On the other hand, if things continue as they are, Trump’s foreign policy may be on the brink of what used to be the unthinkable.
18 thoughts on “Tired Of Winning”
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Shot in the Dark
Cranking Open The Big Brass Nozzle Of Truth Since 2002
In the long game of balance of power diplomacy we are destined to be closer to Iran than Saudi. Iran is a deeply civilized culture with a cohesive and educated population that plays a historic leadership role for one major slice of Islam.
Saudi is a once-rich,oil-depleted desert Sheikhdom with little civilization and a very poorly educated, parochial population. While it houses Islamic holy places, its influence over modern Islam flowed from its checkbook not from its spiritual and intellectual leadership.
The Persians will be with us in a thousand years The Arabs of the Hijaz will be largely forgotten in half a century. If America has staying power in world affairs, we will be dealing with Iran in far more substantial ways than with the Saudis.
This screed reminds me of thinking of my relatives who perished in the ghetto because they remained behind because “Germans are civilized people”. You are an uncouth, unread, uneducated, historically-challenged baffoon, Shvonder-eTASS. Carry on, troll.
Are you able share with me why the US should recognize Jerusalem as the Capitol of Israel?
Because Israel recognizes it as such. Are you able share with me why the US should recognize Ottawa as the Capitol of Canada?
America should recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel because Jews founded Jerusalem. Err, Canaanites founded Jerusalem 2,000 years before Judaism even existed.
Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people. Well, except for the nearly 1,200 years the Muslims ruled it: the 444 years the Romans ruled it; the 160 years the Greeks ruled it; the 200 years the Persians ruled it; the couple of hundred years the Egyptians ruled it; the ninety years the Christians ruled it.
But Israel conquered East Jerusalem in 1967, therefore it’s theirs by right of conquest. Except, the acquisition of territory by war is illegal under international law and has been since the end of WW2.
Any more stupid arguments?
What’s with you & the Jew hatred, Emery? The Second Temple is in Jerusalem. The Muslim mosques on the site were later frauds intentionally designed to compromise the Jewish claim that they (and not the sons of Ishmael) were God’s chosen People.
You realize that international law is just a voluntarily system, don’t you, Emery? The world is made up of sovereign nations, and they may (or may not) agree to bind themselves to whatever is considered “international law” these days. Russia annexed the territory of the Crimea just a few years ago — oh, wait, that couldn’t have happened, gaining territory by conquest has been against international law since 1949 (article XI, passed by the UN after the founding of Israel). The Israelis say that they must hold administrative control over the territory they gained in the 1967 war because their existence as a nation depends on holding those areas. I believe them. Do you?
Emery I, you’re confusing me. Are you saying you do not acknowledge the right of conquest? That a nation founded on having conquered the lands is somehow bound to honor the customs of the people who were defeated? Or who occupied it thousands of years ago?
How’s that going to work in the United States? We bought some from the French who stole it from the Indians, who had themselves stolen it from other tribes. We conquered some, took it away from Mexico, which was conquered by Spain, which stole it from the Aztecs.
Why shouldn’t Israel get to decide where to put its capital? And why shouldn’t we get to decide where to put our embassy?
Shvonder-eTASS, you did not answer why US should be recognising Ottawa as a capitol of Canada. As a matter of fact, based on your own arguements, neither Canada, nor US, nor Australia, nor ANY country has a right to exist.
It does seem that all stupid arguements are coming from you. As to be expected.
And then he resorts to ad hominen attacks. How typical of you.
I am quite aware of the history of Israel, how its parliamentary system works, and who currently leads the country, as well as the history of the Arab lands around it.
Israel gained control of the West Bank 50 years ago. Israel has chosen to neither set it loose, or annex it, but instead to continue an occupation, maintaining order at the point of a gun, which I label oppression. After 50 years, most of the people in the West Bank have spent their whole life under Israeli political control. If they cannot vote, then they are disenfranchised by their political masters, victims of a variation on apartheid. And yes, it is Israel’s responsibility to find a solution; they’re the ones with their finger on the trigger in the West Bank.
The Jews are not the Crusaders. The Christian countries who created Israel to assuage their guilt over the Holocaust were the ones with the arrogance and bloody-mindedness to assume they had the right to determine who ruled the ‘Holy Lands’, just as they did during the earlier Crusades. As one of the last acts of the colonial period, the creation of Israel has proved to be one of the most destructive, just like the Crusader states before it.
You seem to assume that because I dislike the state of Israel, that I favor one or all of the Arab states. This isn’t a case of good guys vs. bad guys, cowboys vs. Indians, white hats vs. black hats. There are no good guys, no Middle Eastern states worth defending. I don’t believe what any Arab leader has to say, and I certainly don’t listen to liberal fans of Islamists and terrorists. I think even less of Saudi Arabia, a supposed friend of the US, than I do of Israel. My opinion is based on my knowledge of the history of the region, and of the current political status there.
