The announcement last week by the United
States of the largest military aid
package in its history – to Israel – was
a win for both sides.
Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast
that his lobbying had boosted aid from
$3.1 billion a year to $3.8bn – a 22 per
cent increase – for a decade starting in
2019.
Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a
rebuff to those who accuse him of
jeopardising Israeli security interests
with his government’s repeated affronts
to the White House.
In the past weeks alone, defence
minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared
last year’s nuclear deal between
Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich
pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr
Netanyahu has implied that US opposition
to settlement expansion is the same as
support for the “ethnic cleansing” of
Jews.
American president Barack Obama,
meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own
critics who insinuate that he is
anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a
fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the
Democratic party’s candidate to succeed
Mr Obama in November’s election.
In reality, however, the Obama
administration has quietly punished Mr
Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli
expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal
were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu
stalled negotiations last year as he
sought to recruit Congress to his battle
against the Iran deal.
In fact, Israel already receives
roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s
assistance on developing missile defence
programmes is factored in. Notably,
Israel has been forced to promise not to
approach Congress for extra funds.
The deal takes into account neither
inflation nor the dollar’s depreciation
against the shekel.
A bigger blow still is the White
House’s demand to phase out a special
exemption that allowed Israel to spend
nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on
weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will
soon have to buy all its armaments from
the US, ending what amounted to a
subsidy to its own arms industry.
Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed
military largesse – in the face of
almost continual insults – inevitably
fuels claims that the Israeli tail is
wagging the US dog. Even The New York
Times has described the aid package as
“too big”.
Since the 1973 war, Israel has
received at least $100bn in military
aid, with more assistance hidden from
view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid
half of Israel’s military budget. Today
it still foots a fifth of the bill,
despite Israel’s economic success.
But the US expects a return on its
massive investment. As the late Israeli
politician-general Ariel Sharon once
observed, Israel has been a US
“aircraft carrier” in the Middle East,
acting as the regional bully and
carrying out operations that benefit
Washington.
Almost no one blames the US for
Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq’s
and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A
nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have
deterred later US-backed moves at regime
overthrow, as well as countering the
strategic advantage Israel derives from
its own nuclear arsenal.
In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored
military prowess is a triple boon to the
US weapons industry, the country’s most
powerful lobby. Public funds are
siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies
from American arms makers. That, in
turn, serves as a shop window for other
customers and spurs an endless and
lucrative game of catch-up in the rest
of the Middle East.
The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive
in Israel in December – their various
components produced in 46 US states –
will increase the clamour for the
cutting-edge warplane.
Israel is also a “front-line
laboratory”, as former Israeli army
negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the
weekend, that develops and field-tests
new technology Washington can later use
itself.
The US is planning to buy back the
missile interception system Iron Dome –
which neutralises battlefield threats of
retaliation – it largely paid for.
Israel works closely too with the US in
developing cyberwarfare, such as the
Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s
civilian nuclear programme.
But the clearest message from
Israel’s new aid package is one
delivered to the Palestinians:
Washington sees no pressing strategic
interest in ending the occupation. It
stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran
deal but will not risk a damaging clash
over Palestinian statehood.
Some believe that Mr Obama signed the
aid package to win the credibility
necessary to overcome his domestic
Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the
hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly
before he leaves office, that corners Mr
Netanyahu into making peace.
Hopes have been raised by an expected
meeting at the United Nations in New
York on Wednesday. But their first talks
in 10 months are planned only to
demonstrate unity to confound critics of
the aid deal.
If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure
Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid
agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu
need not fear US financial retaliation,
even as he intensifies effective
annexation of the West Bank.
Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right
lesson from the aid deal – he can act
against the Palestinians with continuing
US impunity.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf
The
Age of Decline, Apple Pie, and America's
Chosen Suicide Bomber
And Truly, This Is Not About Donald Trump...
By Tom Engelhardt
This
is not about Donald Trump. And I mean it.
October 07, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Tom
Dispatch"
-
From
the moment the first scribe etched a paean
of praise to Nebuchadnezzar into a stone
tablet, it’s reasonable to conclude that
never in history has the media covered a
single human being as it has Donald Trump.
