The Perfect Storm
By Alan Caruba

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The term, '"the perfect storm", has come to mean how circumstances and bad judgments come together to create havoc and death.

I have begun to conclude that America is caught in a perfect storm. It didn't occur overnight, but it has rapidly reached a point wherein the very life of the nation is at stake.

The tipping point, if I may be permitted another cliché, was the election of Barack Hussein Obama as President. Though efforts, including several books, attempted to flesh out what little was actually known about Obama, it was the skillful packaging that turned him into a rock star whose theme "hope and change" could and did mean anything the voter imagined.

Obama arrived in the Oval Office with virtually no paper trail. He had not ever managed a business, never made a payroll, and had not worked in the private sector. He had been "a community organizer" and had taught constitutional law as a lecturer at the University of Chicago. In this regard, he was spectacularly ill-prepared to make decisions regarding the greatest economy in the history of civilization.

He had been preceded by a Congress controlled by the Democrat Party as of the 2006 midterm elections as voters wearied of the long war in Iraq and, typically, the second term of then-President Bush. Leading the new Congress was, by any standard one could apply, two of the most stupid politicians to hold high office. Sen. Harry Reid (NV) was Senate Majority Leader and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA) was Speaker of the House.

Sen. Reid had famously said, "The war is lost" and Rep. Pelosi told the world that the CIA "lies to Congress all the time" and has called insurance companies "villains." Not exactly a vote of confidence in the nation's military or its intelligence agency. When did insurance companies, banks and investment firms become the enemy? The burst mortgage loan bubble was the creation of the federal government.

It is the perfect storm.

It was, however, the economy that took the first body blow with the sudden, though predicable, bursting of the mortgage loan "bubble." There had been earlier warnings but as in any perfect storm, they were ignored. It goes back to the days of the Carter administration when legislation was passed to give everyone the "right" to own a home. Banks and mortgage firms were literally required by law to ignore normal lending caution. When there were more bad loans than good, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government "entities", owned more than half of all the mortgage loans in the nation.

At that point, in what can only charitably be called total panic, Congress authorized the U.S. Treasury to spend $700 billion in TARP funds to "bail out" troubled financial institutions instead of letting them fail. The word was that they were "too large to fail" and had to be rescued and there may be some truth to this, though Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. To this day, Congress does not know much, if anything, about the distribution of TARP. It can't even audit the Federal Reserve.

It is the perfect storm.

In a similar fashion, instead of allowing General Motors and Chrysler to go through the tried and true bankruptcy process, the government "invested" billions before, inevitably, they did undergo bankruptcy. The government now owns some 60% of GM; its unions own most of the rest. Its creditors are suing to get their legal and proper compensation. The government is not supposed and is not allowed to own private enterprises; (though it does own government "entities" like Amtrak which has never made a profit.)

It is the perfect storm.

The country is watching a "Cap-and-Trade" bill pass through Congress that everyone, including its authors, agrees is a massive tax on the use of electricity, one that will drive up the cost of electricity to every American and all business and industry in America. It is based on the assertion that "greenhouse gases" must be reduced to avoid "global warming", but there is no global warming and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide play no role in climate change.

When the cost of energy is increased, the cost of everything that depends on energy use increases and that is, well, everything.

At the same time, for decades the United States has placed every possible obstacle before the exploration and extraction of vast oil, natural gas, and coal resources that exist within the nation and offshore on its continental shelf. Plans for more than a hundred coal-fired plants have been abandoned despite a growing population that is using more electricity. There hasn't been a single new refinery built since the 1970s. The construction of nuclear plants has been painfully slow due to regulatory hurdles. The nation's electrical distribution grid was built largely in the 1950s and 60s. It is in desperate need of expansion.

While coal provides 50% of our electricity and nuclear 20%, the rest is taken up by natural gas and hydroelectricity (water). Just over 1% is provided by wind and solar energy and the government proposes to provide billions in subsidies to its producers.

In much the same fashion, the government mandates the inclusion of ethanol in all gasoline sold even though ethanol provides less energy and adds to the cost not only of the gasoline, but to food products that utilize corn, the primary source of ethanol. We are burning food to fuel cars, trucks, and buses.

It is the perfect storm.

Under the Obama administration, the nation is borrowing more and running up a deficit that is, in his own words, "unsustainable", but the government is making no effort to seriously cut spending. Instead, it passed a "stimulus" bill that is largely devoted to helping states fund government mandates such as Medicare and Medicaid, thus failing to create any new jobs in the private sector, most of which would come from investment in infrastructure. The "stimulus" bill is pure pork, a political Christmas tree.