I’m sorry about the Holocaust and all of the misfortune that has befallen the Jewish people, but that cannot forever be the excuse to provide aid and comfort for the mistake that is the state of Israel. Europe should have provided for a new home for the Jews in Europe, or allowed them all to move to the US and Canada. The Middle East was not theirs to give to the Jews.
Israel has as much, or more, right to exist as any state in the Middle East. They are all illegitimate products of colonialism. But the liberal democracies of Europe and North America are best off maintaining arms-length diplomacy with all of those states until the people of the Middle East decide how to live together in peace. No aid, no arms, no friends, no enemies. Maintain distance.
I’m sorry about the Holocaust and all of the misfortune that has befallen the Jewish people, but that cannot forever be the excuse to provide aid and comfort for the mistake that is the state of Israel.
You say that you know about the history of Israel and the Arab lands that surround it, Emery, but you do not acknowledge that the state of Israel exists because of European & Russian anti-Semitism that long preceded the Second World War and the holocaust.
Please don’t speak about colonialism unless you are willing to do so fairly. All of the world is a product of colonialism. I am person of European ancestry born in the middle of North America. I now reside in Hawaii. I am a “colonial” by any reasonable definition of the word, along with billions of other colonials in the world –even if they will not admit it. Arabic is spoken from Iraq to Mauritania, Mandarin from Mongolia to the southern tip of Indonesia. The right of national self-determination was ginned up by Wilson a century as an antidote to war. How did that work out?
Let me be explicit: I see nothing wrong with colonialism. I see nothing wrong with denying people a “right to national self-determination” whether those people are in the Middle East or in reservations in the American Midwest.
The land Israel sits on was once controlled by the British, the Turks, Arabs, European Christians, Arab Muslims, Byzantine Christians, Roman Christians, Roman pagans, Greek Pagans, Persians, and Babylonians. The current status quo of ethnic Arabs living under Jewish does not strike me as some terrible historical injustice.
Israel will be remembered by history as the last of the crusader states, established by the 20th century European states in the midst of an Arab Muslim Middle East as one of the last mistakes of a flawed colonial legacy, and one of the many causes for the decades of conflict to follow. I think the residents of Israel are owed a free pass to emigrate to Europe and the US. We made Israel, and we need to take responsibility for it’s detritus. But eventually, you just have to walk away from your mistakes. Pouring good money and effort after bad will just make it worse. The Israel of today, with its racially discriminatory constitution and permanent siege mentality, is not something any of the states who created it would wish on the world if we were allowed to start from scratch.
Oh yeah, it is certain that Jews would be safe in Europe & the New World, says the guy who believes he knows history.
It’s not a democracy if a third of the population under your control can’t vote and are kept under control at gunpoint, as their land is gradually expropriated away from them.
Israel is a Spartan state, tough and enduring, willing and able to fight for its land and its right to exist. It may hold out indefinitely (who’s to say?); it may grow. But it houses a growing wing of religious extremists whose views have great influence in the government. It has no solution for the dissatisfied Muslim population under its control except continued oppression. Its democracy is slipping away. It will never be a peaceful, secular, liberal democracy where all are treated equally. It was founded as, and remains, the land of the Jews. That’s a 19th century racial archetype that cannot survive as a democracy in the 21st century.
“It’s not a democracy if a third of the population under your control can’t vote and are kept under control at gunpoint, as their land is gradually expropriated away from them.”
How long would it be a democracy if they could vote, Emery? Why don’t they emigrate to one of the Arab nations that is sympathetic with their cause?
Ironically, I have been accused of anti-Semitism more than once (but not at SITD). I think that Jews tend to take liberal political positions because they are Jews, and especially tht they dislike anything like nationalism because they are Jews (the Jewish dislike of nationalist movements long predates WW2).
When the temple is rebuilt — and I suppose it is inevitable, some day — you will see Jews by the thousands taking animals there to be sacrificed as the law requires, and the sacrificial fires shall be kept burning by bloody-handed priests. Hard to keep a materialist mindset when that is your religion.
As the saying goes, “He who sups with the devil should use a very long spoon.” Deciding who is the lesser of the many evils is a fool’s game. In the Middle East, keeping an cautious and equal distance from all sides is the only sensible policy long term.
Funny how Shvonder-eTASS is refusing to answer his own question: Why does US recognize Ottawa as a capitol of Canada?
Are you too busy celebrating the recent killing of a holocaust survivor in France just because she was Jewish? Or did it not happen and it is all hasbara! fiction?
You really are a hate-filled pathetic anti-Semitic troll incapable of coherent thought.