Recall that, even when the Palestinians gave lip service to the two-state solution, they also demanded a "Right of Return" to Israel. What they wanted was to infiltrate Israel and, over time, create the preconditions for a demographic/militaristic/terroristic takeover of Israel. Thus there would eventually be *one* state, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This is referred to derisively as the "One State Solution" by those of us who are sympathetic to Israel, but if you google that term, what you get is a lot of anti-Israel types proposing an actual one-state solution in earnest, instead of the two-state solution--as if the Palestinians could actually be integrated en masse into Israel proper. After 10/7, be assured that anyone who raises this idea again is not merely naive to the point of delusion, but evil.
“Those apologists, like so many others who chant "stolen land" tropes, engage in what has been called "snapshot geography." The "Decolonize!" bleaters choose a particular moment in the history of the region dubbed "Palestine" and... what, actually? There has never been a nation called Palestine. The region, originally populated by Israelites, Judeans, and Philistines, has been controlled by various empires across history, including the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, various caliphates, the Ottomans, and the British. The history of the world is one of ever-shifting borders, even today. "Decolonize!" is an Orwellian sheep-chant, something intended to drown out discussion and give shallow thinkers a nice-sounding rallying point.”
Oct 15, 2023·edited Oct 15, 2023Liked by Peter Venetoklis
Peter, I appreciate this article. I agree with everything you say. But what is your assessment of US policy in the Middle East?
Your colleague David Woods, in his new Substack "Afterthoughts", is against US assistance to Israel (and also Ukraine).
With your indulgence (and since I am incapable of coming up with too many original thoughts in a short period of time - otherwise I'd have my own Substack column), I am copying here my response to David's 10/12 article:
As a libertarian I struggle to envision a foreign policy for the “real world”. To be sure, I want to start with George Washington’s admonition against “entangled alliances”. But there are such things as global bullies. Do we allow other countries to be picked off until we are all alone?
Of course, any arrangement for common defense must be equitable. I’m a nerd so looked up the numbers and made a spreadsheet. If you combine the US with our European and Pacific “allies”, we account for one third of the population but two thirds of military spending.
To be sure, many of the bad actors in the world are the unintended consequences of some of our less-than-noble interventions, such as engineering the 1953 coup that replaced a democratic Iranian government with the Shah.
Regarding Ukraine and Israel…
Russia, I think, definitely qualifies as a “global bully”. Ukraine is not asking for troops, only supplies. Again, the cost ought to be equitably borne by all the NATO countries.
Israel may be a little tougher call – and full disclosure, I am Jewish. As with Ukraine, Israel is asking for supplies, not troops. In a perfect libertarian society, I would be free to privately raise money to procure arms and send them to Israel. During Israel’s 1948 war of independence, there were Americans who did just that – illegally.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a perfect libertarian society, we have the system we have, and – acknowledging my bias – I don’t think Israel should be the place where we suddenly draw the line.
The baseline libertarian position is that government should not be sending taxpayer money overseas, nor should we be involving ourselves in foreign wars.
That said, this position needs to be filtered through what I've called the "A to B" problem.
Thing is, we've been involving ourselves in foreign entanglements for over a century, with decidedly poor results. We've spent $7T on the Global War on Terror, a "war" that could very well have looked very different and much less destructive if we were less "involved" from the outset. Consider the Gulf War, which was precipitated by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. What if we hadn't bothered? Kuwait wasn't, after all, some bastion of Western values, but rather a monarchy. We've looked away from countless other regional conflicts across history, after all. Many dominoes toppled as a result of our involvement there.
Consider, also, WWII. Long argued as the proof that a global America is a force for good, the counter-argument is that, had America not stepped into WWI, which was at that point a stalemate, the incredibly lopsided Treaty of Versailles would have been much more "even," and the conditions that led to the rise of the Third Reich and WWII wouldn't have emerged.
