planet earth looks blue

While the rest of the world is taking to the streets to protest the unfair bombing of Gaza, the Bush administration simply asks Israel to try not to hit civilians.  Sounds like our present moral standing on Iraq.  All over Europe, the Muslim world, and even in Israel itself people are speaking out against this sudden violence against the Palestinians.  So why is America silent?  Just trying to express individuality?  Or is the American moral compass knocked off track for other reasons?

Let’s go back in history, to 1948.  Truman is in office.  The reverberations of the Holocaust are still felt as the world is trying to put itself back together after WWII.  The western world offers up Palestine, once of the many satellites of the British Empire.  On May 14th Israel declares itself a state.  The Jewish people finally have a homeland.  Truman’s Secretary of State, George Marshall warns the President not to side too quickly with the Jewish state, for fear of harming relations in the Muslim world, starting a precedent of antagonism with the oil-rich Middle East.  Truman, a Zionist supporter himself, was the first to extend his hand, eleven minutes after Israel declared itself a state.  

Since then, America has remained a close ally to Israel, pouring $3 billion a year into their military.  Israel is the top recipient of US foreign aid behind Iraq.  Why do we do this?  Well, to have a dependent nation in the region.  And at the expense of instability, endless wars, and countless past and future casualties.  It is strategically smart for America, since Truman first began the precedent, to make Israel a military power.  Morally, well that’s another issue.  But you don’t get to be a superpower based on your ethics, now do you.  You don’t get to remain a superpower forever either for the same reason.  

2008-12-31