than 750 bases internationally, private contractors and third-country nationals also form a large percentage of the staff, in addition to military reservists and civilian employees of the Pentagon.
US military installations in the Middle East serve to keep an eye on Iran, but their regional footprint was significantly expanded well before Iran became the most publicly cited foreign “threat”.
There were three reasons why the US sought a presence across the Middle East, says Mehran Kamrava, Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar:
“Securing oil resources, guaranteeing the security of the state of Israel and combating threats to American interests” were the initial priorities of US military activity in the region prior to the first Gulf War, Kamrava says.
“Subsequently, direct military presence wasn't in the form of impositions, but the [security umbrella] was a conscious policy decision on the part of the Persian Gulf states.”
Phi Beta Iota: This may well be authentic, but it is highly suspect. A signed Presidential finding is needed for such a project, one does not undertake such initiatives without that written document, nor accept a phone call from a lesser aide as a substitute–nor should JSOG be doing anything without that written finding, certainly not on the verbal word of the CIA Director. We continue to believe that CIA created an Oswald situation, a patsy, for JSOG to kill and dump without credible forensic evidence. There is uncertainty as to whether Obama actually authorized the mission–it may have been done against his wishes as the placeholder president. We continue to believe that former Assistant Secretary of State Dr. Steve Pieczenik has it right — Bin Laden died in 2001. Our only certainty is that the truth is quite distant from the “Bin Laden Story” as told to date.
