Two Populisms, Not One

by PAUL STREET

DECEMBER 21, 2018

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/21/two-populisms-not-one/

Left v. Right Populism

Two very different “populisms” that have arisen in response to neoliberal capitalism in the West.

A left-leaning social-democratic “progressive populism” targets the capitalist concentration of wealth and power and the unbridled pursuit of private profit as enemies of the people and the common good.  This populism is egalitarian and radically democratic.  It tends towards socialism.  Its attractive policy agenda, supported by working-class majorities, includes the downward distribution of wealth, the expansion of the social safety net, university quality health care, increased minimum wages and union power, public jobs programs, and the protection of livable ecology (a Green New Deal).  Its diverse political figureheads include Jeremy Corbyn (leader of the British Labour Party), Jean-Luc Melenchon (head of La France Insoumise), Yanis Varoufakis (leader of the new Progressive International), and even Bernie Sanders.

Then there’s the reactionary anti-cosmopolitan nationalist “populism” of the right. This unattractive and backward-looking populism shares some of left populism’s disdain for giant globalist corporations and financial institutions.  Still, its ire is aimed primarily at immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities and they are perceived liberal and multi-cultural champions in the globalist “elite.”  This white-nationalist “populism” (some would say faux-populism) carries no small whiff of fascism. It aligns with noxious politicians like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen (France), Alexander Gauland (Germany), Matteo Salvini (Italy), Nigel Farage (England), Viktor Orban (Hungary), Geert Wilders (Netherlands), and Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil).

  

The Ruling Class Prefers the Right-Wing Version

So which of these two populisms – the progressive populism of the left and the reactionary “populism” of the right – does the corporate and financial ruling class prefer? The right-wing one, of course.

There’s no mystery about why. The starboard strain offers no serious challenge to capitalist prerogatives. It works to exacerbate internal working-class divisions and to divert majority Caucasian anger away from those who possess real material and social power – the top capitalist stratum and its professional and political class servants – on to far less powerful scapegoats: immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, and Latinx people. Right-wing populism’s anger at the capitalist “elite” is largely for show. Its real fury is directed at absurdly demonized racial, national, ethnic, religious, cultural, and sexual “others.”

Left-wing populism’s anger at the bourgeois masters is for real.  The authentic populism of the portside seeks to overcome racial, ethnic, national, sexual and other social divisions to build working-class and popular solidarity for the common good and against the wealthy Few and their professional and managerial cadres atop the commanding heights of capitalism.

Sanders Trumped on Cable News (2015-16)

That’s why ruling-class-owned corporate media tends to give immigrant- and minority-bashing reactionary populism considerably more attention than it does left-leaning progressive populism. It’s why Sanders’ giant progressive-populist rallies were relatively invisible compared to Trump’s widely covered white-nationalist rallies on U.S. cable news in 2015 and 2016.

The plutocracy-skewering Sanders campaign almost unseated the ruling class’s preferred candidate Hillary Clinton with essentially no business support– no small feat in the United States’ money-soaked political process. You’d hardly have known this, however, from the dominant media coverage, which vastly downplayed the Sanders challenge even as it obsessed over every little Trump Tweet and snarl. It was “down the memory hole” (Orwell) with the highly civilized and avowedly Scandinavia-inspired, social-democratish Sanders phenomenon even as it happened.  The Terrible Trump, whose brutal gatherings evoked memories of Nazi rallies in 1930s Germany, was, by contrast, the “authentic” and “populist” story on CNN.

“More Occupy Than Orban”

Another and related way in which ruling class media channels its sheer elitist contempt for left (actual) progressive-populism is by failing it distinguish it from noxious reactionary populism and indeed merging it with the backward-looking variant. Listen to an interesting statement from last week from the editorial board of the New York Times regarding the extraordinary working-class, egalitarian, and anti-capitalist Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) uprising that has roiled France with large majority support in recent weeks. “The Yellow Vests on the Champs-Élysées,” the Times editors intoned, “are cousins of the British who voted for Brexit, the Americans who voted for Donald Trump, and the Poles, Hungarians and Italians who elected populist, anti-democratic governments”  (Editors, “Macron Blinks,” NYT, Dec. 11, 2018).

