But empires are long gone, and the American empire does not have the luxury or the capacity to set up shop in faraway lands as the debacles of Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. have amply demonstrated.
Indeed, among western nations, America has been the least "land-based" colonial empire because it adopted a "mercantile-colonial" approach in which it replaced troops and administrators on the ground of their colonies with commercial colonialism. It tried the boots-on-the ground colonialism briefly (e.g. the Philippines) but that didn't last. Japan and Germany are still under US occupation but these two cases are the outcome of war in which the US defeated its enemies. In other places, it literally stole the colony (e.g. Hawaii, Puerto Rico), but overall the boot-land footprint of the US is minimal.
What the US succeeded in doing is to replace military occupation with selling cultural junk and addictive brainwashing products. Those products range from filthy processed food to movies made by US corporations and Hollywood, accompanied by gigantic marketing campaigns with which it seduces largely ignorant third world populations reeling under absolute monarchies and dictatorships with its glorified "American Dream" marketing ploy. In the case of monarchies, the US ignores or tolerates the barbarity of the ruler in exchange for access to markets and militrary bases on his soil (e.g. most of the Near and Middle Easts, the Arabian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, among others). In the case of dictatorships, the US most often pretends to be against the dictator, stirs up instability under the guise of supporting anti-regime groups, but without forcing the stalemate that lasts decades (China, Venezuela, Egypt, etc.) which keeps both the ruler and his opponents in need of the US, while the US sells weapons, has access to markets, and pilfers resources behind the political scene.
Nowadays, on television channels (e.g. OSN) targeting the Arabian Gulf populations, you'll see Arab-headdress-clad young men and veiled women partying western-style in huge SUVs, and Arab-headdress-clad families lapping up the violence of Hollywood movies as they gulp down American-style burgers and chips along with generous quantities of sugar-loaded - or carcinogenic Aspartame-loaded - Pepsi, Coke and the like.
Israel's problem is that it is the last boots-on-the-ground colonial entity after the decolonization of the mid-20th century. No one doubts that without US military support, Israel would be doomed, surrounded as it is by nations it did everything in its power to make enemies of, and who are kept at bay by the American anesthesia mentioned above. Sleepy as most Arab countries have been in regard to the genocide in Gaza, they are so only because the US uses the Iranian scarecrow to tame and domesticate Arab countries into submission to its will and to Israel's colonial barbarity.
The question is: Has Israel outlived its use?
Is the enmity of the Arabs and Muslims around the world a price worth paying to maintain the absurdity of an ultra-religious fundamentalist colony like South Africa was?
What use is Israel to the US if most Arab countries have opened their territories to US military bases and American commercial domination? What use is Israel to the US if military technology allows the US to manage wars from thousands of miles away?
Does the US really need an army (disguised as an Israeli Defense Force) in Palestine that is so costly to maintain with all the headaches it never ceases to cause?
Is the US willing to continue taking the risk of fanatic Jewish settlers demolishing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a Jewish temple after 3,000 years? Isn't this a bit too anachronistic and dangerous to US interests world-wide?
How long can a foreign implant be tolerated before it is rejected, despite multiple strategies to repress the immune system?
Is it really worth keep pushing the region deeper into Islamic radicalism and terrorism because of Israel? The rise of Islamic fundamentalism is 100% attributed to the perception of Israel as a foreign western implant, its decimating of an indigenous Palestinian people who had done nothing to the Jews of Europe, its undermining of regional stability, its serving as a pretext to all kinds of radicalisms, its forcing the US to make deals with dictatorships and absolute monarchies, all at the expense of a healthy natural development of the peoples of the region. The peoples of the region understand this dynamic in its totality. There is "a context" to the past 50 years of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, to the 9-11 bombings, to the 1983 bombing of US and French marines in Beirut, to all the hijackings and terrorist attacks. Why is it that of all colonial territories around the world, only the Middle East remains a powderkeg in a constant state of war, not rooted in recently arising problems, but rooted in British and American colonialism long after the end of colonial empires?
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not about control over oil wells or about issues of trade or about Russian intervention to dislodge westerners, or about a democratic opposition to an autocrat... It is about a colonial enterprise born in the 19th century that continues to exterminate the native population in order to accommodate foreign migrants from Europe and the US. The fact that these foreign migrants are Jewish is not the fundamental issue, but it doesn't help. The Palestinian resistance was not Islamic between from the 1920s all the way to the 1990s: It was recuperated by Islamic fundamentalism in the 1990s when all other forms of secular resistance were met with lies, deceptions and violations of agreements signed.
Still, is it really that difficult to accept Islam as a driver of Palestinian resistance when the enemy sets its rasion d'etre on the fact that it is Jewish? Why is it difficult to conceive that one religious fundamentalism (Islam) is fighting another religious fundamentalism (Judaism)?
Haven't 75 years of the existence of the American Jewish colony (inherited from the British to be sure, just like Vietnam was inherited from the French) proven its failure? This colony is unable to survive on its own and is very costly materially and otherwise to maintain. Sure, technology and advances in the development of deadly weapons seemingly always give the Jewish settler colony an advantage, but the resistance to the colony always seems to catch up, and this arms race cannot go on indefinitely without at some point raising the more fundamental question: Do the Jews in the 21st century really need a thorny non-viable "homeland" smack in the middle of a region that has had 14 centuries of continuous Muslim rule?