It is the perfect storm.

Meanwhile, it is no secret that the United States is the world's policeman. Our navy ensures that the world's vital sea lanes remain open. Our military has some 800 bases, large and small, around the world. It is engaged in fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and it is withdrawing from active fighting in Iraq. Billions have been expended in both of these campaigns to defeat an enemy sworn to destroy America.

Then too the borders of the nation and its sovereignty are being ignored and reduced by the tide of illegal immigration and by ratification of United Nations treaties that supersede U.S. legislation and rights. An obscure group of bureaucrats in the Department of Commerce are still working on plans to merge the U.S., Canada, and Mexico into a single political and national entity called the North American Union.

It is the perfect storm.

The United States, an experiment in individual liberty and federal rule; a nation that survived a Civil War, that struggled another century to end racial discrimination, that fought in many wars include two world wars in the last century, is now disintegrating financially and will soon lack the means to provide adequate power to its cities and towns.

Most of the nation's individual States are, for all intents and purposes, broke and laboring under public service sector union contracts that impose huge present and future costs on their citizens.

To the astonishment of every economist in the world, the White House and Congress are proposing to raise taxes in the midst of a recession. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush all lowered taxes and made their recessions go away.

In mid-July, the Vice President said, "We have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt." That is impossible.

It is the perfect storm.

The nation's voters are almost completely divided between those on the Left and those on the Right. There is an all-or-nothing, winner-takes-all quality to our political system and has existed since the FDR era. The middle ground of independent voters literally determines most elections or at least those that are no longer stolen such as the recent one in Minnesota that sent a former comedian to the Senate.

That brings us to the observation that we have a very unsavory group of politicians in government these days. There are exceptions, but the revelations of sexual infidelity or misconduct as well as outright theft have become routine. The vile politics of Chicago and Cook County have now been imported into the White House.

The worst development, however, is the creation of "czars" empowered to make and shape policy without ever being subject to review or oversight by Congress. That is a kind of gangster government.

Lastly, it comes as no news to anyone that the nation has been sinking into a era of decadence since the 1960s in which the consumption of illegal drugs is widespread and sexual license is reflected in popular entertainment as well as high divorce rates, single parents, and, of course, abortion. There's a lot to be said for morality.

I am by nature an optimist and I remain hopeful that elections and protest movements will alter future events, but for now it is the perfect storm.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, August 2009

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Stopping ObamaCare.

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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We have roughly 30 days to kill socialized medicine in the United States.  The ObamaCare enthusiasts are pulling out all the stops, during the month of August to push whatever their healthcare overhaul FINALLY turns out to be. 

 

You see, even the Obama Administration and the democrats on Capitol Hill have NO IDEA, at this point, exactly what their “healthcare” bill will include and what it will exclude.  They have been jumping around all over the healthcare map, like fleas on a hotplate, trying, desperately, to come up with something, anything; the American people will swallow hard and accept.  Problem is… the American people simply don’t want what they are selling!  But the democrats are frightened, witless, that their new president is about to get his first “slap-down” by the electorate and the democrat/socialists are desperate to prevent that.  If ObamaCare can be stopped,  it will be a great victory for Amereicans who want no part of socialized medicine in the United States… plus it would be a tremendous embarrassment for Obama.     Even Republican Congressman Jim DeMint, of South Carolina, claims it could be Obama’s Waterloo! Now, that IS embarrassing!

 

To make matters decidedly more difficult for the ObamaCare crowd, Rasmussen released a story on Monday (08-03-09) that made some folks in DC sit up and take notice. The report (out 08-03-09) says Confidence in the U.S. Health Care System Has Grown in Recent Months.

 

Rasmussen says that forty-eight percent (48%) of U.S. voters now rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% rate it as poor. These figures reflect a significant increase in support for the health care system over the past few months. In May, just 35% of adults nationwide rated the system as good or excellent. A year ago, just 29% of Likely Voters rated the system in such positive terms.

 

And check this: The new polling also shows that 80% of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent. That’s up from 70% in May. You’ll find the entire eye-opening article HERE.

 

The democrats absolutely must get something through the Congress the President can lay claim to as the HIS Healthcare plan, even if it bears no resemblance to the glorified “pie-in-the-sky” healthcare, or Government-Run Healthcare, or Universal Healthcare, or Nationalized Healthcare, or Public Option Healthcare, or whatever they are calling it today.  For our part- we are still referring to it as ObamaCare, or Socialized Medicine.

