Opinion Editorials, March 2012

If we don’t come to terms in America to the reality around us, we will be doomed; and not just as an empire-holder, but as a serious major player in any future affairs of planet earth.  We need to step down from that land of make-believe, and accept once and for all that Americans are neither a special cast divinely placed on this earth to rule it, nor the self-proclaimed virtuous people born with an added limb of exceptionalism.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, throw away the sponge which is continuously used to brainwash us, come out from under the shower of socio-political lies, and enter the sauna of break-believe, where we can have both body and mind cleansed.

As I am writing this column, the White House is preparing to receive tomorrow, Monday, March 5, none other than Benjamin Netanyahu for a tête-à-tête – one would hardly call it a summit – with Barack Obama.  Tête-à-tête is in truth the most appropriate term, given that when it comes to the relationship between the two countries, Israel and the United States, there is really a Holy Duality, a transcending divine mystery, which makes us, USRAEL, a nation, indivisible, under God, with justice for just us.  We are, or have become, at least for many people in the Middle East, a bi-cephalic monster, a true Satan of sorts.

To people in most advanced, or “civilized”, nations what is occurring this coming week in the United States would appear as the greatest insult to their freedom and independence, but not to us in brainwashed America.  The annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), being held this year with over a 50 percent increase attendance (nearing 14,000) will be addressed by the two heads of state of Usrael.  [No, I haven’t coined the word, although I thought of its appropriateness decades ago, just like probably others have.]  It is a ritual that takes place, much like lighting the Christmas tree or the Yom Kippur candles.

What’s different this year, accentuated by a huge increase in AIPAC attendance, is the set of circumstances surrounding Iran’s ascending nuclear capability and Israel’s desire to maintain its nuclear hegemony in the region.  Netanyahu is carrying with him another weapon that is sure to soften up any independent ideas Obama might have on such critical issue, and that is the danger of alienating the Jewish vote, and far more importantly the Jewish influence, on the eve of his possible reelection for a second term as president.  After all, there is a segment of the US population who believe that relations between Obama and Netanyahu are, or have been, somewhat strained.

Obama might not like being forced to set policy under pressure from Israel, but he has no choice if he wishes to continue living in the White House, and he knows it.  In fact, he has already fired the first salvos prior to the annual ritual of rekindling the incestuous relationship between the two countries at the conference.  He recently stated for the benefit of the Iranian leadership – and Israel – that he is not bluffing, taken by many Americans as getting ready to launch yet another preemptive war.  Just like in 2006, when America’s maestro of preemptive war music, Younger Bush, was pointing his baton, through Condoleezza Rice, to the next candidate in his triad axis of evil: Iran.

Both, the US civilian government, whether wearing Republican or Democratic colors, and the Pentagon, are quickly coming to the realization that the American military can bomb the daylights out of an enemy and its collateral civilian population, but it cannot win wars or have success in nation-building.  The question remains as to whether the US will come to a full and total realization before it accedes to Netanyahu’s demands for its blessing in a preemptive attack.

For all the existing pros and cons to an attack on known, or fake, Iranian nuclear facilities, there is only an ultimate solution to the problems besetting the Middle East that will obtain peace in the long term… and that is via negotiations and compromise.  Nothing else will do.  If Israel attacks Iran, with or without America’s consent, its fear of an eventual second holocaust is not going to be minimized, but irremediably confirmed to happen at a later time.  We keep forgetting that at the end of the day Ahmadinejad, regardless of his verbal antics, has less power in Iran than Netanyahu has in Israel.  The monolithic power in Iran is vested in the ayatollahs who run a fundamentalist Islamic state where the use of nuclear weapons is said to be un-Islamic which, if true, shows a greater level of humanity than that exercised by the allies when fire-bombing German cities to stones-and-ashes, or nuking two Japanese cities, all as WWII was about to end and there was only one reason for doing so: un-Christian wrath.   

America must stop characterizing nations as rogue just because it suits its needs.  If there is a nation in the world which appears to most others as a rogue nation, it is the United States of America.  Let’s just walk away from the land of make-believe in which we’ve been living and enter reality, the land of break-believe.

Ben Tanosborn

tanosborn@yahoo.com

www.tanosborn.com

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