Dear Neocons: Why we’re not Sending Combat Troops to Iraq no matter how much you Pout, Scott Corey Informed Comment, June 27, 2014
Self-limited commitment gives US power the flexibility to craft actions to fit real world needs. It finally tears the US out of the isolationism/empire dilemma that our most troublesome friends have exploited all to long, and all too well.
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If we can get moderation and negotiation, we should not miss the chance. If we cannot, we should keep the flexibility to tilt as we see fit, depending on the context, for as long as we are able to sustain our options. Now is the time to work for the best, be prepared for the worst, and ignore the advocates of impulsive war.
In the Deaths of 3 Israeli Teens, Likud Policies are also Implicated, Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 1, 2014
The Likud has a policy of keeping the Palestinians stateless. Stateless people lack the right to have rights, in the phrase of Hannah Arendt and the US Chief Justice Warren Burger. They have no state to back their rights, therefore they have no real title to their property, no rights over their land, water or air, nor really even control of their own bodies. In some ways their situation is analogous to that of slaves.
Since the stateless lack a state, they also lack law and order. What most struck me from my last visit to a Palestinian refugee camp was how much of a frontier situation it was. There are no police. Everyone has to fend for themselves. And it is easy for predatory gangs to form.
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If the Likud really wants an end to such incidents, then it should negotiate in good faith to bring about the kind of Palestinian state that could actually police Palestinian lives. Instead, Mr. Netanyahu, despite public denials, wants to make a Palestinian state forever impossible, because he sees it as a danger to his brand of Iron Wall Zionism, which is aggressive and expansionist and Jewish-supremacist. Netanyahu did everything he could to torpedo Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process. One side-effect of statelessness is lawlessness. Netanyahu is actively choosing it.
