I have recently done a post about alliances between nations/people. The post was dead in the water as generally nations don't have strong alliances. We (I) can up with the USA, Canada, UK and Australia. I think it is clear that these nations have strong alliances because they generally consider themselves to be of the same ilk. However, there is a very strong bond between the USA and Israel which breaks the rules of the alliances above. So why is there such a strong bond. In fact it might be the strongest bond between nations on earth. The USA are prepared to take massive risks for Israel, why?
Israel is about the only DEMOCRATIC nation in the Mid East today and allow women to vote whereas most other Arabic nations have no DEMOCRACY and do not allow women to vote. Those are just a few of the things that America has in common with Israel plus of course they buy most of their military supplies from it.
I still reckon secretly israel, is a state of usa. Uk and usa made israel, and i still reckon israel is not an independant nation, but is one of usa states.
actually we have very little in common with Israel. in fact when truman voted in support of the creation of Israel large parts of the state department all most resigned in protest. their reasoning that introducing a foreign element over the native arab population would only lead to conflict, oppression and bloodshed. the argued that no population would passively accept their rights being taken away from them. 60 years later the supporters of Israel in the states have yet to been right once about their predictions. standing by as Israel grew into an opressive fascist overmiliterized state while those who argued against it have been shown to be right time and time again.
Mearsheimer and Walt wrote an interesting book some years ago, about the Israel Lobby in US politics. It was based on an article they wrote for the Atlantic Monthly (I think it was) , which was spiked at the last moment, for undisclosed reasons. They got the article published in the London Review of Books (you can read it here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby and their difficulties inspired them to extend this article into the book that followed. For those of us who have been horrified at the process that led to the Iraq invasion, this book seemed to explain a great deal.
So the conclusion would be that the polls were faked by the Israel lobby and most Americans actually didn't support the Iraq war on the night it was launched?
It's been postulated that Americans see ourselves as a reflection of the Jews. Our ancestors were, in many ways, refugees from other countries, and we found our own "Promised Land." We even had a native population to overwhelm, although it was easier for us because North America north of the Rio Grande was still in the Stone Age, so we did a much more efficient job of exterminating them. So when the Jewish refugees from WWII needed a new place to live, we felt kinship with them... and offered them somebody else's homeland, just like ours. During the Cold War, the Russians were successful at bringing most of the Arab/Muslim nations in the Middle East into their own political sphere. We responded by picking up Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and a few others. But by treating Israel as our 49th state (Hawaii and Alaska were still territories) and lavishing them with modern weapons and sheer money, we gained an ally that would stand by us forever--and also one that now had a huge, well-armed military. The Cold War is over, but now we've gotten ourselves into a war with most of the Muslim Middle East, including a few former friends like Iran. So having the world's only Jewish country on our side--one that is universally assumed to have nuclear weapons--is a bulwark in the region. It's all politics. Isn't everything? Interesting fact: Zionism is dying out in the USA, especially among younger Jewish Americans. There are more Israelis emigrating to America, than Americans going the other way. Quite a few of us are not at all sanguine about our country's knee-jerk support of Israel, particularly its treatment of the Palestinians.
Don't be ridiculous, that's just crass. There was, however, a huge campaign of misrepresentation, whipped up by neocons close to and in the administration, which had a great effect in shaping public opinion. (Presumably you would not deny that politicians can shape opinion, especially given the US public's notoriously vague grasp of foreign affairs). At that time it was all the easier, since public opinion was (understandably) in bellicose mood after the Trade Centre atrocity. The central lie was of course fabricating a non-existent link between Al Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein. Even the president himself connived in this, whether out of cynicism or rank stupidity. Richard Clarke's book "Against All Enemies" lays out how it unfolded in painful detail.
No. Most Americans supported the Iraq war because they believed the fake information about Saddam having WMDs, and because they believed the fake information that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, rather than Saudi Arabia. 100% of the leadership (Osama was a member by marriage of the Saudi royal family), about 95% of the financing (Saudi Arabia is arguably the richest large nation in the Middle East), and 79% of the attackers (15 of 19) in the 9/11 operation were from Saudi Arabia. But the Bush family couldn't let us know that because the Saudis are their buddies in the energy industry, and he didn't want us demanding that he bomb Riyadh. That's why he made up the fairytale about Saddam. By attacking Iraq and killing Saddam, he destroyed what little stability the region had, created a new majority-Shiite state to align with Iran, yet he failed to appropriate Iraq's oil wells for U.S. companies--because the destruction greatly reduced their output. And that's why he settled for going after Osama in Afghanistan, far from Riyadh. Who doesn't believe that if he had threatened to bomb Riyadh instead of Kabul, King Abdullah would have had Osama's head delivered to the White House service entrance on a FedEx truck within 36 hours?
Excuse Me Friends but I note in your near comments that all of you don`t mention the great and very big cuestion in $$$...that means a very big war as something like thisone that wants to begin USed world whith Obi ! ! !...Everyone forgives that detail ! ! !...Atte:LACR Note : Excuse My Bad English and thanks for reading this lines ! ! !...Have a nice day ! ! !
Yes I'd agree with a lot of this. However I think possibly you overestimate the strength of the links between Saudi rulers and Al Qa'ida. It's true the bin Laden family is very big in KSA, but I gather Osama was very much their black sheep. It seems to me that the Saudi royal family unwittingly created the monster of Al Qa'ida by encouraging Wahhabism (a form of puritanical sunni fundamentalism), out of guilt and to distract from their own corruption, given that they rule the birthplace of Islam. I think they fear what they have created and are now forced to placate. I think the issue some people make out of the Iraqi oilfields is a red herring. Seems to me whoever owned them would want to pump oil and sell it on the world oil market, so the net world supply is not affected by the ownership issue. Though, as you rightly observe, the one thing that DOES affect the net world oil supply is having the wells and pipelines out of commission because they've been bombed by the US Army! The Iraq invasion was a complete clusterfuck, at all levels, built on lies. (Here in the UK, some of us rechristened French Fries as Clusterfuck Fries.) Perhaps my favourite vignette symbolising the ineptitude was the discussion of a new flag for the supposedly democratic Iraq. The old (and current) Iraqi flag, like that of almost all the Arabian countries, uses a design based on red, white, green and black. This pre-dated Saddam and had been a national symbol, e.g used by the Iraqi football team etc, for decades. Yet the Bremer administration, in its wisdom, proposed a new flag with a blue and white colour scheme. Now, I can only think of one country in the region with a flag with those colours.....yup, Israel. Tactful or what, eh?
Let's all raise a glass and toast the good health of your friend Obi, may he save many more galaxies hence. :cheers:
It's also the official colour scheme of the Kansas City Royals, maybe Bremer's just a huge baseball fan. Yep, very tactful choice indeed :wallbang: :facepalm:
