We've still spent a lot of money no matter how you look at it.

Why don't we send that kind of support to mexico so that the Mexican gov't can more effectively fight the drug lords?
That would even get us some peace and quiet closer to home.

I believe several billion $ a year goes to Israel and Egypt per the U.S. treaty obligations from the 1977 Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.  There would be diplomatic repercussions to breaking that agreement and sending it to Mexico.  (This according to a retired USAF friend of mine who did a year over in Egypt helping them set up their air bases the way we do ours.  He said we gave the Egyptians something like $1B a year in military aid, but it was really more like a store credit with us, they had to spend it on buying our stuff from us.  So the base was built by Haliburton or whoever and everything not airplanes was the same stuff set up just like it would be over here).

I agree with those that don't think sending the $ to Mexico would buy us anything worthwhile.

I've seen this video:
It looks like a fail of Israelis tactic.


Or they should have used those 76mm Otto Mellara automatic cannons.

The United States remains involved in the Middle East for two reasons.

1. We are strategically dependent on the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia.

2. A Middle East war has the potential to not only become a world war, but to disrupt the flow of oil that we depend on to function.

Nothing that happens in Mexico is going to either start World War III or touch off a second holocaust.  The Middle East is an entirely different story.

As for the Palestinians...there is a safe, stable country where people of that ethnicity, language, and culture can live and work in peace.  It's called Jordan.  But this isn't about a Palestinian state.  It won't end when there's a Palestinian state.  It's about "driving the Jews into the sea".

Which isn't to say that Israel is always right, or Israel is innocent, or that Israel hasn't done it's share of wrong.  I sincerely doubt, however, that Americans would've acted much differently had we been placed in a similar situation as the Israelis.

My whole problem with this:  Why should we hand out welfare to a lot of countries around the world like that?

And since we can't deport them without horrible violence...

You say that like it's a bad thing.   

Quote

Quote from: Bud on June 01, 2010, 04:53:20 PM
All the Jews have been doing for the past 63 years is to attempt to live in peace as dictated by the UN partition.

I didn't realize that.

The Arab states around Israel desire to destroy that country.  They use the "Palestinians" as a proxy.  People seem to forget that.  It's not like Israel can 'turn the other cheek' they are fighting for their very existence.

Why the blockade of Gaza?  because the year before the blockade roughly 1 THOUSAND rocket attacks were made against Israeli citizens by rockets launched from Gaza.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at what it was all about from the Hamas side...



Best send-up I've seen in YEARS!!!   I'd    if it wasn't so d@@@d serious.

From a cooler, vastly more experienced and knowledgeable head than mine:  www.jerrypournelle.com

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q2/view625.html#Israel1

The money line:  " Israel strategy is important to the survival of Israel. It's easy enough for American intellectuals -- including me -- to come up with advice for the Israelis, but we don't live within rocket range of enemies who have no compunction about firing unguided missiles in the general direction of cities, suburbs, and schools; nor are we surrounded by enemies who have vowed to exterminate us.

One of Aesop's fables concerns a fox who chased a rabbit. When the fox failed to catch the rabbit, his friends laughed at him. The fox answered "I was running for my dinner. The rabbit was running for his life." I am very critical of many Israeli policies. I fumed at some of those policies and practices when I visited Israel, and I wonder if some of the needless irritants did not greatly contribute to the collapse of the good times when we could take a bus from Jerusalem to Jericho, then up the Jordan Valley to the Sea of Galilee; when much of Judea and Samaria was open to tourist travel. That all ended, and while I'm pretty sure it ended because of Arrafat's greed, I can see that some of the Israeli practices may have contributed -- perhaps greatly contributed -- to the popularity of Arrafat, which was, after all, built in large part on hatred of Israel.

I left Israel convinced that I don't know how to run that country, and I am very glad that my life and that of my family do not depend on my figuring out what to do. I'm only running for my intellectual reputation."

Geoff
Who notes the man has been there several times and has correspondents on several sides.