 

So, the plain truth is – neither Obama or his henchman on Capitol Hill have any idea what will be in the bill when they finally manage to scrape something together they can get enough votes in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to pass and send to the President for his signature.

 

Now, here’s the thing:  During the next month, or so, primarily August, they will be back home back-slapping and glad-handing and trying, like crazy, to get you to support a bill the contents of which they haven’t a clue! In other words, the democrats and Obama are now at the point in their Socialized Medicine threat of trying to sell America what we in the Carolinas would refer to as a “Pig-in-a-Poke”. Interpreted that means simply, you can tell something is in the bag, but you have no idea what it is.  It could be a pig or a polecat!  And… you don’t get to find out which it is - until after you buy the bag!

 

Get ready for the letters, the phone calls, and the knocks on the door, the TV and radio ads, and the columns and articles in the newspapers and, of course on the Internet boosting ObamaCare during the month of August because they are going to be pouring it on.

 

If we are to kill this socialized medicine, we are going to have to meet them blow for blow.  We have to tell our Congresspersons and our senators that if they are so weak as to vote for ObamaCare they can forget about our vote next time they stand for re-election. Help them understand they can expect an early retirement from the nation’s legislature.

 

You must remember that, first and foremost, the Obama Administration is going to force you to have health insurance, whether you want it or not.  It is called the “Individual Mandate.” Yes, dear reader, this bill will affect EVERY American, healthy or sick, young or old. It will make no difference.

 

J. D. Longstreet

 

 

 

 

ObamaCare Brings "Nullification Acts" from Sovereign States in America
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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If you are as old as I am you probably remember those old "Rest Homes." For those of you who are not as old as me, basically, some of them gave the impression they were nothing more than warehouses where Americans stored old people waiting their turn to die. Some were really bad. They smelled of urine, feces, disinfectant, and death. Well, guess what? Under Obamacare something, which seems very like them, is on the way back onto the American scene… only this time they will be called "Medical Homes." Oh, and don't worry about the doctors in these Medical Homes. Under the current plans - there won't be any. They will be run by nurses and nurse practitoners. You can learn more about the proposed Medical Homes HERE. Before you read it, prepare to be frightened... very frightened!

Back before the War for Southern Independence, Americans understood the power of the tenth amendment to the US Constitution. They understood the people of the states had the power to nullify actions of a US Congress which did not represent the people of the United States as they had been sworn to do… you know, sorta like the crowd we have in the US Congress today.

It was bound to happen. Americans are beginning to consider attacking the ObamaCare HealthCare Overhaul, sometimes referred to as: Nationalized Healthcare, Universal Healthcare, and Public Option Healthcare. (They'll call it anything but what it is: Socialized Medicine!) through nullification acts of the states.

 

By the way, you may have noticed the socialists in the federal government have insisted on changing all reference to "Government-Run Healthcare" to "Public Option Healthcare." The idea is straight out of "Propaganda 101." Remove any and all reference to GOVERMENT-RUN Healthcare and replace it with the words: "PUBLIC OPTION HEALTHCARE." It is supposed to help you forget that ObamaCare is, in fact, Government-Run Healthcare and make you believe that it is YOUR CHOICE. It takes the onus OFF the government and places it solely on YOU! As I said, it is physcological warfare, of a sort. They are playing with your mind. They are treating you and I as the fools they believe us to be.

Nullification. Now, that's a word we haven't heard tossed around much since the days just prior to the "Late Unpleasantness."

See, this is what happens when the American people feel they have a government that is NOT REPRESENTING THEM! And frankly, not since the early to mid 1800's have I read of a US government less inclined to listen to the people it purportedly represents than the current crowd we have taking up space in Washington DC.

Back to Nullification:

Nullification is an American tradition. It dates from as far back as the late 1700's. Some of the states are looking at it for protection from the US Congress and the current presidential administration. What has them fired up? Plainly put - it is ObamaCare, or "socialized medicine." They don't want it in their states. And, they do not want the federal government forcing it on them.

In Florida, State Senator Carey Baker and State Representative Scott Plakon, recently , filed a proposed State Constitutional Amendment (HJR37) as a means to prevent Floridians from being affected by any Federal Health Care Legislation. If approved by the legislature, Florida residents could be voting on it as early as 2010.

The bill includes the following:

(1) A law or rule shall not compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system.

