USA=Israel?

Prof. Cole's web page contains an article by Mark LeVine, Prof. of History in UC Irvine. I think it's very relevant to today's situation.

To put it bluntly, Americans have chosen to return a man to the White House who has supervised the killing of more civilians than Slobodan Milosevic. We have signed onto a President who sanctions torture, who wantonly rejects any international treaty--Kyoto, the ABM and the International Criminal Court--that doesn�t suit his messianic agenda. Who truly believes �God Almighty� is on his side.

America, in short, has become a criminal nation, and it must be stopped. (Yes, there are many other criminal nations, but aside from Israel how many even have the pretense of democracy? Russia? The Sudan? China? India is perhaps one; and given its sordid occupation of Kashmir it shouldn�t surprise that a US-India-Israel axis of occupation and Islamophobia is one of the most prominent features of the world�s geo-strategic post-9/11 landscape.)

In Israel most citizens know full well the realities of their occupation; even right-wing newspapers routinely publish articles that describe its details with enough clarity to make any ignorance willful. This dynamic is in fact why Israelis have responded to the civil war with Palestinians by increasing the dehumanization of the occupation, accompanied by a fervent practice of getting on with life no matter what�s happening ten or fifteen miles away in �the Territories.� The alternative, actually working to stop the insanity of the occupation, would lead to much more hatred and violence within Israel and between Jews than Palestinians could ever hope to inflict on Israeli society from the outside.

The situation is almost identical vis-�-vis the American perspective on Iraq. Abu Ghraib? Mass civilian casualties caused by a war launched on demonstrably false pretenses? The erosion of civil liberties? The transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer money (not to mention Iraqi resources and capital) by the US government to its corporate allies? To more than 70% of America�s eligible votes--that is, the approximately thirty percent that voted for Bush and the forty percent that didn�t feel this situation was compelling enough to warrant their taking the time to vote--none of it really matters. America is great and strong and can do what it wants, and to hell with anyone who gets in our way, especially if they fight back.

The numbing acceptance of large scale and systematic violence perpetrated by the state as a normal part of its exercise of power and the willingness of a plurality of the electorate to support parties and policies which are manifestly against their economic and social interests (as demonstrated by the increase in poverty and economic insecurity across the board in Israel and the US produced by the last two decades of neoliberalism) sadly characterize both societies today. This is why I never shared the optimism friends who thought this situation would help elect Kerry. Like Israel�s Barak or Peres, in the context of a post-9/11 militant globalization, John Kerry offered Americans little more than Bush lite on the most crucial issue of the day. In America�s increasingly obese culture, is there any wonder we chose SuperSize over Nutrasweet?

The topic line made me laugh hysterically.

US has not dropped to that level.

Originally posted by Questor
US has not dropped to that level.

Please read the complete paper...

Care to elaborate?

This article brings up a lot of good points. I have always thought that the US should stop supporting Isreal. I even started a thread on why I thought we should not support them any more. The only argument I could get in opposition of my opinion was that the 8 million jews in America would never let it happen.