Sorry, sir, not with you on the Birther thing. We will have to agree to disagree. Ditto on the vast Zionist conspiracy. Yes, Zionist lobbyists and politicians (like the shameful Chuck Schumer--listen to his recent outrageous, Arab-demonizing speech before AIPAC) have had undue influence on U.S. foreign policy. Many AIPAC members are cultural liberals, but clearly that didn't stop them from going to bed with America's fundamentalist nutball fringe to protect "the Holy Land" from the demonized Arab hordes. It's disgusting these lies they've foisted on gullible Americans. The "War on Terror" is simply the Arab-Israeli conflict writ large. How many trillions of dollars do we have to spend, and how many American lives do we have to give up till we finally realize that the elephant in the living room is ISRAEL. We can drain the swamp by cutting off ALL aid to Israel now. That would change the equation overnight. It takes politicians with enough courage to stand up to the clever Zionist rhetoric of branding everyone who criticizes Israel as an anti-semite. I am very impressed with Obama and HRC for at least partially standing up. But we need to go much further by cutting off all aid to Israel now. That will save several billion a year, which we can apply to paying for ObamaCare or cutting the deficit (whatever you prefer). That and the trillions saved by ending the War on Terror, brought on in large part because of our aid to Israel and dependence on Arab oil (and concommitant Godzilla-like military footprint on Arab soil). We don't need all this ranting about ObamaCare and Obama taxes and so on. The solution is clear. We stop doing the bidding of Israel and let them fight the wars with their neighbors and all of Islam, if they feel so inclined. The money we save can fund any manner of entitlement (pleasing to liberals) or completely balance the budget (pleasing to conservatives). But first things first, as my Midwestern Dad always said. The first thing is this: U.S. out of the Mideast now. Not one more dime to either side. Finally, I didn't call out the ENTIRE Tea Party movement, just the extremists in that movement. Be careful whom you go to bed with, sir. If the Tea Partyers start linking up with the fundamentalist Christian fringe, they will be wholesale backers of Israel all over again. If the Tea Partyers strongly advocate CUTTING THE CORD with Israel and with Arab governments too, then, yes, they are a breath of fresh air. I totally agree with them on balancing the budget and lowering taxes. No argument there, as I make clear. But I worry they will be co-opted into the Republican NeoCon tent, which will force the USA to remain the bodyguard for Israel. That has to end.

Well, sir or madam, I did attend Passover. And have attended many times. But Americans aren't buying this clever rhetorical gambit that an attack on Israel is anti-semitism, anymore than an attack on the Vatican makes one anti-Catholic. Read the piece. I admire the pluck and industry of the Israelis, who turned a desert into a productive homeland. But they spit right in our faces when they occupy the lands of their neighbors, and green light further settlements when our VP arrives on the scene. Are you all calling Hillary Clinton (who is part Jewish) an anti-semite too? The anti-semitism charge is lowball. Let's get real here. Our support of Israel has emboldened Islamic fundamentalism. If Israel wants to go to battle with the Arab world, have at it. Just don't use American money and weaponry or our protective umbrella. The U.S. should not be aiding and abetting either side, anymore than we should take sides in the interminable battle between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. If Israel is so big and bad, they can take care of themselves. Heck, they have the nukes it seems. I say, U.S. out of the Mideast. And once we've stopped giving weapons to israel and selling weapons to the Arabs, and stopped importing oil from Mideast regimes, our homeland security will improve dramatically. There is NOTHING anti-semitic about those ideas. So, stop playing that game. It's shameful and actually cheapens real examples of bigotry, which I work strongly to fight every day of my life.

See my comments under Rosenberg, which were partly a response to your comments. I don't believe in Mr. Woodward's points about some vast Zionist conspiracy. I just think Israel can and SHOULD fend for itself. No more U.S. aid, period. Israel and the U.S. will be better off for it. Anyone who deeply cares about Israel should take this position. Israel then has the freedom to do whatever it wants (without Sugar Daddy Uncle Sam lecturing it) and the U.S. does not have to take the enormous hit for Israel's intransigence or bellicosity. Simple solution. And it would work.

Dear Stunned:

In the spirit of my above piece urging calm, restraint, and decorum, let me respond to your intriguing post point-by-point, since, it seems, I have not given your Posts sufficient attention, and this has you very upset.

STUNNED
Posted by Stunned in Seattle | Apr 12, 2010, 2:51 PM Pacific Time Mr. Woodward, Let me take this moment to personally thank you, on behalf of Jim Crotty, for being the biggest raving lunatic on this page.