For more than a year now, unless a terror
attack roiled American life, he’s been the
news cycle, essentially the only one,
morning, noon, and night, day after day,
week after week, month after month. His
every word, phrase, move, insult, passing
comment, off-the-cuff remark, claim, boast,
brazen lie, shout, or shout-out has been
ours as well. In this period, he’s praised
his
secret plan to destroy ISIS and
take Iraqi oil. He’s
thumped that “big, fat, beautiful wall”
again and again. He’s
birthered a campaign that could indeed
transport him, improbably enough, into the
Oval Office. He’s fought it out with 17
political rivals, among others, including
“lyin’ Ted,” “low-energy Jeb,” Carly (“Look
at that face! Would anyone vote for
that?”) Fiorini, “crooked Hillary,” a Miss
Universe (“Miss
Piggy”), the “highly
overrated” Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle
("You could see there was blood coming out
of her eyes, blood coming out of her
wherever"),
always Rosie O’Donnell (“a slob [with] a
fat, ugly face”), and so many others. He’s
made
veiled assassination threats;
lauded the desire to punch someone in
the face; talked about
shooting “somebody” in “the middle of
Fifth Avenue”; defended the size of his
hands and his
you-know-what; retweeted
neo-Nazis and a quote from
Mussolini; denounced the outsourcing of
American manufacturing jobs and products
while
outsourcing his own jobs and products;
excoriated immigrants and foreign labor
while
hiring the
same; advertised the Trump brand in
every way imaginable; had a
bromance with Vladimir Putin;
threatened to let nuclear weapons
proliferate; complained bitterly about a
rigged election,
rigged debates, a
rigged moderator, and a
rigged microphone; swore that he and he
alone was capable of again making America,
and so the world, a place of the sort of
greatness only he himself could match, and
that’s just to begin a list on the subject
of The Donald.
In
other words, thanks to the media attention
he garners incessantly, he is the living
embodiment of our American moment. No matter
what you think of him, his has been a
journey of a sort we’ve never seen before, a
triumph of the first order, whatever happens
on November 8th. He’s burnished his own
brand; opened a new hotel on -- yes --
Pennsylvania Avenue (which he’s used his
election run to
promote and publicize); sold his
products
mercilessly; promoted
his children;
funneled dollars to his family and
businesses; and in an unspoken alliance
(pact, entente, détente) of the first order,
kept the nightly news and the cable networks
rolling in dough and in the spotlight
(as long as they kept yakking about him),
despite the fact that younger viewers were
in flight to the universe of social media,
streaming services, and their smartphones.
Thanks to the millions, billions, perhaps
trillions of words expended on him by
nonstop commentators, pundits, talking
heads, retired generals and admirals, former
intelligence chiefs, ex-Bush administration
officials, and god knows who else that have
kept the cable channels churning with Trump
on a nearly 24/7 basis, he and his
remarkable ego, and his now familiar
gestures -- that jut-jawed look, that orange
hair, that overly tanned face, that
eternally raised voice -- have become the
wallpaper of our lives, something close to
our reality. If he were an action film, some
Hollywood studio would be swooning, because
never has a single act gotten such nonstop
publicity. We’ve never seen anything like
him or it, and yet, strange as the Trump
phenomenon may be, if you think about it for
a moment, you’ll realize that there’s also
something eerily familiar about him, and not
just because of The Apprentice and
Celebrity Apprentice.
In a
world where so many things deserve our
attention and don’t get it, rest assured
that this is not about Donald Trump. It
really isn’t.
In
terms of any presidential candidate from
George Washington to Barack Obama, Trump is
little short of a freak of nature. There’s
really no one to compare him to (other,
perhaps, than
George Wallace). Sometimes his pitch
about America -- and a return to greatness
-- has a faintly
Reaganesque quality (but without any of
Ronald Reagan’s sunniness or charm).
Otherwise, I dare you to make such a
comparison.
Still, don’t be fooled. As a phenomenon,
Donald Trump couldn’t be more American -- as
American, in fact, as a piece of McDonald’s
baked apple pie. What could be more
American, after all, than his two major
roles: salesman (or pitchman) and con
artist? From P.T. Barnum (who, by the way,
became the
mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, late
in life) to
Willy Loman, selling has long been an
iconic American way to go. A man who sells
his life and brand as the ultimate American
life and brand... come on, what’s not
familiar about that?
As
for being a conman, since at least Mark
Twain (remember the
Duke of Bridgewater and the Dauphin, who
join Huck and Jim on their raft?) and Herman
Melville (The
Confidence Man), the charm of the
-- excuse the phrase under the circumstances
-- huckster in American life can’t be
denied. It’s something Donald Trump knows
in his bones, even if all those pundits and
commentators and pollsters (and for that
matter Hillary Clinton’s advisers) don’t:
Americans love a conman. Historically,
we’ve often admired, if not identified with,
someone intent on playing and successfully
beating the system, whether at a confidence
game or through criminal activity.
After the first presidential debate, when
Trump essentially admitted that in some
years he paid no taxes (“that
makes me smart”) and that he had
played the tax system for everything it
was worth, there was all that professional
tsk-tsking and the suggestion that such an
admission would
deeply disturb ordinary voters who pay
up when the IRS comes knocking. Don’t
believe it for a second. I guarantee you
that Trump senses he’s deep in the
Mississippi of American politics with such
statements and that a surprising number of
voters will admire him for it (whether they
admit it or not). After all, he beat the
system, even if they didn’t.
