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Degaine
climber
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Bruce,
I suggest reading the following:
The $36 Billion Bargain : U.S. Aid to Israel and American Public Opinion
by A. F. K. Organski
US may have recognized Israel upon its creation, but US support of Israel did not truly start until 1967, when the US saw Israel as a key strategic ally in a Middle East slowly but surely making ties with the USSR (until 1967 Israel received most of its support from France and the UK). Israel was the only Western democracy in the region during the Cold War. In 1989-91 when the Cold War came to an end, support of Israel continued due to its strategic position vis a vis Arab regimes, and since 9/11, given GWB and his administration's policies Israel obviously has strategic importance.
In a nutshell, it's not some vast conspiracy or a soft place in someone's heart for Israel. As a matter of fact if you look the US response to the 1956 conflict between Israel and Egypt, the US gave Israel (and France and the UK as well) a stern talking to/reprimand, and Israel promptly left the Suez area.
Certainly somewhere in the mess the Palestinians got screwed, although in the 1948 partition, 90% or so of the land "given" to the Jewish population was already owned by Jews. The big mistake was the decision to occupy the West Bank and Gaza post 1967 without providing the Palestinians with citizen status or the territory as their own country. Had the West Bank been given back to Jordan, I can assure you that the Palestinians would be even less close to having their own country than they are today.
In any case, the tension between the Palestinians and Israelis is a convenient excuse for other mid-east regimes to behave the way they do. Saudi Arabia often states that it would not be so oppressive if Isreal gave the West Bank to the Palistinians. What Bull Crap!!! There's no causal relationship between the two.
Anyway, carry on.
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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In his last will and testament, written the day before his suicide in the Berlin Bunker, A. Hitler was finally forced to admit that his greatest strategic and, by implication, tactical error was not arming the Arabs.
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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Not when Israel disintegrates in about 10 to 15 years. I give the US about 50 more years as a nation state, but a bit longer as a politically and racially fragmented economic zone.
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pc
climber
East of Seattle
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Topic Author's Reply - May 3, 2006 - 06:29pm PT
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Most Europeans I speak with give us no more than 20. Isreal and the US may blow up together.
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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This only confirms my basic thesis that the US peaked as the US sometime between the death of Kennedy and the time the Vietnam War started heating up, say around 1966. There hasn't been any real cultural "Unity of Being" since around that time, any broad-based consensus about the national identity and purpose. Funny, that's when middle class entitlements peaked, too.
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Anastasia
Trad climber
Near a mountain, CA
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Who is a Palestinian? Palestine is made up of many ethnic and religious fractions that have occupied in the region called Israel. The area is the center of trade routes for the desert regions.
There are many Palestinians that are also Christian. That is why a few were hiding in a Christian Orthodox Church in Bethlehem.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/siege/
Israel is a very ethnic centric state that will fail for it does not represent the whole of it's population. Therefore it is a non-equal state that discriminates against others.
I will not support Israel for this reason. Though I do wish the Jewish population peace, health and prosperity. I just wish they won't deny anyone else the same.
As for Iran,
I wonder if their weapons of destruction are similar to those of Iraq. (We never really did find those massive collections.)
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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You mean they're still trying to keep the myth going, but that can't go on forever. Just wait, in a hundred years the Holocaust will mean as much to the man in the street as the Boer War in the 19th century or the Muslim invasion of Buddhist India in the 8th century A.D. The same goes for the Normandy Invasion, Stalingrad, the Cold War, or Woodstock nation. In fact, a rabid reactionary Catholic divorcee (i.e. 'sinner') just blurted out to me the other day, right in public, at the top of her lungs, that the Holocaust was "yesterday's papers". I guess that settles it! Long live Pope Adolf the XVI!
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pc
climber
East of Seattle
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Topic Author's Reply - May 3, 2006 - 08:02pm PT
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Sh#t, what do you do to provoke that Bruce?
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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I hinted that the Catholic Church was at least passively involved in the Holocaust in Italy. You know how it is: Irish-Italians are still wearing their first communion dress when they're 44 (maybe 51?) years old.
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pc
climber
East of Seattle
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Topic Author's Reply - May 3, 2006 - 08:24pm PT
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Nice casual conversation...First date? ;)
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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DEFINITELY THE LAST. I also suggested that she might get a second job and start saving up on the side for a face lift, a little "tuck under the chin" at a health resort somewhere far away in the Third World. Italians sure have a temper.
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Blight
Social climber
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A 20 year life span for the US as a nation is pretty optimistic. The US has abused European goodwill for too long and as a result Europe is already building strong trade relations with China and the east. The US economy will become increasingly irrelevant as the totally unmanageable national debt is increasingly exposed by euro oil bourses.
