Why are we looking for a conflict to join?
Musings
As the United states has grown to be a world power beginning with World War II we no longer sought to be isolationist but instead felt we should help insure positive results around the world in humanitarian matters and in our efforts to control dictatorships or rogue governments. In general that seems to be a positive position to be taking. However, that also leads the country into a number of situations which it did not anticipate and questions later start arising such as: "why did we do this" or "what were we thinking." Oftenthe answer is that there wasn't enough thought that went into our involvement, the government at the time simply had a policy position and intervened.
Vietnam of course is one of those as is Korea and the other conflicts in which we have been involved in the Middle East. Presumably from these involvements we have learned not to insert ourselves unless we have a particular strategic or humanitarian reason and we feel we should be present in that situation. However, we seem to march into most of these situations almost thoughtlessly. In Korea we responded to a communist invasion and then didn't have a strategy going forward, while in Vietnam we decided to support a government that had a dubious claim to be ruling the south part of Vietnam to begin with. A retrospective look suggests that we entered an escalation with little forethought, We sent military support and then advisors and acted totally surprised when some of the advisors were killed and our ships off the coast of North Vietnam felt they had been attacked. We had inserted ourselves into a civil war and acted like everyone there should know not to touch us.
In the first Gulf War we seem to have made a more thoughtful approach. Kuwait was invaded by Iraq. We made a thoughtful and measured approach and once we had achieved our goal we withdrew. With the second Gulf War we seem to have jumped in for political reasons and have never really emerged. The situation simply expanded into Afghanistan. Syria, Jordan and around the region. Indeed 3 soldiers were killed and more than 40 others injured in a missile attack on a US base in Jordan in 2024.
The most confusing of our involvements today is our apparent effort to keep ourselves involved in the Israel's conflicts with its neighbors. It is hard to understand why.
Contemplations
We have now had some level of involvement in Israel fighting its neighbors for over 75 years. In the beginning this was a policy where we were supporting a David fighting the Goliath of multiple Arab countries that wanted Israel to be wiped off the map. That situation has changed. Now we have Israel taking a pugilistic attitude towards its neighbors and their supporters. Through Israel's diligent efforts it has become the dominant power in the Middle East. It has entered into armistices with several of its neighbors and was at a standstill with theothers. This seemed to bring Israel the general situation that it wanted in that it now controlled the area and there was no likelihood that it wasto be destroyed by its various neighbors.However, Israel has continually sought tocontrol the Palestinians that lived within its expanded borders that included Gaza and the West Bank and carry on an intermittent war with Iran and its allies. As this situation has changed there seemed to be little reason to continue being an unquestioning supporter of Israel. It was obviously strong enough to take care of itself and is one of the richer countries in the world on a per capita basis. However American politics have meant that, to seek the favor of a voting bloc in this country that supports Israel,the politicians keep us involved in Israeli affairs.
Israel's current government's policy is a right wing effort of Israels to absorb the West Bank and keep Gaza as a colonized or apartheid area. The government is run by Bi Bi Netanyahu who constantly panders to American presidents, talks with them on the phone, acts complacent and then does whatever he wants. Currently what he wants is to keep his war in Gaza and with the allies of Iran going because he is under threat ofhaving to go to jail for some items that have been investigated by the Israeli justice system, and the ongoing war has prevented a new vote from occurring to oust him. The government of Israel has done nothing to show how Israel could become a country of two peoples, the Hebrews and the Palestinians(the occupants of the land before the modern state of Israel was formed) which is the US's stated goal. The Israel government has no desire to have it be a country of two peoples. Netanyahu seems to think the Palestinians can simply be made to go away. The government's egregious acts towards that minority of its residents show that thegovernment's long term plan is simply to keep sending in more Israeli settlers and pushing out the Palestinians until they have nowhere to go but to be squeezed into the neighboring countries as refugees.
The trouble with this situation is that the United States government doesn't know how to extract itself from this situation as Israel's primary supporter in the world. Indeed almost all the voting blocs at the United Nations and other world organizations and in the European Economic Community have declared their opposition to Israel's policies. Pretty much the United States stands alone in its support of Israel. That suggests we might not have the right policy.
Besides the fact that this is a silly position to be in, what makes it particularly concerning is that the US keeps getting itself deeper into its support of Israel in its conflicts with its neighbors. Besides our consistent annual aid we had a special package of aid that sent Israel $14 billion for weapons in the second-half of this year. Considering that Israel is one of the richest countries in the world that is a confusing position to be in. If Israel is going to have these various fights with its neighbors without any proposal of how to accommodate the Palestinians and bring the conflicts to an end, it does not seem the United States wants to be inan open-ended position of giving aid to Israel. Sooner or later there's a good prospect that this policy will get us involved directly in their war.
Most recently we have added a new level of involvement. We have sent a THAAD System to Israel and have sent approximately 100 military people to operate the THAAD system. The THAAD is a state-of-the-art missile defense system. The United States military only has approximately 7 of these. Yet we are placingone of them in Israel instead of having the Israelis come up with their own defense to Iranian and Hezbollah and other missiles. We have now inserted ourselves not only into Israel with our defensive weapons but have sent the soldiers too service and fire those weapons. To the extent Israel and its adversaries start throwing enough missiles at each other, and whatever other levels of fighting go with that,our military individuals are bound to be caught up in the fighting and some number of them injured and killed. When that happens there will undoubtedly be an outcry too retaliate because our soldiers were attacked. That is what happened in Vietnam.
Thoughts
Israel is a wealthy and well armed country. It needs to either find a way to work with its neighbors or be prepared to defend itself in conflicts with its neighbors. We are 75 years into this effort with no end in site. There is no reason to keep going forward with a blank check of supporting Israel regardless of what it does. President Biden and President Bush each asked Bi Bi Netanyahu, a number of times, to stand down with the antagonistic efforts and work on ways to bring about a two state solution. Bi Bialways said appropriate things in their conversations about what he would work on and then went and did whatever his government wanted to do. That has always led to more conflict with the neighbors and guerrilla groupsand such is the continuing status now. It does not make sense to be sending elite missile defense systems, with over 100 soldiers to operate them, into a war that is brewing. We should withdraw the THADD system and the soldiers operating it and tell the Netanyahu government that our support for its efforts are over unless and until it can meet the standards to create a two state solution that we have requested. The Netanyahu government has ignored us and we are still marching forward in what may well wind up to be the next war. We have no obligation to do that.
Obadiah Plainman
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