(2) A person or employer may pay directly for lawful health care services and shall not be required to pay penalties or fines for paying directly for lawful health care services. A health care provider may accept direct payment for lawful health care services and shall not be required to pay penalties or fines for accepting direct payment from a person or employer for lawful health care services.

 

Out in Arizona they have ALREADY passed a piece of legislation titled "The Healthcare Freedom Act" and there are reports that at least ten other states are expecting to have similar legislation introduced in their coming legislatures.

 

 

What is happening here is… the American people are questioning the legality of the federal government to force this socialized medicine on the people of this country. They say the tenth amendment denies the federal government that power. They may well be correct. Here's the text of the tenth amendment:

 

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

 

So, when a state nullifies a law passed by the federal government that state is saying that that particular law has no effect within the boundaries of that state. They nullify that law.

These nullification acts date all the way back to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. These two National Forefathers drew-up the first nullification acts both in Virginia and in Kentucky. It was thought then, and is still thought by many today, that states are sovereign entities and that the states have the constitutional power to make a decision for themselves as to whether the federal government has exceeded it's authority under the terms of the US Constitution. If the states decided that the federal government has, in fact, overstepped, then the states had/have the power two simply refuse to obey those laws passed by the federal government that were/are outside the constitutional boundaries set by our forefathers in the US Constitution.

We warned over and over again that socialism would tear this country apart. Now that our federal government has decided that socialism is the way to take the country, even though socialism has a proven record of failure time, and time, and time again, the US has begun to disassemble itself. State legislatures have already begun to reassert themselves as sovereign states and have now begun to nullify federal laws within their states. It is going to get a lot uglier, dear reader, when the federal government decides it must use force to motivate the states to obey those laws the states say are unconstitutional. But, just as we warned in 2007 and 2008, THIS is what a nation gets when it opts for socialism and elects a socialist as President and hands over the reins of the Congress to socialists as well.

 

Welcome to the Socialist States of America.

J. D. Longstreet

 

History Repeating Itself?

J. D. Longstreet

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As the Obama Administration begins to withdraw troops from Iraq and step up US operations in Afghanistan, one can see certain parallels with the way America mishandled the war in Vietnam. What is frightening, though, is to see the current administration seemingly set on making the same mistakes, the mistakes that cost the US so dearly in Vietnam, all over again. Obama's regime seems set to accept something short of victory in Afghanistan and that is worrisome. In Iraq, as each single day goes by, it becomes even more obvious that the US is pulling troops out of Iraq and turning over control to an Iraqi government that seems bent on re-creating the same sort of dictatorship ruled over by Saddam Hussein before the US entered and took him out. In other words, the US is setting the stage for a Gulf War Three right now.

For those of us who lived through the trying days of the Vietnam War, both here at home and in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the bumbling and fumbling in the two theatres of war in the Middle East today are all too obvious. The loss of the Vietnam War was authored in Washington, DC, by the US government. The US Armed Forces had the war won, when politicians in the nation's capitol gave that victory away!

A new book by Richard Botkin, titled " Ride the Thunder" details what happened in Vietnam and how a war that was won could be sacrificed on the alter of politics.

What follows is a review of that book by Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, a former POW in North Vietnam and a former US Senator from Alabama. As you read, you will begin to see that history, does, in fact, repeat itself. We think you will agree with us that the US is, today, setting the stage for Gulf War Three and we think, you will agree that it does not have to be this way.

Here, now, is Rear Admiral/US Senator Jeremiah Denton's take on Richard Botkin's book, "Ride the Thunder."

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"Thirty-six years ago this month, after the North Vietnamese suffered utter destruction of their military complex from Linebacker II air operations and the blockade of all North Vietnam ports, the Democratic Congress passed a bill prohibiting any further U.S. aid to South Vietnam. The bill's passage was the death sentence to the nation we had vowed to protect from communism.

 

President Nixon knew his veto of the bill would be overridden, making any veto effort futile. Even though the North was ready to sign a treaty to free South Vietnam, Congress' demands to pass the bill nullified Linebacker II and provided the communists with a free ticket to walk into South Vietnam.

 

This exercise of off-battlefield politics resulted not only in the loss of a near conquest by American armed forces but in a dreadful loss of American credibility. No history pundit has since given account to Vietnam's true victory -- until now. Richard Botkin, author of "Ride the Thunder," provides indispensable, historic details of the Vietnam War, dispelling the notion that all was lost.