Whenever I see Trump and read
accounts of his business dealings, I’m
reminded of what 1920s
Chicago crime boss Al Capone
told British journalist Claud Cockburn:
"Listen, don't get the idea I'm one of those
goddamn radicals... Don't get the idea I'm
knocking the American system. My rackets are
run on strictly American lines. Capitalism,
call it what you like, gives to each and
every one of us a great opportunity if only
we seize it with both hands and make the
most of it." Trump’s “rackets” are
similarly “run on strictly American lines.”
He’s the Tony Soprano of casino capitalism
and so couldn’t be more American.
My
father was a salesman. I grew up watching
him make his preparations to sell. I
existed at the edge of his selling universe
and, though I thought I rejected his world,
the truth is that, given the chance and
under the right circumstances, I still love
to sell myself. It’s addictive in the most
American way. There was as well another
aspect of that commonplace world of fathers
I once knew and that I now recognize in
Trump’s overwhelming persona: the bully.
That jut-jawed stance, the pugnacious
approach to the world, that way of carrying
both one’s body and face that seems inbuilt
and offers the constant possibility of
threat -- it was the norm of the world I
grew up in. It was what fathers looked like
(and must still in so many families). It
was, in short, an essential part of the pre-Trumpian
world, a manner, a way of being that The
Donald has distilled into an iconically
brutal version of itself, into not the
commonplace bully -- schoolyard variety --
but The Bully. Still, at least to me, and I
think to many Americans, it couldn’t be more
recognizable and, I suspect, for people
raised among the bullies, the thought of
having such a bully in the Oval Office and
speaking for you for once is strangely
appealing.
Just
in case you were wondering at this point,
I’m serious: this is not about Donald Trump.
And
yet, don’t believe that everything about The
Donald is old hat and familiarly American.
In this strange election season, there are
aspects of his role that are so new they
should startle us all. Begin with the fact
that he’s the
first declinist candidate for president
of our era. Put another way, he’s the only
politician in the country who refuses to
engage in a ritual -- until now a virtual
necessity for American presidential
wannabes, candidates, and presidents:
affirming repeatedly that the United States
is the
greatest, most
exceptional, most
indispensable nation
of all time and that it
possesses the “finest
fighting force in the history of the
world.”
Undoubtedly, that by-now-kneejerk urge to
repeat such formulaic sentiments reflects
creeping self-doubts about America’s future
imperial role. It has the quality of a
magic mantra being used to ward off
reality. After all, when a great power
truly is at its height, as the United States
was in my youth, no one feels the need to
continually, defensively insist that it’s
so.
Trump broke decisively with this version of
political orthodoxy and it tells us much
about our moment that he is now in the final
round of election 2016, not in the trash
heap of American history. His claim, unique
to our moment, is that America is not great
at all, even if he (and only he) can -- feel
free to chant it with me -- make America
great again! Add to that his insistence
that the U.S. military in the Obama era is
anything but the finest fighting machine in
history. According to him, it’s now a
hollowed-out force, a “disaster”
and “in
shambles,” whose generals have been “reduced
to rubble.” Not so long ago, such claims
would have automatically disqualified anyone
as a candidate for president (or much of
anything else). That he can continually
make them, and make the first of them his
t-shirt-and-cap
campaign slogan, tells you that we are
indeed in a new American world.
In
relation to his Republican rivals, and now
Hillary Clinton, he stands alone in
accepting and highlighting what increasing
numbers of Americans, especially white
Americans, have evidently come to feel: that
this country is in decline, its greatness a
thing of the past, or as pollsters like to
put it, that America is no longer
“heading in the right direction” but is now
“on the wrong track.” In this way, he has
mainlined into a deep, economically induced
mindset, especially among white working
class men facing a situation in which so
many good jobs have headed elsewhere, that
the world has turned sour.
Or
think of it another way (and it may be the
newest way of all): a significant part of
the white working class, at least, feels as
if, whether economically or psychologically,
its back is up against the wall and there’s
nowhere left to go. Under such
circumstances, many of these voters have
evidently decided that they’re ready to send
a literal loose cannon into the White House;
they’re willing, that is, to take a chance
on the roof collapsing, even if it collapses
on them.
That is the new and unrecognizable role that
Donald Trump has filled. It’s hard to
conjure up another example of it in our
recent past. The Donald represents, as a
friend of mine likes to say, the suicide
bomber in us all. And voting for him, among
other things, will be an act of nihilism, a
mood that fits well with imperial decline.
Think of him as a message in a bottle
washing up on our shore. After all...
This
is not about Donald Trump. It’s about us.
Tom Engelhardt is a
co-founder of the
American Empire Project and
the author of The United States of Fear
as well as a history of the Cold War,
The End of Victory Culture. He is a
fellow of the
Nation Institute and runs
TomDispatch.com. His latest book is
Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret
Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Follow
TomDispatch on
Twitter and join us on
Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch
Book, Nick Turse’s Next
Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead,
and Tom Engelhardt's latest book,
Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret
Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Tom Engelhardt |
