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
Prepare Yourself for Blowback from Yemen
By Jacob G. Hornberger
October 15, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- If there is another terrorist attack on
U.S. soil, this time because of the death
and destruction that the U.S. government is
wreaking in Yemen, I can already hear the
laments and complaints of statist-Americans:
“Oh my gosh, another terrorist attack
against us! Why do the terrorists and the
Muslims hate us for our freedom and values?
Why can’t they see that we’re good people
who just want to live our lives in peace? We
must now give more power and more money to
the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA so that they can
keep us safe from those who hate us because
we’re good.”
In
other words, the last thing they’re going to
acknowledge is that the Tomahawk missiles
that the U.S. military fired against radar
sites in Yemen yesterday, killing whoever
happened to be manning those radar sites,
will have had anything to do with
retaliatory terrorism against the United
States.
Once again, this time in Yemen, the Pentagon
is playing the victim. It claims that it
fired its missiles in self-defense after two
incidents in which rebels in Yemen fired
missiles at a U.S. Navy ship in the area.
But
the Pentagon is not a victim and it didn’t
fire those missiles and kill those Yemeni
radar operators in self-defense. Instead,
like its other interventions in Iraq, Libya,
Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East, it
is an illegal participant in the ongoing
conflict in Yemen.
First, let’s point out the obvious: No one
in Yemen has ever attacked the continental
United States nor does anyone in Yemen have
any interest in doing so. The conflict in
that country is a civil war, one that isn’t
any business of the United States but which
the U.S. national-security establishment has
made its business, just like it did more
than 50 years ago in Korea and Vietnam.
Second, if a poll were suddenly conducted of
the American people as to who is fighting in
Yemen and why they are fighting, my hunch is
that 99 percent of the respondents would
answer, “I have no idea.” Thus, it’s another
classic example of how Americans just defer
to the national-security establishment —
i.e., the Pentagon and CIA — when it comes
to foreign interventionism. “They’re the
experts on national security,” the sentiment
goes, “and so we should blindly defer to
their wisdom and expertise.”
Third, Saudi Arabia, which has embroiled
itself in the conflict by invading Yemen and
killing countless people, has done so with
weaponry that has been furnished by the U.S.
military-industrial complex.
Fourth, by firing its missiles into Yemen,
the Pentagon committed an illegal act of war
under our form of constitutional government.
The U.S. Constitution, which purports to
control the actions of federal officials,
requires a congressional declaration of war
before the Pentagon is permitted to wage
war. Of course, that has never mattered to
the Pentagon, notwithstanding the fact that
it requires its soldiers to take an oath to
support and defend the Constitution.
Let’s not ignore the obvious: Rather than
fire its missiles at those radar sites, the
Pentagon could have just come home and
limited its role to protecting the United
States, just as the Swiss military does.
Indeed, at the risk of belaboring the
obvious, the Pentagon has intentionally
stationed its warships near the warzone,
knowing full-well of the likelihood that
Yemenis might strike at U.S. warships in
retaliation for the death and destruction
that U.S. partner and ally Saudi Arabia is
wreaking on the country with U.S.-provided
weaponry.
The
Pentagon is not a victim in Yemen and it’s
not an innocent party to the conflict. By
providing armaments to Saudi Arabia, it has
knowingly embroiled the United States in the
conflict and is now playing the innocent.
It’s another classic example of how the U.S.
national-security establishment has operated
ever since it lost its official enemies, the
Soviet Union and communism, with the sudden
and unexpected end of the Cold War.
As
we have learned, time and time again, there
are will be costs arising from the
Pentagon’s intervention in Yemen.
First, there are the money costs. Those
Tomahawk missiles have to be replaced, just
as all those Saudi missiles and bullets that
are being fired on Yemenis, have to be
replaced. That means more booming business
for the military-industrial complex. It also
means higher taxes and more government debt
for the American people.
Second, there is the likely terrorist
blowback. When the Pentagon and CIA are
killing people in the Middle East and
Afghanistan, there is a high probability of
terrorist retaliation. One can scream to the
high heavens about how Muslims, terrorists,
and communists hate America for its freedom
and values, but it won’t change the truth:
Anti-American terrorism is rooted in the
fact that the Pentagon and CIA continue to
kill people over there.
Third, there is the suppression of freedom
here at home. That’s where emergency powers
come into play.
James Madison pointed out that of all the
enemies to liberty, war is the biggest. It
inevitably entails emergency powers being
wielded and exercised, centralization of
power, and ever-increasing taxation and
inflation to fund the war machine and all
the bureaucratic measures that supposed to
“keep us safe.”
Given that the Pentagon and CIA have kept
America at war for some 25 years, it’s easy
for Americans to recognize the truthfulness
of Madison’s statement. Americans now live
under a political regime whose
democratically elected president, together
with the army, CIA, and NSA, now wields some
of the most extraordinary powers in history:
The
power to assassinate people.
The
power to kidnap people and incarcerate them
for life in concentration camps and military
dungeons.
The
power to torture people.
The
power to invade countries.
The
power to initiate coups.
The
power to spy on people, monitor their
Internet activity, and record their
telephone calls.
None of those powers are consistent with a
free society. They are all consistent with
totalitarian regimes. And everyone should
take note: Whoever is elected president —
Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton — will be
wielding all those dictatorial powers in
conjunction with a national-security
establishment that is dead-set on keeping
America embroiled in conflicts all over the
world for the next 25 years.
It’s really the perfect racket. Too bad all
too many Americans haven’t yet figured it
out. Just wait for the next terrorist attack
and you’ll see what I mean, when they start
lamenting about how good we are and how the
Muslims and terrorists just hate us for our
freedom and values.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president
of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was
born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and
received his B.A. in economics from Virginia
Military Institute and his law degree from
the University of Texas. He was a trial
attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also
was an adjunct professor at the University
of Dallas, where he taught law and
economics.
http://www.fff.org/ |
