Designing a Peace Government

The U.S. and most other countries have political structures with a subtle and dangerous bias toward war, a design that counterintuitively encourages leaders to launch wars. Political systems so designed are irrational and urgently need reform.

Surrender

Washington has deployed even more military forces against Iran and intensified its economic war against Iran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard generals have launched a rhetorical broadside against Washington, and Israel has again threatened to commit aggression against Iran.

Shall We Have Another War...This Time, Iran?

No one did much thinking in early 2003; everyone was "in shock," you see. That excuse cannot be used this time. So...has the U.S. public learned anything in the interim?

Giving a Fix to an Addict

Reports of giving offensive weapons of mass destruction to the Netanyahu gang sound like buying off the neighborhood junkie with a free fix. The next U.S. president better come into office with a plan of pure magic.

The best TV news program available in the U.S. today, Democracy Now, says that Obama has "reportedly" offered Israel offensive weapons of mass destruction to delay a war of aggression against Iran, i.e., a new and more powerful fix for a buddy who is already a junkie and on the verge of "going rogue." Given that Obama wants to help Israel, defensive arms and/or an even more solid security wall around Israel than the U.S. already provides might have been in order, but to offer to increase the ability of a potential aggressor to commit aggression in return for a promise that the potential aggressor will delay ever so slightly his commission of the sin would constitute a betrayal of presidential responsibility for protecting U.S. national security, not to mention being a very nasty thing to do to one's addict-buddy. A friend would offer Israel an option other than the madness of launching an uncontrollable war against a vastly larger adversary rather than further whetting the appetites of a regime already committed to solving its foreign policy and domestic policy problems through violence.

Even the infamous hardline former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, keeps warning against the Netanyahu regime's promotion of war as the answer, most recently calling the idea "stupid." One wonders how well he will sleep if the regime he recently left and now distrusts becomes convinced that it finally has the ability to deal the Iranians a "final solution."

Democracy Now indicated the news might not be true. One can only hope, but this is exactly the self-defeating policy Washington has been pursuing for a generation, and the U.S. "Israel problem" just keeps getting worse and worse. If the report is true, Obama may get reelected, since no presidential-quality opposition is yet visible on the horizon, but if he does, then how will he control Israel the next time?

The Magnes Zionist: Let Iran Go Nuclear, Ribono shel Olam

The Magnes Zionist: Let Iran Go Nuclear, Ribono shel Olam

This post by an Israeli and self-described Zionist cuts through the flood of propaganda, ignorance, and willful self-delusion on the subject of attacking Iran with a degree of clarity and moral vision almost unknown in U.S. commentary.


The author concludes:

The Jews I know seem to be divided between those who support sanctions and those who support military action. Maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd. I support neither. The drums of war have started again, and the madness should be stopped now. If either Israel (or its proxy, the US) attacks Iran, it will be difficult for any moral person to defend the right of such a rogue state to exist.

Have we reached the point where we can no longer safely avoid the conclusion that there exists a state so powerful and so vengeful and so lacking in self-control and so contemptuous of the rights of others that the defense of our own national security compels us to disarm that state? In short, can the U.S. any longer afford to permit the state of Israel to exist?