CROTTY
First, you mention the names Woodward and Crotty. You might note that these are our real names. That is, both Mr. Woodward and I have the courage to put our real names behind our posts. Have you? No. So, when you get on the subject of “outing” below, wouldn’t it be fair, dignified and courageous for you to out yourself?

STUNNED
Typically, my reply to a Crotty Farm Report article is something along the lines of astonishment at how JC can be such a self-loathing, rapt-in-denial gay male homosexual who experiences domination fantasies, acts on them and then translates them into political misguidedness.

CROTTY
First, I don’t think anyone who reads me and knows me would suggest I am in denial. That proposition would strike many as hilarious. I was in a very public gay relationship with my compatriot in Monk Magazine back in the late eighties. Perhaps you haven’t read the book “Mad Monks On the Road” (Simon and Schuster), which chronicles this relationship in detail for all the world to read (as do innumerable press reports from that period, including a nice article in Newsweek). Furthermore, the nature of this relationship was quite clear to all readers of Monk Magazine. That I lean primarily heterosexual (in the Kinsey scale of things, and using the notion of “Love Maps,” which Joe Kramer turned me onto) does not alter how proud I am of that period of my life. No shame, no hiding at all.

As for your notion that I experience “domination fantasies,” that too would accord with what my friend, personal sexologist, and interview subject of mine for Playboy.com, the Mad Monks’ Guide to New York CD-ROM, and Monk Magazine, the incredible Annie Sprinkle, would say. Except she saw my female relationships as a kind of S & M. With me being the sadist. But, hey, I am open to all sorts of options.

;)

Any takers?

;)

That said, what’s hard for me to figure out is whether you are expressing bigoted sentiments or are actually publicly confessing your own “gay male” desires. Perhaps to dominate ME? Or poor Mr. Woodward? Until you reveal who you are, with a valid email address, it really is hard to know. Your anonymious commentary suggests you are deeply afraid of something about yourself, though, as with all feedback putatively directed at me , I promise to take what seems like a hurtful accusation and transform it into helpful advice. Though the thought of me suddenly appearing at an Eagle Bar in S & M drag does make me smile. I don’t think I could keep a “straight” face, but, hey, there’s always a first time, but I wouldn’t bank on it. I think I would get the shit kicked out of me for not taking it all so seriously.

As for your use of the term “gay male homosexual,” that too seems odd. I guess you are making a distinction between that term and gay FEMALE homosexuals? I have to turn to my resident Kinsey 6 gay friends to sort this one out. For it seems the term gay homosexual is redundant. Though, as I did make clear before, there is a wonderful book called “Gay Spirit,” which claims in part that heterosexual folks or primarily heterosexual folks can have a “gay spirit.” And, by God, I have always hoped to be included in that camp, even if at times I’ve become more curmudgeonly than “gay” in the old-fashioned use of the term.

STUNNED
Then, typically, JC comes along and deletes my post because he doesn't like being outed like that.

CROTTY
Dude, madam, whatever you are, I delete comments when they are hateful, boorish, sophomoric, and don’t contribute to real dialogue. I already “outted” myself decades ago. This is not the forum to entertain childish homophobia, or to process another person’s shame. If you want to play amateur Michael Signorile, there are other forums (or therapist couches) for you, but not CFR.

STUNNED But today there is no need for this little interchange because it is you, Mr. Woodward, who has proven himself to be so repressed as to translate your hungry, hungry desire for little boys' linuses into misguided political speech. I wish you the best in your journey to quench this particular, peculiar thirst. You, my friend, are a truly special individual.

CROTTY
Hmmm. My take on the always entertaining Mr. Woodward is that he is more of a conspiratorial sort. Many of his conspiracies I reject out of hand. There are other readers of CFR who share the same conspiracies. But because Mr. Woodward is so darn sensible in other areas makes Me at least read what he has to say. I didn’t know that Mr. Woodward was a candidate for NAMBLA membership. That said, I have to apply my commentary above here. It seems you are some amateur Freudian. Perhaps you want to write a Psychotherapy Blog on CFR (we are always looking for new talent!), starting with yourself as the first subject?

But, of course, first, you must have the courage to “Out” yourself. On that point, Mr. Woodward and I are in full Husker agreement.

