RANK AND CRINGING U.S. OPPORTUNISM

The following article was lifted in its entirety from the Arutz Sheva website. The commentary underneath is entirely my own.

Arutz Sheva: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/
Article: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=118274

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Between Wars, U.S. Toughening Up on IsraelBy Hillel Fendel

The Bush administration and State Department are blocking arms and technology transfers to Israel, Middle East Newsline reports.
Quoting "Israeli and U.S. sources," MENL reports that the State Department has blocked the transfer of weapons and technology to Israel over the past three months, reflecting deteriorating relations between the two countries since the war in Lebanon in August of this year.

The unofficial suspension of U.S. arms deliveries, beginning in late September, halted the airlift of air-to-ground and other munitions that had been ongoing since the war - despite Israel's continuing need for them. Israel says it needs the equipment in order to replenish munitions and other stocks in preparation for a larger war that might include Syria in mid-2007.

"Nobody will say openly that there is a problem," a government source said. "But there is a serious problem that reflects the marginalization of Israel in U.S. strategy... The administration has not rejected any Israeli request. Instead, the State Department and Defense Department have said that all requests must be examined."

Military cooperation between the two countries has also been hampered in other areas. The State Department recently prevented Northrop Grumman from providing Israel with details of its Skyguard laser weapon, which the company wanted to sell Israel. In turn, Israel suspended negotiations to procure the system, which is designed to intercept short-range rockets and missiles.

Two reasons have been given for the deterioration in relations. One is the perceived Israeli loss, or at least non-victory, in the war with Hizbullah, which has undermined
U.S. confidence in Israel's military and government. In addition, the U.S. may be trying to assuage Saudi Arabia, whose help the U.S. seeks in Iraq. "There's nothing like stopping the weapons flow to Israel to show the Saudis that the United States means business," a diplomatic source told MENL.
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COMMENTARY

This is just the beginning. The weasels who run our country are being suckered by the usual state department apologists into believing that Israel is a liability, and as this administration grows more desperate to achieve a continuation of Republican rule, they might gladly toss friends to the wolves when those friends seem expendable.


The reason offered for a decrease in confidence in Israel's military and government is that Israel did not decisively win the war in Lebanon.

England did not win at Dunkirk either. How does a setback change the underlying issues?

And if that lack of a decisive victory does make such a difference, what are we to think of the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq? What about the war on drugs, which we have been losing ever since the Reagan administration. Evil is not stopped by one victory, nor the world made perfect by one success. The good fight is, in fact, never won.


Setbacks are no reason for cutting and running.
Especially if the cause is just.
And it has been said that we do not allow defeatism to influence us.


The U.S. State Department has for decades fairly consistently taken a pro-Arab stance, despite the many offenses that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have engineered. But in this Foggy Bottom follows the example set for so many years by the British Foreign Office, whose Arabophiles blatantly favoured their smiling clients in the middle-east over those pesky Jews, and the example of France, which has unabashedly endeavored to make itself a bedmate to the Arabs since the oil-embargo.


It may be said that this policy sabotage also attempts to make the Europeans more malleable to the American point of view.
But European approval is more blatantly geared towards self-interest than even the most cynical American policies, and bending towards the rabble is not a moral method of winning friends - who will no doubt note how utterly opportunistic this change in direction is.
Far better to deviate neither to the right nor to the left, but remain steadfast and focused on what is decent, rather than be seen as limply heeding the rabid mob.


National interest should not trump our values; it would indeed have been far more profitable for the US to have remained neutral in several wars and sell materiel to both sides. But we took sides based on moral concommity. And it was right to do so.

Americans choose to imagine that the government represents them.
We are not opportunists. We would wish our elected officials to reflect our ideals.