Mr. Trump, Stop Being An Ass

Mr. Trump, Stop Being An Ass. America First and Support for Israel Are Polar Opposites

Mr. Trump, stop being played as a dumb ass by Jewish-Americans. Every American soldier, Marine, and U.S. civilian who has died or been wounded or maimed since Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1996 has been the victim — in significant part — of the record of slavish and largely unquestioning U.S. support for Israel’s national security interests.

This kind of policy requires the utter abandonment of all the tenets inherent in the concept of America First. Together, your selection for ambassador to Israel — a supporter of West Bank settlements; that is, the brazen theft of Palestinian land — and your promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will do four disastrous things: they will kill and maim more U.S. military personnel; decrease U.S. national security; prolong America’s Islam war by decades; and irreparably rupture the trust of your political base’s faith in your promise of putting America first. Proceed in the direction you are setting and you will be from the first day of your presidency nothing more than one more post-1945 U.S. president who is a slave to Israel’s national security interests, and the hapless pawn of disloyal Jewish Americans, their organizations, and their journals.

The only obligation the United States has to Israel is to never stand in the way of that country’s right to defend itself according to its own best lights. Building West Bank settlements, driving all Palestinians into Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or making war on Iran and Hizballah are all decisions that can only be made by Israelis and their government.

The key point is that while no other nation has the right to intervene to stop Israel from exercising its right to self-defense, neither does any nation have any obligation — legal or moral — to allow itself to be tarred with the brush of disaster which may accompany Israel’s foreign policy or military actions.

And, Mr. Trump, that is precisely the spot in which Israel and and the leadership of the American-Jewish community want to put you in: namely fighting wars on their behalf.

As long as you choose to tie the United States to such things as Israel’s settlement building, and volunteer to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, you will be further uniting the Muslim world in their hatred for the republic, telling American parents that their soldier-children should die for Israeli rather than U.S. interests, and advising U.S. taxpayers that they will continue to be forced by a small and disloyal American-Jewish cabal to shell out billions of dollars to build and defend Israel, money that, as you said during the campaign, is needed to accomplish the same tasks in America.

The American republic was not formed to be the cats-paw of any foreign power — especially one irrelevant to U.S. interests, like Israel — or any disloyal gaggle of Americans. Neither is there anything manly or self-respecting in you authorizing such Israel First goals as are signified by your ambassadorial choice and the plan to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Remember that the supporters of both goals are the same people and organizations who hysterically vilified you, lied about you, and advised all Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton. You owe them nothing, Mr. Trump, and America owes neither them nor Israel another dollar or another military life. It is time, Mr. Trump, to stop playing the fool for Israel, Israel First, the Neoconservatives, and at U.S. Congress that is controlled by all three.

A prolonged and ultimately losing war with Islam or America First, Mr. Trump? It’s up to you.

Michael F. Scheuer is a former CIA intelligence officer, American blogger, author, foreign policy critic, and political analyst. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. http://non-intervention.com