I get the feeling, whatever article I write is just a pretext for folks to dump all sorts of tangentially relevant baggage, and engage in heated Holy Wars over offhand one-sentence comments I make in passing. No attempt is made to deal with the essay in full. Illegal immigration, Israel, racism, Obama’s Birth Certificate, these are the issues that get people really excited. I know now to drop at least one of them into every post!

;)

Now to Cevin’s points below.

CEVIN
Wow. There is so much here I find objectionable that I don't know where to begin. The civil war was a clash of cultures similar to the one today and some how it started without mass media.

CROTTY
My point about the Civil War is that each malfeasance POST-War during Reconstruction was not magnified and dissected on the nightly news. Minor malfeasances become magnified today, which creates for all sorts of imbalance in the cultural conversation. See my intro up top. Because folks have an inability to digest a whole meal, they latch onto whatever push button issue they do understand and start going nuts around that. And I don’t want to get into the whole Society of the Spectacle stuff, since, if this is THAT Cevin, you know all about THAT discussion. My article was simply an attempt to move people away from being victims of the spectacle as presented on the nightly news and cable gagfests.

CEVIN
Your attacks on Israel are simply logically inconsisent. Please break down your assumptions and then follow the arguments based on those assumptions. Then you will begin to understand why people complain of anti-semetism.

CROTTY
This is the classic gambit each side in the conflict deploys. They want to get Americans and American policy-makers mired in the rabbinical or mullah-like specificity of their particular "story." They are unable to see what they think is OBJECTIVE truth is actually just their highly subjective narrative, shrouded in the legalese of seemingly consistent truth. To the crazy man, his view of the world is also logically consistent.

My simple (though not simplistic), synoptic point is unassailable: criticism of the policies of Israel, whether this is criticism of the policies of the Israeli government inside Israel, in the settlements, in Gaza, in the West Bank, or via Israel’s powerful proxies here in the U.S. is NOT anti-semitism. And calling it as such does a huge service to real bigotry, and real anti-semitism (and routinely invoking the anti-semitism card actually DEPRESSES freedom of dissent on the issue, though I realize, much as with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their need to see racism everywhere, there is a lot of Jewish organizations that owe their existence to continually playing on this fear). All of us need to lighten up around our pet victim scripts. Even the wily, insensitive, Holocaust-denying persona of the Iranian president is more of an act designed to tweak Israel’s nose. He’s gotten Israel to take him at his word, to build him into a monstrous bogeyman, instead of the dim-witted Chavez-like megalomaniacal joker he clearly is. Israel INCREASES his power (and by increasing his power, they increase their influence on U.S. foreign policy in the region; a clever gambit; if you don’t have a real bogeyman, invent one).

I remember back at Northwestern University when the Nazi wackjob clowns wanted to march in Skokie, a largely Jewish suburb of Chicago. There were lots of heated earnest debates on both sides, including Jewish lawyers defending the Nazis’ right to march. In the end the Nazi clowns got to march. I am not even certain more than five showed up. But I developed huge respect for the Jewish residents of Skokie because of their undying respect for civil liberties. It really blew my mind, and I never forgot it. And even today I get very emotional when I think of their innate wisdom. And this is why it is so disconcerting to see so many Jewish friends, who are so brilliant on so many issues, and see things so clearly and so objectively on almost every major policy discussion (and from a variety of perspectives) get so fuzzy-headed, obstinate, and downright authoritarian when it comes to Israel.

I guess it’s why Catholics become apologists for the grotesque abuses enabled by the Catholic Church (including the outrageous scandal of pedophile priests and the church’s enormous cover-up). In the end the Jewish people and Israel need to be de-coupled. Ditto for Catholics and the country called Vatican City. I am, in small part, with those Orthodox, largely Hasidic, Jews who consider the earthly embodiment of Israel, and the whole notion of a “Jewish state,” sacreligious and an affront to the teaching of Judaism. I won’t go so far as to call Israel racist, but the relentless defending of it by any means necessary is clearly a huge blind spot among many Jewish friends (especially those quasi-Marxist friends who are so leftist when it comes to the whole notion of the Nation-State in the first place!!!, let alone a Nation-State based on a religion!; ironies and hypocrisies abound).