 

The aftershock of Vietnam resulted in the tragic realization among veterans and citizenry alike that the gallant, sacrificial effort of American, South Vietnamese, and allied forces to preserve a free South Vietnam had been futile and flagrantly unappreciated by America. Following Vietnam, no American promise of prolonged commitment to any cause would be of concern to antagonists or trusted by allies.

 

The precedent is being applied tragically by the current administration in its signals to our antagonists that we will withdraw our troops from Iraq and other Middle East trouble spots before we achieve our objectives. Unless we can dismiss the applicability of the precedent, we are destined to repeat our failures, thus ensuring our ultimate demise as a nation. However, we will not dismiss it until the truth about our Vietnam experience is revealed in its totality.

 

Now at last, "Ride the Thunder" provides this indispensable revelation. Anyone who reads it will finally have the facts to perceive the answers to long-held questions: Was the cause in Vietnam worth our waging a war? Did the media's reporting and false antiwar influences cause us to surrender? Was military victory indeed forfeited by Congress' unilateral political act? Was the bill prohibiting any further commitment there the coup de grace in efforts to free South Vietnam?

The book delivers the truth comprehensively and authoritatively. Evidence is presented in the true stories of persons engaged over the entire time frame of the war. Incontrovertible facts and details are presented on Vietnam.

 

"Ride the Thunder" painstakingly sketches the history of Vietnam, revealing its remarkable ethnic characteristics: its peerless work ethic, an unequaled awareness of the importance of family, compassion for the elderly and an awareness of the importance of rearing wholesome children. It relates how Vietnam in early ages became a powerful nation in military, political, and economic terms.

 

However, Mr. Botkin also relates Vietnam's history of often being overtaken and ruled by more powerful nations whose soldiers and officials mistreated innocent Vietnamese with unbelievable savagery. From China, Japan, and other powerful oppressors to devastating natural disasters, Vietnam's people have been tempered by sufferings for centuries.

 

"Ride the Thunder" traces its historical origins in relationship with the United States. The book exemplifies how the Korean War predisposed the United States to regard Ho Chi Minh's invasion as directly related to U.S. containment of communist expansion. The Korean War ended with the United States settling on a stalemate for the first time in our history. This created a pattern of quitting and foretold the possibility we would settle for even less in a future war -- as we did in Vietnam and show signs of doing in the Middle East.

 

Naturally, Vietnam's history takes the sharpest focus as it deals with the American involvement in the Vietnam War. In this light, "Ride the Thunder" chronicles the individual personal experiences of the Vietnamese and U.S. military and political personages, the sum of which presents a comprehensive tapestry depicting all the complex facets, revelations and implications of the war and its aftermath.

 

The persons chronicled have well-known names, including Maj. Le Ba Binh, U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Gerry Turley, Capt. John Ripley and Sgt. Chuck Goggin, to name a few. The sum of their collective experiences displays the events and true significance of every ground and air campaign, battle and strategic tactical decision. The truth derived is in sharp contrast to the way the war was reported, written into history and remembered by us as a nation.

 

As I reviewed "Ride the Thunder," though I have come to be regarded as one of the more authentic writers on what is significant about that war, I learned much I had not known.
However, more than any author can convey in words, one thing that I and other former prisoners of war witnessed with our own eyes was the absolute total destruction of the enemy's military during Linebacker II and the full realization by the North Vietnamese that they no longer had the means to continue the war.

 

A few days before my release from prison, I was subjected to an interview and briefing by the top military and political leadership of North Vietnam. The leaders told me they accepted defeat and were eager to sign an agreement to keep South Vietnam free. Their earnest plea to me upon return was to prevent the POWs from exaggerating the brutality of the treatment inflicted on us, which would incite U.S. public opinion to the degree that Mr. Nixon would find it inadvisable to sign the agreement.

 

The interview is written up briefly in "American Admiralship" by Edgar F. Puryear Jr., published by Naval Institute Press.

 

I hope Mr. Botkin's "Ride the Thunder" and my review will establish an accurate perspective on the meaning and significance of Vietnam and result in a renewed, honorable depiction of the war.

 

Jeremiah Denton

 

Rear Adm. Jeremiah Denton, U.S. Navy (retired), is a former U.S. senator from Alabama.

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Information on now to purchase "Ride the Thunder" by Richard Botkin can be found HERE.

 

J. D. Longstreet

 

The Jerusalem Quandary

By Alan Caruba

 

I have often wondered why it is such a tiny nation as Israel commands so much news coverage. Having declared its sovereignty in 1948, it is now just over sixty years old.