The Times’ editors’ falsely merged the Yellow Vests with European, American, and British right-nationalist populism.  They did so in defiance of their own paper’s reporting from the streets of France. As Times correspondent Adam Nossiter reported in early December:

“The Yellow Vests, who have thrown France into turmoil with violent protests in recent weeks, say they want more, and they want it sooner rather than later — lower taxes, higher salaries, freedom from gnawing financial fear, and a better life…Those deeper demands, the government’s inability to keep up, and fierce resentment of prosperous and successful cities run like an electrified wire connecting populist uprisings in the West, including in Britain, Italy, the United States and, to a lesser extent, Central Europe.”

“What ties these uprisings together, beyond the demands, is a rejection of existing parties, unions and government institutions that are seen as incapable of channeling the depth of their grievances or of offering a bulwark against economic insecurity…But what makes France’s revolt different is that it has not followed the usual [reactionary-] populist playbook. It is not tethered to a political party, let alone to a right-wing one. It is not focusing on race or migration, and those issues do not appear on the Yellow Vests’ list of complaints. It is not led by a single fire-breathing leader. Nationalism is not on the agenda.”

“The uprising is instead mostly organic, spontaneous and self-determined. It is mostly about economic class. It is about the inability to pay the bills. In that regard, it is more Occupy than Orban — more akin to the protests against Wall Street driven by the working poor in the United States than the race-based, flag-waving of Hungary’s increasingly authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban…In Paris, it was the luxury shopping streets, the Avenue Kleber and the Rue de Rivoli — insolent symbols of urban privilege compared with the drab provinces from which the Yellow Vests emerged — where windows were smashed on Saturday” (emphasis added).

The Times reporter on the ground in France (unlike the Times editorial board in Manhattan) got it right (left): The Yellow Vests are to the anti-neoliberal but non-nationalist and working-class left of the right-wing “populists” of the U.S., UK, Italy, Poland, and Hungary. The street-fighters of France trashed bourgeois and capitalist symbols and property, not immigrants or minorities. As Gilbert Mercier noted two weeks ago:

“…the Gilets Jaunes movement is anti-capitalist: a guttural revolt of the have-nots against the elite. It is a popular, not a populist, movement. Europeans and even American populist-nationalists are already distorting the Gilets Jaunes’ significance to serve their political agenda. As opposed to the rise of nationalism-populism elsewhere, such as in Italy, Austria, Hungary, the UK as expressed by BREXIT, the US, and Brazil with the election of Bolsonaro, the Gilets Jaunes do not have an anti-immigration or even an anti-EU agenda that reeks of racism and neofascism.…The Gilets Jaunes are in revolt against capitalism or neoliberalism, which is a worldwide system of concentration of wealth and power into a few hands.”

(Note how Mercier felt the need to distinguish the Gilets Jaunes from “populism” even though the movement is arguably left-populist.  That’s because the Western media-politics culture has given the term “populism” to the right).

But so what? As dutiful neoliberal servants of the American and global bourgeoisie, the Times editorial board finds it useful to merge the real, popular, and social-democratic populism of the left with the unpopular, racist, authoritarian, nationalist, xenophobic, and creeping fascist populism of the right.

“The Anti-Populist”

The leading Democratic-presidential hopeful Joe Biden has declared himself the (get this) “Anti-Populist.” He makes no distinction, of course, between the leftish populism of Sanders and the virulent white-nationalist “populism” of Trump and his party. This is a clever corporate-neoliberal way of marginalizing the progressive-populist flank in U.S. major party politics and presenting the centrist Goldman Sachs-Citigroup-Council on Foreign Relations-establishment agenda (represented by Biden and/or perhaps the more dashing Beto O’Rourke atop the Democratic Party ticket in 2020) as the safe, reasonable alternative to the dangerous “rabble” and “mob” – the wretched commoners, who need to be managed by far-seeing and benevolent masters.

Bill Blum v. The New York Times – and Bernie Sanders

In another example of how the Times likes to stick knives in Left backs, the paper marked the death of the wonderful anti-U.S.-imperialist author and activist by publishing an insufferably condescending obituary that not-so-subtly linked Blum to Osama bin-Laden while failing to relate anything of real substance about Blum’s learned and widely-read reflections on U.S. “foreign policy” (also known as American imperialism).  I met Bill Blum on at least two occasions.  He was a kind and gentle man who exhibited none of the “rage” the Times claimed to see in his writings. It’s a shame that Blum’s writings haven’t been taken more seriously by progressive-populists like Bernie Sanders, who seems unwilling to either understand or to acknowledge any understanding [1] that (as Dr. Martin Luther King said more than once near the end of this life) we cannot pay for social democracy while spending the lion’s share of our tax dollars on the spiritually cancerous  maintenance of a giant and mass-murderous war machine. How many times did the “democratic socialist” candidate Sanders cite Denmark, Norway, and Sweden as his social-democratic policy role models without having the decency to note that these nations spend comparatively tiny portions of their national budgets on their militaries?