And that is not anti-semitic sir. I think many Catholics have the exact same blind spot when it comes to the Catholic Church, the Pope, and the Vatican (and God knows the Sikhs, Muslims, and all other religions have similar blind spots). And, by the way, backers of Tibet ALSO have a blind spot when it comes to the deified Dalai Lama. As a former Tibetan Buddhist, and Zen Buddhist, as much as I want religious freedom for Tibetans, and self-rule in Tibet, to glorify Tibet unequivocally is to miss the injustices and poverty that was engendered by the Tibetan Buddhist theocracy. Blind allegiance is the problem here. And as more and more Jewish-Americans come to see that their blind defense of Israeli policies actually hurts not only Israel (in the eyes of the world and now millions and millions of formerly sympathetic Americans … believe me, a sea change is now underway), but the Jewish people as a whole, they will create more distance between themselves and the unjustly engineered Jewish state. It’s inevitable.

CEVIN
Relative to other nations, Israel does not warrant attention.

CROTTY Relative to other nations, Israel deserves ALL of our attention. Because Israel is the lynchpin of what is screwing up our foreign policy in the broader Middle East, and eating away at our finances and good name worldwide. We are essentially fighting proxy wars for Israel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and maybe soon in Iran, because the whole origins of the massive jihad against the U.S. and its allies is based squarely in our wholesale defense of Israel. Israel’s only “friend” is America. Period. Now why is that? Because we are such good guys? No. 1. Our addiction to Oil (and our need for a reliable “partner,” a Hyman Roth if you will, who will help us protect the supply); 2. The fundamentalist Christian wacky belief in the Holy Land, and Israel as the best possible defender of it (the Zionist neocon Svengalis have played the Republican Right like a fiddle in this regard); 3. The massive influence that Israel has over U.S. elections through its own representatives or through its proxies in America.

Is this all in the U.S. interest? No. Not when you count all the dead and trillions of dollars spent fighting Israel’s wars for it, plus all the stationing of troops we have to put on Muslim soil, further emboldening the terrorists there. Is it in Israel’s interest? Also no. More on that below.

This notion that Israel is the bulwark against anarchy is the old manifest destiny argument we used to exterminate the native Americans. With a friend like Israel, who needs enemies. The simple point is: With what they have had to put up with from America and Israel, I can’t believe every single Arab is not a jihadist by now. Its amazing how controlled the fury is. Just imagine if hundreds of thousands of troops from a foreign power were STATIONED on U.S. soil. Don’t you think that would get the militia nutballs and other Palin-inspired extremists in the U.S. a bit pissed off? Heck, they are ready to get their guns and form state militias over health care, for cryin’ out loud. Just imagine how ticked off they would be if invading armies showed up in their towns.

That’s what Arabs are faced with all over the Middle East, mostly from America (the friend of their arch enemy!). It’s no surprise this fact has emboldened the wackjob fringe in the Arab world. It would enable the wackjob fringe in most any country. Israel plays this adroit psychological game on the gullible American people, by saying, “See, didn’t we tell you, they are crazy, they are messianic, they want a worldwide Islamic caliphate.” It takes a few courageous folks to pull the curtain aside and reveal the powerless Wizard residing there. Israel is the “great and powerful” Oz of our day (which gains its power from PERCEPTION, and the protective U.S. umbrella). They have perpetrated this myth about the Arab people and their ambitions to hide from view their own culpability.

I am not buying it (and neither is Obama and growing number of Americans). The Arab world is changing. More progress is being made daily on human rights, on developing alternatives to oil, on education, much more. A growing number of wise Jewish Rainbow Brothers in America see the sea change underway and are working hard for cooperation between Arabs and Israelis. These Israelis and non-israeli Jews see the writing on the wall. In less than 100 years, by dint of massive Arab breeding, Israel itself will be majority Muslim. Much like South Africa after apartheid, those who woke up early and did the right thing enjoyed the fruits of their wisdom and compassion. The rest went into seclusion or left. That's the choice facing Israel and their supporters in America.

We as Americans need to let this natural Arab-Israeli organic movement blossom by getting out of the region and out of the way. This is the best hope for Jews and Arabs everywhere. It is not anti-semitic. Anti-semitic is to embrace Israeli policies that turn the world against Jewish people. That’s real anti-semitism, and it is perpetrated daily by Israelis and by many Jews in America. Time to turn the other cheek, no matter what the atrocities on the other side. After all, it’s what we are doing in Afghanistan (welcoming former warlords, Taliban members, even Al Qaeda into the fold, and it’s working). The same needs to happen in Greater Palestine. Though I don’t believe in a two-state solution (there should be one state where Jews and Palestinians live as free people), for practical purposes, and for the sake of peace, I am willing to accept Israel as is, but at the 1967 borders.

