Stolen
Elections are a Threat to National Security: Bush, Netanyahu, McCain Plus the
Liberty, Mavi Mamara and
Cole. Israel’s Navy goes Berserk.
Stolen elections are a threat
to national security because when candidates like George W. Bush and Benjamin Netanyahu
lose the election, but manage to change the rules to get themselves
selected as leader, they have no political skills or legitimacy and bring only
two tactics to the conduct of the office they stole: force and fraud. Their own people do not even support them.
These attitudes then inform
the foreign policy of the state they lead, invariably leading to armed
conflict. The exceptionalist
attitude that prompted them to take the office they lost becomes an attitude
toward their own nation: the rules that apply to others do not apply to them.
Consequently, Bush’s war of
choice in Iraq ended up strengthening Iran, the exact opposite of the policy he
claimed to be pursuing. The case with Israel is even more egregious. Netanyahu has a habit of shooting from the
hip in such a way as to jeopardize Israel’s relations with its friends who have
extended themselves the most on Israel’s behalf. That is why he lost to Tzivi
Lippi.
During Netanyahu’s first term
as Prime Minister, he carried out an attempted assassination of Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader
in Jordan. The Israeli agents were
caught and the regime of King Hussein, which had just signed a peace treaty
with Israel, was threatened because many thought the king was a secret
accomplice in the attempted assassination.
Having strengthened Khaled Meshal, isn’t it logical to
replay the assassination card by sending an internationally disguised hit team
to Dubai to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. This time, Israel succeeded in killing its
target, but by using false passports of friendly nations has jeopardized its
relations with: Britain, Ireland, France, Australia and Germany. Good work, Bibi. Now, Israel’s piracy in pursuit of its
blockade of Gaza is sacrificing its good relations with Turkey, its most
friendly Moslem nation and Egypt. How
stupid can one be?
The irony of all this is that
it was the closing of the Strait of Tiran in 1967 that Israel claimed
constituted the aggression that justified its launching of the Six Day
War. Blockade is an act of war. Israel, which under the laws of war is
responsible for administering the lands it conquered, is now blockading it. Boarding other vessels in international
waters is piracy, and killing unarmed passengers at close range on those ships
is murder. Israel’s problem is that its
Navy is the step child of Israel’s military services. All the glory goes to the air forces and the
Israel Defense Force. So, on those few
occasions when the Israeli navy is called into action, it goes overboard.
During the 1967 war, the
Israeli Air Force and Navy attacked the U.S. spy ship Liberty, killing 35
sailors and injuring more than 170 others, almost sinking the ship. Instead of demanding accountability for
Israel’s attack on a lightly armed ship in international waters, Admiral John
McCain, the father of Arizona Senator and presidential candidate John McCain,
allowed the Liberty incident to be swept under the rug. The reason was to try to reduce the
anti-Vietnam war fervor of the Jews in the United States by supporting Israel
in its war of aggression. In fact, more
American sailors have died at the hands of the Israeli Navy than Al-Queda’s. Not only
does the United States assist in the cover-up of Israel’s “friendly fire”
aggression, but it gives it more money and arms.
Ironically, one of the surviving
sailors from the Liberty attack was on the flotilla heading to Gaza. The Israeli attack was obviously another
botched job because all of the dead were on one ship, the Mavi
Mamara; so the other ships were able to be stopped
without any loss of life. Clearly, the
commander of the contingent that boarded the Mavi Mamara should go to jail. And if the person responsible
turns out to be Netanyahu, then he should go to jail. But when was the last
time an Israeli soldier was indicted for killing innocent people who were not
Jews? Mass murderers like Brooklyn born
Baruch Goldstein are actually lionized in Israel.
But the greatest irony of the
whole incident is that during anti-Israeli demonstrations in Los Angeles, a
lone Israeli walked by waving an Israeli flag.
Of course, the pro-Palestinian demonstrators were angry, but the Israeli
was able to wave his flag, walk back and forth, and leave. If the situation had been reversed, if an
Israeli demonstration protesting the deaths of fifteen Israelis was passed by a
lone Palestinian Arab waving the Palestinian flag, he would be killed, if not
by the demonstrators then by the police, and the Israelis would trot out their
usual excuses about how they were provoked, just as they are trying to justify
their piracy on the high seas.
When Somalis seize ships they are called pirates and shot
to death by the United States Navy. When
the Israelis are pirates and kill fifteen people (there were no deaths by the
Somali pirates), the Israeli’s create a new crime “political terrorism” which
they claim justifies their behavior.