Those are big "ifs" of course - alternate history is as much a guessing game as anything else, but the presumption of "pax Americana" needs to be challenged given how poorly so many of our foreign entanglements have turned out. Even the Soviet Union's arc might be grossly different - imagine no post-WWII partition of Europe.
The "A-to-B" part is evident in Afghanistan. We shouldn't have gone in, but once we did, and once we established alliances, expectations, and obligations, a flat abandonment was the wrong thing to do. Since we're in all these things, we must be prudent in our extrications.
Ukraine is, properly, Europe's business. And Europe's (in particular Germany's) fault. They should be leading the supply and support effort. But, we are here today, and while it's reckless to presume endless support, it'd also be reckless to do an Afghanistan-style abandonment.
Which brings us to Israel. I'm of the opinion that our past aid has been as much hindrance as help, because of the strings that such always comes with. Part of our "assistance" is always two cents (or more) of "this is what we expect you to do and not to do," and this current war will be no different.
America *has* to extricate herself from the position of globocop. It creates moral hazard in our allies - most spend FAR less than they should on their militaries, because American taxpayers underwrite their defense. And, our debt chickens are coming home to roost. Reckless spending created inflation, which forced interest rates up, which increases the cost of borrowing to support that spending. We could easily defend the nation with only half to a third of what we currently spend on defense.
But, extricating ourselves from Globocop is tricky. Apart from formal treaties, there's the expectation of "finishing the job" that we've emplaced. It's an endeavor that would span a couple decades, and in the meantime it'd be wrong, not only politically but morally, to radically "cut the cord."
In recap, we (and probably the world) would have been better off staying out of the Kuwait matter and leaving Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Yes, it was a tyrannical regime, but we effected a cure that, in many ways, was worse than the disease, in many ways.
We won't learn that lesson, unfortunately.
As for Israel, we're in it now, we must see this out to an end. That end being wiping Hamas out and whatever sorts itself out with Gaza.
"If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel'”
― Benjamin Netanyahu
"We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us."
Recall that, even when the Palestinians gave lip service to the two-state solution, they also demanded a "Right of Return" to Israel. What they wanted was to infiltrate Israel and, over time, create the preconditions for a demographic/militaristic/terroristic takeover of Israel. Thus there would eventually be *one* state, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This is referred to derisively as the "One State Solution" by those of us who are sympathetic to Israel, but if you google that term, what you get is a lot of anti-Israel types proposing an actual one-state solution in earnest, instead of the two-state solution--as if the Palestinians could actually be integrated en masse into Israel proper. After 10/7, be assured that anyone who raises this idea again is not merely naive to the point of delusion, but evil.
“Those apologists, like so many others who chant "stolen land" tropes, engage in what has been called "snapshot geography." The "Decolonize!" bleaters choose a particular moment in the history of the region dubbed "Palestine" and... what, actually? There has never been a nation called Palestine. The region, originally populated by Israelites, Judeans, and Philistines, has been controlled by various empires across history, including the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, various caliphates, the Ottomans, and the British. The history of the world is one of ever-shifting borders, even today. "Decolonize!" is an Orwellian sheep-chant, something intended to drown out discussion and give shallow thinkers a nice-sounding rallying point.”
Another brilliant piece, Peter!
Peter, I appreciate this article. I agree with everything you say. But what is your assessment of US policy in the Middle East?
Your colleague David Woods, in his new Substack "Afterthoughts", is against US assistance to Israel (and also Ukraine).
With your indulgence (and since I am incapable of coming up with too many original thoughts in a short period of time - otherwise I'd have my own Substack column), I am copying here my response to David's 10/12 article:
As a libertarian I struggle to envision a foreign policy for the “real world”. To be sure, I want to start with George Washington’s admonition against “entangled alliances”. But there are such things as global bullies. Do we allow other countries to be picked off until we are all alone?
Of course, any arrangement for common defense must be equitable. I’m a nerd so looked up the numbers and made a spreadsheet. If you combine the US with our European and Pacific “allies”, we account for one third of the population but two thirds of military spending.