Wouldn't it be better for the Jews to live in Europe whence they came, either as citizens of a loving European community now far more civilized than a century ago, or perhaps inside a self-ruling Jewish homeland inside Europe itself? Examples of small sovereign political entities abound in Europe - Monaco, Luxemburg, Andorra, Lichstenstein, San Marino, etc. - How difficult is it for the Europeans to agree to cede a small part of their territory to create a Jewish homeland for all the European Jews who settled Palestine at the cost of a monumental ethnic cleansing of the local indigenous Palestinian population?
I'll conclude by reminding readers that the Crusades of the year 1095 were the exact identical precedent to the Jewish homeland campaign. Religious in its genesis (retrieve land taken by the Muslims in 638) and commercial in its interests (bypass the obstacles to trade created by the Muslim conquests). The Christian settlers came to the region, massacred and ethnically cleansed, created counties and kingdoms, established settlements, bred with the locals, fought endless battles and made endless peace agreements.... But as soon as the fervor waned and the interests shifted, the Crusaders ended up packing and moving back to Europe. Is it really any different in the 21st century with Western Crusaders being 20th-century Jewish fanatics, rather than 10th-century Christian fanatics?
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Opinion
Opinion - Is the U.S. relationship with Israel still worth it?
K. Ward Cummings, opinion contributor
Mon, September 2, 2024
Opinion - Is the U.S. relationship with Israel still worth it?
As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I find myself asking out loud a question I’ve whispered to myself often since the Twin Towers came down: Is the U.S. relationship with Israel worth it?
This was a lot easier to answer during the Cold War, when the U.S. supported Israel in order to counterbalance Soviet influence in the region. But, that was a long time ago, and though the Russians are still active in the Middle East, it’s not on the same scale.
Stable oil markets are also a longtime reason we have supported Israel, but that situation is changing too, as the U.S. is now the leading producer of oil on the planet.
Of course, Israel continues to help the U.S. in many important ways politically in the region. But I still feel compelled to ask: Is that enough?
The U.S. has paid a heavy price for our relationship with Israel over the years — not just in treasure, but also in blood. According to the 9/11 Commission, U.S. support for Israel was a key reason for the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences (in the U.S.) as a student, but rather from this violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel,” reads the commission’s report.
If you are old enough to remember the U.S. energy crisis in the 1970s and the gasoline rationing that came with it, you may also remember that the fuel shortage was the result of Arab nations cutting the United States’ oil supply because they were angry about American support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
Or perhaps you remember the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, in which 241 U.S. service members were killed. At the time, it was viewed as “a lesson in the danger for the U.S. of stepping in the middle of a conflict between Israel and one of its neighbors.”
Today, as tensions in the region escalate, experts are concerned that “the chance of an assault on the U.S. is also growing.” U.S. intelligence officials say that “there’s a rising risk Lebanese Hezbollah militants will strike Americans in the Middle East — even potentially hit inside the United States.”
I was alarmed to read in the 9/11 Commission report that the attacks were supposed to be much more severe than they were, involving 10 planes, not just three; and that Osama Bin Laden had wanted the attacks to occur much earlier — as a response to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s highly controversial visit to a contested holy site in Jerusalem the year before. I could not help but be struck by Bin Laden’s determination to punish Americans for something Sharon had done.
The message seemed clear. As long as the U.S. supports Israel, American lives are at risk.
Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, was nothing short of cold-blooded murder. Nearly 1,200 innocent Jewish civilians were killed, and 250 hostages were taken.
In pursuit of Hamas militants, Israeli forces have killed an estimated 40,000 Palestinians [in cold blood as well] and displaced hundreds of thousands more, according to the Associated Press.
All suffering is regrettable. But, as a concerned American, with vivid memories of the World Trade Center bombings, what frightens me most about this recent stretch of violence is all of the suffering children. Specifically, I worry that a whole new generation of young Gazans are being radicalized against Israel and the United States.
Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks and Hamas’s new leader, was once one of those children. He was born in Gaza, and was deeply affected by his family’s displacement during the early wars that helped shape Israel. He joined Hamas as a young man and rose quickly through its ranks, building a reputation for brutality so severe that it earned him the nickname, “The Butcher of Khan Younis.”
Today, as I look at the images of all the suffering young people in Gaza, I can’t help but wonder how many young “Yahya Sinwars” walk among them.
According to a recent report by the International Rescue Committee, more than 19,000 children in Gaza have been orphaned by the fighting. Children comprise more than 47 percent of Gaza’s population and half of the Palestinian deaths are thought to have been women and children.
Over 90,000 people have been injured and a million displaced — many of them children. The International Rescue Committee is concerned about the long-term effects on them from the war as they endure, “family separation, abandonment, physical and environmental dangers, injuries, and psychosocial and emotional distress.”
International aid groups are doing what they can to ease the suffering and build a future for the children of Gaza. But I know I’m not alone in thinking that, if I were a 12-year-old Gazan boy, who had watched my family and friends die in an Israeli strike and had to live in refugee camps far from my home, surrounded by poverty and despair, I’m not sure there are enough free Hershey’s chocolate bars or donated toys on the planet to make me forget about it.
K. Ward Cummings is a writer who lives in Baltimore.
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