I suspect that ultimately an almost totally militarised US will be left with no choice but to provoke war with the combined forces of the rest of the UN and China, and the result will be conclusive for what we call the United States.
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Such optimism for our (once?) great nation.
While Bruce may have a point about the US peaking sometime in the mid-1960s, suggesting that it has been downhill since, I’d suggest that the activities and policies of The Shrub and his cronies/handlers has rapidly accelerated that downhill fall far more than any of the previous administrations.
Will history record that Bush and Co were indeed responsible for the disintegration of the US? As I believe it will.
Face it Bushites, the guy and his friends are bad news for both America and the world. When will you people wake up and smell the coffee?
Get rid of him. My fellow citizens (though not me) hired the pr*ck, why can't we fire him. Why do we have to wait for Congress (and a partisan one at that, which will never impeach the turd) to get rid of a president.
Let's hold a referendum like that of the California gubernatorial one that got rid of Davis and installed the guvernator. The Constitution needs to be amended so the people can choose, not a whole bunch of Capitol Hill fatcats with agendas that don't benefit America and Americans.
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pc
climber
East of Seattle
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Topic Author's Reply - May 4, 2006 - 12:46pm PT
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Having grown up in Canada I'm not that familiar with the workings of the federal gov't. What are the options for removing the President? (other than hot lead)
Recall? (or is that only a state thing) What's involved?
Impeachment? How does it get started? How does it get through?
pc
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Anastasia
Trad climber
Near a mountain, CA
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I won't call them spineless, they just want someone else to do the dirty work.
Let someone else get killed for the cause.
I call that brilliant.
Politicians don't send their sons to war either.
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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It's certainly been downhill for the "rising" middle classes in the US since the mid-1960s, and today the infra-structure and traditional manufacturing-based industries are undoubtedly all crumbling: highways, dams, levies, the auto industry, the air lines etc. etc. etc. Mommy and daddy don't get two pensions each with rock solid medical and dental plans to see them through old age and retirement. No free tuition at state colleges and universities. Most people don't have that "things are getting better & better" feeling like they had in the 'burbs around 1963. But the US may remain at least militarily powerful for a long while with all money and power concentrated at the top and everyone else in debt up to their navels. One little bump on the natural disaster or economic road could send this two-tiered debtor society crashing in a hot, silly moment, though. A familiar scenario throughout recorded history . . . We already have quite a few doubts about the wisdom of our High Priests (i.e. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) Bird flu pandemic at the same time as a massive earthquake on the West Coast with a terrorist attack somewhere in the heartland? Wait and see . . . We do live in "interesting times".
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Fattrad writes: Patrick, Back to this again?
Yes Jeff.
You seem insistent on your ‘Religious War’ thread to keep bumping it to the top because you believe it is an issue that should be kept topical.
Equally, I believe the issue of getting these lying, cheating cowards out of the White House and into prison is also topical, and even more relevant and important to our country’s future.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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We always see the "Evil" in others and never in ourselves. Goes for Iran, goes for the US and Israel too.
We just gloss over the fact that the US basically overthrew the Democratically Elected Iranian government and installed the despotic Shah, and we did it for Oil and Oil alone.
That gave rise to the Iranian revolution, Khomeini, and the seeds of so much of radical Islam.
What goes around comes around.
Now if anybody tried to do that to us, we'd nuke em.
Israel has long term problems since their population is somewhat programmed to dwindle as a state when citizens are commonly expected to marry within their religion and most of their religion either discourages or repels converts. Many opportunites exist for Israelis outside Israel and while Israel has few resources, its enemies are loaded with one of the most important resources on the planet.
It would be a good idea for Israel be strenuously make and consolidate peace while the scales of power are still tipped in its favor.
Peace
Karl
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rocketsocks
climber
Bellevue, WA
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"We always see the "Evil" in others and never in ourselves. Goes for Iran, goes for the US and Israel too."
Sorry, wrong. How many times have you heard people in the US say how evil the US or the Bush administration is? There are bumperstickers and movies for f*ck's sake. Personally I think the problem is the reverse. There are so many people eager to spot the slightest mote of evil in the west (wiretapping, zomg!) that they lose all perspective and fail to see that, for example, Iran's is truly an evil regime. The US Senate does not shout "death to Iran!" on a regular basis. And you tend not to see too many executions for the crimes of homosexuality or adultery in the US. Etc...
Don't hold the Iranians to a different standard just because they have a different culture, or out of some sense of "white guilt" or other BS. Hold them to the same standard you would hold the US administration, for example.
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