“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” -Mark Twain
Photo by John Bakator on Unsplash
We’ve written recently here at the Country about the warmongering uniparty that represents us in government, and about the Military Industrial Complex, which wields undeserved amounts of power and influence and has misled the American people into war repeatedly.
After the horrific events in Southern Israel and Gaza unfolded over the weekend, it is urgent that the people review and evaluate our position in the Middle East. Our leader, President Biden, was notably missing yesterday as the White House called a lid at noon on a critical day. We later discovered he was missing so he could attend the second day of his deposition in his felony documents prosecution. As an aside, these document cases faced by both Trump and Biden are silly wastes of time - our government data is held secret in a ridiculous regime that leads to authoritarianism. In fact, “Current and former government officials have estimated that 50 to 90 percent of classified documents could safely be released.” These documents are the people’s and do not belong to the bureaucrats of the Military Industrial Complex or the intelligence Community. They are still hiding documents that could help explain once and for all who killed President Kennedy 60 years ago, for God’s sake.
What is most chilling about the Hamas-Israel crisis is the realization that we fund every side of this war in some capacity. The US has long backed Israel as our lone ally in the Middle East, a small thriving democracy surrounded by authoritarian dictatorships. “Israel…is the largest cumulative recipient of overall U.S. aid since World War II, including billions for missile defense and purchases of U.S. military equipment,” according to the Wall Street Journal. We reportedly have agreed to send Israel $38B over a 10-year period as our best non-NATO ally.
But we also fund Hamas. In 2021, the Biden administration reversed the course of the Trump administration, re-authorizing aid to the Palestinians. And Hamas’ major sponsor (and the single largest funder of terrorism on the planet) Iran just received a sweetheart deal in which we exchanged 5 prisoners each but the US also authorized the release of funds, being held by sanction, to Iran to the tune of $6B. That, in addition to the fact that the Obama administration released an estimated $56-$150B in frozen Iran assets and sent Iran $1.7B in cash to coax them into a misguided nuclear deal in 2015 that in effect sanctioned Iran’s support of terror around the world by not addressing it.
The White House and their apologists claim that these payments to Hamas, Iran and others are tightly controlled and only available for humanitarian efforts. That is nice to say but it defies belief. Any dollar that Iran or Hamas had before these payoffs, that they had intended to spend on food or other necessities, can now be released for terrorist attacks. While we have no evidence that the most recent attacks were funded by Iran, the Wall Street Journal has quoted senior Hamas leaders that Iran helped to plan and ultimately approved the attacks out of Gaza over the weekend. The naive policy that Presidents Obama and Biden have pursued in the Middle East over the past decade clearly has served to fund terrorism and exacerbate the violence.
Similarly, it’s well known we are funding the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. But the US sanctions and other policy decisions are actually helping Russia to make more money than ever on oil sales, according to the New York Times. The Times further reports that the Biden administration has offered the fewest offshore oil and gas leases in history, and while oil production is slightly up under Biden, the rate of growth has slowed considerably under his administration.
Every barrel of oil not produced in America will be produced elsewhere including Russia, Iran and other bad actors - enriching dictators. More importantly, energy independence is a critical security issue, and our strategic oil reserve has shrunk to its lowest level in decades under the current President.
It is time for a major reset in US policy regarding the Middle East, Iran, Russia and oil. We should start at zero with vital US interests prioritized first. The policies of the past two decades have led us into terrible places - endless wars, death and destruction while the world does not improve (see data below from accleddata.com). Let us start today to re-build a foreign policy we can be proud of again. Our founders and great leaders like Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy had a wonderful dream that was America: as a beacon of hope and peace in the world. This is not it.