CEVIN
Issues of genuine injustice exist in places like Tibet, but because Tibetans aren't hijacking passenger planes and blowing up innocent people and commiting atrocities, few have great sympathy for them.

CROTTY
Terrorism is a weapon. Israel used it in taking Palestine. When a people lack money, resources, respect, they get desperate. That’s how terrorism as a strategy becomes popular. If the Tibetans had gotten more violent sooner than the China Olympics, they might have gotten somewhere. When you are dealing with arrogant, well-financed governmental thugs who don’t understand nonviolence, or who see it as a sign of weakness, you need to resort to cruder, but, at times, more effective methods. I’ve said this repeatedly: Martin Luther King, without the threat of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers lurking in the background, would not have made much progress for African-Americans. As Joseph Nye teaches, you need both soft AND hard power. They work in tandem. Over kalpas, yes, maybe the pacificism of the Dalai Lama is the right idea, but, in the here and now, you need hard power. And sometimes asymmetrical hard power, like terrorism. Not that I advocate it, which I clearly do not, but I understand why people resort to it as a tactic. The simple strategic answer for Americans is to drain the area of a recruitment vehicle: the U.S. military footprint in the region.

CEVIN
I am always curious why no one ever examines the foreign aid paid to Egypt and why there is no insistence that their government by subject to our demands since they receive billions as well.

CROTTY
As I’ve said here, and many times in the past, I TOTALLY agree. Because I think the U.S. should immediately cut off all aid to Israel does NOT mean we should shift aid to other countries in the Middle East. We need to cut off ALL aid to Arab countries too. We need to get out of this interminable war between old enemies, who claim descent from the same father. Each side has its reasons. Each side can sound very persuasive. But in its resolution of the conflict each side falls back on empircally unsupportable or untenable theological/Biblical justifications interpretations or blatant myths. For Israel, they foster this hurtful idea that there is no such thing as a Palestinian. That Palestinians are just Jordanians or just Arabs. By the same token, the Palestinians propagate all kinds of myths about the Jewish people. The conflict never ends, and, until the U.S. removes itself completely, the conflict will continue. We are getting played by both sides. If I was President, by executive order I would cut off all aid to the region. My slogan: Not one dime of aid, Not one drop of oil.

CEVIN
Actually, I think Israel should reject foreign aid from America and instead demand payment for use of the strategic use of its territory and the other benefits gained by having one relaible ally in the middle east. I imagine they could potentially raise more money without the stigma and without having to abrogate their autonomy to an interloper.

CROTTY
As I’ve said repeatedly, I TOTALLY agree (though we won't be paying Israel a dime because we will have no need to be in the region). Crotty wants the U.S. out of the region altogether. We are not helping anyone by being there. Israel can fend for itself. And I don’t want Israel’s tainted “partnership.” That notion of partnership IMPLIES that the enemy is the Arab people. That’s the assumption you fail to examine. Arabs are not the enemies of the U.S. Israelis are not the enemies of the U.S. But Israelis and Arabs seem to hate each other. Let them go on hating each other. NOT our problem. An international problem, maybe. But not an American problem (as long as we are no longer importing oil from the region; easily doable with the vast supplies of oil and natural gas right here and next door in Canada).

CEVIN
Under the Crotty scenario, all recipients of foreign aid should submit to American hegemonic power. Bush was able to get a number of African nations to make abortion illegal and succeeded in reversing the downward trend of AIDS cases in Uganda. Kudos to them! Right? The lesson I thought people would learn from the war in Iraq was that the violence and conflict there has absolutely nothing to do with Israel. The region is full of fundamental extremists and the region would be unstable even without Israel. It is not the elephant in the room - quite the contrary - it is the diverstionary scapegoat. Everyone is eager to take the bait and believe the lies that Israel is the source of all the problems in that region (and thereby beyond). It just ain't so.