To be sure, many of the bad actors in the world are the unintended consequences of some of our less-than-noble interventions, such as engineering the 1953 coup that replaced a democratic Iranian government with the Shah.
Regarding Ukraine and Israel…
Russia, I think, definitely qualifies as a “global bully”. Ukraine is not asking for troops, only supplies. Again, the cost ought to be equitably borne by all the NATO countries.
Israel may be a little tougher call – and full disclosure, I am Jewish. As with Ukraine, Israel is asking for supplies, not troops. In a perfect libertarian society, I would be free to privately raise money to procure arms and send them to Israel. During Israel’s 1948 war of independence, there were Americans who did just that – illegally.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a perfect libertarian society, we have the system we have, and – acknowledging my bias – I don’t think Israel should be the place where we suddenly draw the line.
The baseline libertarian position is that government should not be sending taxpayer money overseas, nor should we be involving ourselves in foreign wars.
That said, this position needs to be filtered through what I've called the "A to B" problem.
Thing is, we've been involving ourselves in foreign entanglements for over a century, with decidedly poor results. We've spent $7T on the Global War on Terror, a "war" that could very well have looked very different and much less destructive if we were less "involved" from the outset. Consider the Gulf War, which was precipitated by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. What if we hadn't bothered? Kuwait wasn't, after all, some bastion of Western values, but rather a monarchy. We've looked away from countless other regional conflicts across history, after all. Many dominoes toppled as a result of our involvement there.
Consider, also, WWII. Long argued as the proof that a global America is a force for good, the counter-argument is that, had America not stepped into WWI, which was at that point a stalemate, the incredibly lopsided Treaty of Versailles would have been much more "even," and the conditions that led to the rise of the Third Reich and WWII wouldn't have emerged.
Those are big "ifs" of course - alternate history is as much a guessing game as anything else, but the presumption of "pax Americana" needs to be challenged given how poorly so many of our foreign entanglements have turned out. Even the Soviet Union's arc might be grossly different - imagine no post-WWII partition of Europe.
The "A-to-B" part is evident in Afghanistan. We shouldn't have gone in, but once we did, and once we established alliances, expectations, and obligations, a flat abandonment was the wrong thing to do. Since we're in all these things, we must be prudent in our extrications.
Ukraine is, properly, Europe's business. And Europe's (in particular Germany's) fault. They should be leading the supply and support effort. But, we are here today, and while it's reckless to presume endless support, it'd also be reckless to do an Afghanistan-style abandonment.
Which brings us to Israel. I'm of the opinion that our past aid has been as much hindrance as help, because of the strings that such always comes with. Part of our "assistance" is always two cents (or more) of "this is what we expect you to do and not to do," and this current war will be no different.
America *has* to extricate herself from the position of globocop. It creates moral hazard in our allies - most spend FAR less than they should on their militaries, because American taxpayers underwrite their defense. And, our debt chickens are coming home to roost. Reckless spending created inflation, which forced interest rates up, which increases the cost of borrowing to support that spending. We could easily defend the nation with only half to a third of what we currently spend on defense.
But, extricating ourselves from Globocop is tricky. Apart from formal treaties, there's the expectation of "finishing the job" that we've emplaced. It's an endeavor that would span a couple decades, and in the meantime it'd be wrong, not only politically but morally, to radically "cut the cord."
In recap, we (and probably the world) would have been better off staying out of the Kuwait matter and leaving Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Yes, it was a tyrannical regime, but we effected a cure that, in many ways, was worse than the disease, in many ways.
We won't learn that lesson, unfortunately.
As for Israel, we're in it now, we must see this out to an end. That end being wiping Hamas out and whatever sorts itself out with Gaza.
Peter, thank you for your response. I asked a question and got a whole 'nuther column out of you!
"If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel'”
― Benjamin Netanyahu
"We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us."
-Golda Meir
I see infidels and they do not know they are infidels. Queers for Palestine is like shrimp for whales.