David Ben-Gurion went on the radio and said, “Two thousand years of wandering have come to an end.”

 

The name, Israel, means “he who wrestles with God.” The wandering began after the Jews had lived in Israel for over a thousand years, after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and drove them out in 70 AD.

 

Israel has fought and won wars intended to annihilate it. Zionism, a new Jewish state, began as the dream in the late 1800s among European and Russian Jews seeking to escape anti-Semitism. It became a place of refuge for Holocaust survivors in the late 1940s and for Jews who were forced to flee Middle Eastern nations.

 

For a relatively new nation, it has held the attention of the world from the day it was reborn in the sweat and blood of Jews seeking a place where being Jewish was normal, accepted, unexceptional.

 

To gain an extraordinary insight, I recommend you read Rich Cohen’s “Israel is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and its History” ($26.00, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), possibly one of the best books I have read in decades about the astonishing history of Israel from its earliest to the present times. It is filled with stories of the people who built the First Temple and, after the destruction of the Second Tempe, as Cohen says, “turned the Temple into a book”, praying for the next two millennia, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

 

The real Jews and real Israel are obscured by the hatred attached to them by their Muslim enemies and other antagonists, but there are many who now refer to themselves as Christian Zionists because to be a Zionist is to advocate a land for the Jews. As Cohen puts it, to be Christian is to be Jewish without actually being Jewish.

 

The quandary of Jerusalem is that three major religions lay claim to it. To be Jewish, to be Christian, even to be Muslim, Jerusalem is considered holy, but its long history has been a litany of bloodletting as claimants sought to legitimatize their faiths with its possession.

 

What the original Zionists discovered was that Israel, called Palestine at the time because of the British mandate over it, was not “a land without people for a people without a land” or that its history ended after the Jews were driven out by the Romans to  become the Diaspora living among other nations.

 

As Cohen notes, “The Zionist ideology was beautiful, but for the pioneers to fulfill it, the Arabs could not exist.” They did, however, exist. The quandary, the conundrum of Jerusalem and of Israel is that the dynamics of demography, of birth statistics, puts the existence of the Jewish state at risk. The Arabs were there. The Arabs are there.

 

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Arabs did not wish to yield an inch of the land in 1948 and do not wish to do so now. They do not want a “two-state solution.” They want what the Nazis called “The final solution.”

 

For the early pioneers of Israel, its reestablishment was a form of redemption. As one of its founding rabbis, Abraham Kook expressed it the purpose of the Jew is to bring the divine idea into the world. To bring this idea to fruition, to bring the Lord back into the lives of man, he said, the Jews must return to Zion. His son, Ziv Yeshiva Kook, called the Holocaust a “cruel divine operation needed to lift (the Jews) up to the land of Israel against their wills.”

 

The Holocaust, however, was more like the fulfillment of the hope of anti-Semites, the extermination of Jews from the Earth. It has something to do with the role Jews have played in relationship to the one God three major faiths lay claim. The Jews are happy to share their God with others, but insist that some rules be obeyed in the process.

 

Jews living in America had already found their Zion, a place where Jews could live normal lives. At the turn of the century, Jewish immigrants overwhelmingly chose America, not Israel.

 

Before and since Israel’s founding, many made “aliyah” (return) and some fifteen percent of them are American born. Since 1967, following a decisive war, more than two hundred Jewish settlements have been built in what are referred to as the territories. In 2005, seeking to exchange land for peace, Israelis were forced to leave Gaza. Israel did not get peace. It got rockets.

 

Until now, American Presidents have been friendly to Israel, but that has changed with President Barack Hussein Obama. His recent demands to stop the construction of twenty housing units in East Jerusalem are a rebuke to Israel’s very existence. Cohen notes that, “There are two hundred thousand Jews living on the West Bank—half of them in East Jerusalem, in neighborhoods (that) Israel insists it will keep in any peace deal.”

 

There will be no peace deal and the Jews of Jerusalem and Israel will continue to lay claim to their nation. They have built a nation, but in doing so, they have transformed themselves, often in ways even they don’t like.

 

The fly in the ointment is Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon and its constant threats to “wipe Israel off the map.”

 

The new generation of Iranians protesting in the streets has to hurry up and remove the evil mullahs and ayatollahs holding their ancient nation back from its full potential, from freedom. Israel cannot wait forever to end an atomic, existential threat. If it must, it will once again re-write the history of the Middle East.

 

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

 

© Alan Caruba, July 2009