CROTTY
With all due respect, you are putting the cart before the horse, sir. There are only two issues in the Mideast that concern us here: A. Oil; B. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s it. If we completely withdraw from Arab oil, we have no need to get involved in Arab internal or external politics in order to protect said oil supply. Period. And if we get religion out of our foreign policy, especially the Judeo-Christian bias in our foreign policy (especially under Bush and Reagan), then we have zero need to give special credence to Israel. There are fundamentalists in Israel. It was an Israeli fundamentalist who killed the wonderful Rabin. There are fundamentalists in America. And, yes, in the Arab world. As my point about allowing the Nazis to march in Skokie makes clear, nutjobs love attention. We need to NOT make these wingnuts highlights on the nightly news. That was the point I made at the beginning of the piece and still stand by it. We are a free and open society, or supposedly strive to be (Patriot Act notwithstanding). We can allow all kinds of religions, all kinds of wacky political beliefs. As a free and open society, we don’t NEED TO CARE if there are radical fundamentalists in the Mideast, whether Muslim or Jew, or whatever flavor, because, in my scenario, WE HAVE NO BUSINESS THERE. We will FAR more effectively drain the Mideast swamp of fundamentalism ONCE WE LEAVE and stop occupying Arab lands.

Heck, our own American Revolution was precipitated by the forced quartering of British troops. This pissed our forefathers off enough to launch a revolution. Don’t you think the average Arab, Muslim or not, is mighty pissed that we have such a huge footprint on their soil? And, what’s more, we are aiding and abetting their arch enemy, the state of Israel?

It is NOT anti-American to actually LISTEN to what the Arab man-in-the-street is telling us: STOP BACKING ISRAEL, STOP OCCUPYING ARAB LANDS. I am hugely patriotic. And because I am hugely patriotic I see how it is in our national interest to actually LISTEN to what the Arab world is telling us (through word and deadly deed). I am so happy we finally have a President who ACTUALLY IS LISTENING TO THE ARAB WORLD IN EARNEST. Not just the oiligarchs, but the people. Whatever you think of Obama in all other areas this is such a profound and welcome shift in American foreign policy, I would support him for a second term if he raised my taxes 50%. I am not joking. Especially if he holds firm against any and all Israeli settlements. And chooses to cut off all aid to the Mideast.

I am not interested in hearing about all the grievances one side has against the other. I am not interested in hearing either side’s biased version of history. I am not interested in taking sides in a conflict I am not responsible for, or in adjudicating who’s slightly better this month, this year, or this decade. Both sides are equally wrong and equally right. It’s simply NOT OUR BUSINESS.

Finally, to your point about hegemony (a full developed Gramsci notion I don’t just willy-nilly apply to the U.S., like so many armchair leftists), I don’t believe in ANY unilateral U.S. aid. Despite our best intentions, it invariably gets tainted. We have huge problems here at home. We shouldn’t spend another dime on any kind of foreign aid until we’ve tackled real issues we have here: illiteracy, the glaring and destructive unpreparedness of huge swaths of our population for any job that requires serious reading or writing or anything behind robotically scanning items in a grocery store; illegal immigration; a health care cost crisis for most Americans; oil addiction; environmental desecration; lack of meaningful mass transit in most of the country; a pathetic lack of conservation efforts; a yawning deficit. The list is so long. We can most help the world by being an example right here at home, including on how to balance a budget and grow an economy with fine quality goods the world actually wants (instead of haranguing other nations about our trade deficit, we should train our people to create the finest goods known to mankind). If you don't want to work hard, you don't get a dime of welfare. Time for tough love.

Our military, our foreign aid, they do little to help us. Our innovative products (iPhone, for instance) and, most important, the freedom to come here and start anew, that is the core of Brand America. I have nothing against men and women in uniform, but they have no business in the Middle East. They’ve been sold a duffel bag of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist anti-Arab propaganda. We need to begin dismantling our military establishment and wind things down to a core defensive, but extraordinarily lethal, posture. Otherwise, we are headed the path of all empires (even if we are a paper tiger at this point, with China owning a lot of our debt).

Unfortunately, most Americans have been bamboozled that it is un-patriotic to think this way. But Crotty will win them over in the end. Give me a few years. These ideas will be mainstream ideas soon enough. And U.S. aid to the Mideast will be history.

Then, and only then, will the warring factions be forced to negotiate in earnest. If you are the middle person between warring brothers, or warring lovers, it’s you who loses in the end. We are that unlucky cuckhold in the middle of this family fight, We are stupid enough to believe we can solve it. We can’t. Time to leave the room. Let the brothers take each other to the precipice. Then they will come to their senses, but only after both have hit bottom.

In the meantime, our only job in the Middle East is to make sure BOTH Israel and all Arab nations completely come clean on their nuclear programs. They can fight all they want, but we don’t want to suffer the mushroom cloud fallout from their craziness. Obama’s nuclear summit is a step in the right direction.

Thank you for writing. Now I need to go back to making a living.

Warm regards,

Mr. Crotty