But, like the United States war in Iraq, the current Middle East crisis
stems from the fact that the Israelis voted for peace and Tzivi
Lippi in the last election (just as Americans voted for Al Gore in 2000), but
the clever lawyers and crooked Supreme Court in the United States and the male
dominated political leadership in Israel, gave the election to the loser.
When the loser is given the
office it is not democracy, it is dictatorship; and not surprisingly, the
results are catastrophic: two wars and a worldwide economic depression. And it could get worse. While fighting religious fundamentalist
regimes in Afghanistan and Iran, the United States is supporting the religious
fundamentalist regime in Israel. In the
United States as well, the immigration issue and the birther
movement have become Trojan horses for abandoning the American tradition of
separation of church and state and birthright citizenship. As the recent death of a Mexican teenager by
a United States border guard illustrates, the Mexicans have now become
America’s Palestinians, they can be shot on sight and no one cares.
The Greek Junta that
overthrew the democratic government in 1967, eventually collapsed after the
ill-fated attempt of its proxies to militarily regain control of Cyprus. Instead of the inevitable war with Turkey
that would have resulted, democracy was restored to Greece. Similarly the Generals in Argentina tried to
reclaim the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) by force. This maneuver resulted in the restoration of
democracy in Argentina. And, of course,
the big elephant in the China shop, Adolf Hitler, came to power
undemocratically and promptly precipitated a global conflagration.
Another irony is that the USS
Cole was bombed by Al-Queda on October 12, 2000. Seventeen sailors were killed and another 39
wounded. The Cole was almost sunk. In the final debate of the 2000 presidential
campaign, that took place in St. Louis, Missouri five days later on October 17,
Governor Bush said in answer to a question about the Middle East, “We can’t put
the Middle East Peace process on our timetable….Saddam Hussein is still a
threat in the Middle East. Our coalition
against Saddam is unraveling. Sanctions
are loosened. The man who may be
developing weapons of mass destruction, we don’t know because inspectors aren’t
in.” [This also shows that Bush has a
learning disability. 9/11 did nothing to
alter his perception of threats to America.] Gore, on the other hand, pointed
to his two day suspension of his campaign to participate in the Middle East
summit trying to reach a deal. No wonder Bush lost the race. So, while Bush stole the election from Gore,
Gore let him steal it and, in truth, they both stole the election from the
American people by excluding the independent candidates and choreographing the
issues in the campaign. The final debate
was mostly about health care and what to do with the federal budget
surplus. Five days after 17 American sailors
were killed and thirty-nine injured and a destroyer almost sunk, the two major
party candidates in debate did nothing but send their condolences to the
families of the dead. No wonder less
than eleven months later nineteen suicide hijackers destroyed the World Trade
Center and part of the Pentagon.
Something dramatic was needed to catch the attention of those
self-absorbed idiots.
This is a good example of how
the timing of events makes a big difference in politics. The Governor of Missouri, who was running for
the Senate, was killed in an airplane crash on October 16, 2000, the night
before the debate, so the deaths on the Cole were overshadowed in the media
cycle by the death of the Governor of the state where the debate was
happening. Localitis uber
alles.
The problem is that because
it is politically incorrect to say that it is the United States’s
unfair support for Israel that was the cause of the 9/11 attacks, we are
slipping back into the Middle Ages.
Instead of the ideal of the American melting pot and a world
meritocracy, income disparities are increasing on the back of inherited wealth
and power while the movement grows for racial and ethnic homogeneity in
nations. While fighting religious
fundamentalism in the Moslem world, many in the United States want to limit
citizenship to white, Christian, English speaking people.
The right wing Christian
fundamentalists, in conjunction with racists and birthers
are trying to turn the United States into a greater Israel, with ethnic
qualifications for citizenship. The movement
to repeal birthright citizenship does not even correctly identify its
source. Only a “natural born” American
is eligible to be president. Natural
means nothing if not the absence of human involvement of any kind. It is in the first Article of the
Constitution.
There is no doubt that the United
States is at war. The problem is that it
is fighting for principles that will only make the war worse. The stolen 2000 election and the exceptionalist philosophy that it engendered in the
American political psyche, has put the United States on a path of perpetual
warfare. The only way to protect a
Jewish State on lands taken from the indigenous population, where American Jews
have more of a right to live than the non-Jews who already live there, not only
requires endless warfare against Moslem fundamentalist states, but also the
abandonment of core American principals of non-sectarianism and equal
opportunity.
The world is on a path to
religious war fought with nuclear weapons.
Nations with stolen elections are not democracies, so the leaders need
to appeal to “higher authority”, namely religion, for making decisions. Unfortunately, neither the Bible, nor the Torah, nor
the Koran talk about nuclear arms.