Posted on 03/02/2004 6:24:22 AM PST by Alouette
Um, Earth to Gunslinger: we're not sending money to Israel to "defend them". We're sending money there to restrain them.
Do you really want Israel to mop up the Middle East it's way?
Think about that for a while before blurting out a reply.
By the way, what's your sentiments on that Iranian passenger plane that our warship blew out of the sky?
Tell that to the people who get LGB's dropped into the apartment next door from an F-16. I'll agree with you we restrain Israel, which perpetuates the conflict. Too bad we only get credit for arming them from the arabs.
Do you really want Israel to mop up the Middle East it's way? Think about that for a while before blurting out a reply.
I've thought about it plenty. It's their war, for their country, let them fight it. We didn't let anyone tell us how to handle our 'settlement problems', and we don't have them anymore.
By the way, what's your sentiments on that Iranian passenger plane that our warship blew out of the sky?
I don't know what the truth is. The Navy started lying from the beginning of the fiasco (saying our ship wasn't in their waters, etc). I've seen reports that the Iranians put an F-14 IFF squawkbox in the plane and put it on a deliberate course to fly at the Tico to provoke an incident. If you'd like to get into the real apples and oranges of that vis-a-vis the U.S.S. Liberty, we can.
Well, I pretty much agree with you. I think we should let them take care of their adversaries their way, but for better or worse, US policy for decades has been to restrain them, to try to keep a lid on the Middle East, to ensure a steady supply of cheap oil.
IMO where that doctrine falls apart is in practice. In other words, we're not ensured a steady supply of cheap oil. Sometimes it's expensive, sometimes it's dearly expensive, and once, it wasn't even available, period. I remember driving cross country during that period, and it was no fun at all hoping to find an open gas station in the middle of nowhere in upstate NY on a Sunday.
What we should have been doing is building nuke plants like there's no tomorrow, exploiting all of our own oil and high grade coal, instead of letting the greenies get in the way, and then having Slick -- from the security of Arizona, no less -- declare all of Utah's high grade coal to be a "national monument", leaving us with one supplier -- his pals the Riaddi brothers in Indonesia.
We should also have put money into hydrogen as a replacement for natgas and propane where practcial, using hydrogen cracked from seawater via nuke plants. And at the same time, we should have used those same nuke plants to desalinate water for irrigation and municipal supply.
We have -- or rather, had it within our grasp to be genuinely energy-independant, without any major belt-tightening required. But, the time has passed, and now we're cornered into trying to save our national butt via Middle Eastern petroleum.
I could go on, but my doctor warned me about my blood pressure...
I don't know what the truth is. The Navy started lying from the beginning of the fiasco (saying our ship wasn't in their waters, etc). I've seen reports that the Iranians put an F-14 IFF squawkbox in the plane and put it on a deliberate course to fly at the Tico to provoke an incident. If you'd like to get into the real apples and oranges of that vis-a-vis the U.S.S. Liberty, we can.
Well, I don't want to dredge it up, and that's pretty much my point -- shit happens in war, and if you have a big enough microscope you'll find that no country has really clean hands. Whatever it was that happened in the Mediterranean, both countries have made the strategic decision to put it behind them. (And FWIW, there's been pretty much the same resolution WRT the Iranian plane.)
And while the argument can be made that even if accidental, the Americans on that ship are still dead, it can also be pointed out with equal validity that even larger numbers of Israelis -- civilians, mostly -- are dead due to Israel's voluntary restraint at our behest.
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