Endnote

1) Lefties like to quote this aphorism from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. ”In my experience within the intellectual and professional classes, the bigger problem has been how the salary prevents men and women from saying publicly what they privately understand to be true.

Paul Street’s latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014)

Washington Melts Down Over Trump’s Syria Withdrawal

Their obsession with Vladimir Putin misses the point and obscures the hard costs of our military misadventures.

By MATT PURPLE • December 21, 2018

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/washington-melts-down-over-trumps-syria-withdrawal/

He’s a wily one, that Vladimir Putin. Consider all that he’s managed to accomplish over the last 24 hours, according to the geopolitical wizards on Twitter. At Putin’s behest, President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a withdrawal of American troops from Syria. That’s now cleared the path for Russia to exert control over Damascus, the Middle East, indeed the world itself, because Moscow has at last secured the jewel in its neo-Soviet empire…a strip of chaotic desert in northeastern Syria.

If that’s actually Putin’s thinking, then he’s not playing checkers or chess so much as 13 Dead End Drive right before the chandelier falls on his head. Yet that was the gist of the analysis from America’s smart set yesterday. Think tank functionaries and journalists and right-wing radio hosts were all united in furious opposition to Trump’s Russia-influenced absconding from Syria. Somehow they’ve yet to muster similar unanimous outrage over our massive national debt or our loneliness-cum-opioid crisis, but I’m sure that’s just a matter of time. Until then, the Syria page of Washington’s mad-lib book yields all the usual buzzwords: “adversaries,” “strength,” “surrender.”

So far as Putin goes, he isn’t trying to flip Syria behind some newly hung Iron Curtain. His aim is a return to the pre-civil war status quo: a friendly Assad regime, a safe Russian naval base in Tartus, and an end to jihadist-fueled instability across Syria. That latter one is especially important to understanding the Russian psyche. Putin fears nothing more than a weak state besieged by armed rogues, a result of his formative experiences in chaotic Dresden after the Berlin Wall came down and later amid uprisings in Chechnya. Hence the desire to protect Assad, who will keep the mob from the Tartus door. The real disruptive change, then, won’t come if Putin “wins”; it will come if the United States were to somehow realize its original delusion of overthrowing Assad, which would (further) tear open a power vacuum that would be filled at least in part by jihadists.

And what about if the United States withdraws? Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is likely to attack the Kurds, which he sees as a threat to his homeland. (Though even there, the crystal ball is murky. As Joshua Landis pointed out on Twitter yesterday, the Kurds helped fight off Arab rebel militias, and Assad may decide he needs them as allies in post-war Syria.) Some combination of Assadists and Russians will then move in against the straggling rebel and ISIS remnants, the latter of which is still committing horrific atrocities but largely defeated and shut out of major population centers. Syria after that will be changed, tense, bloodstained, aggrieved. But it will be more stable, at least, than it was during the war, perhaps enabling the trickle of refugees returning home to become a gush. And even if that scenario proves too rosy, even if Turkey and Syria somehow end up skirmishing, what is America supposed to do? What justifies the expenditure of another dollar or soldier in a conflict as intractable as that? What net good do we accomplish by planting ourselves in front of a powerful NATO nation on the other side of the globe?

We’ve heard a lot this week about the capital we’re sacrificing by pulling out of Syria: in power, in allies, in something called “credibility” that hawks seem to think functions like Monopoly money. But what about those two resources I just mentioned: dollars and lives? Why do those get so little attention? The United States since 2001 has spent nearly $6 trillion on wars in the Middle East, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs. In Syria, that money has often gone towards gilded banana peels that we then promptly trip over, including two plans to arm rebels that ended up feeding weapons to jihadists and a $500 million program to train fighters that produced about five graduates before being shut down. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure crumbles. Why shifting money into domestic needs at times such as this is considered “populist” rather than just common sense, I will never understand.

Then there’s the toll in blood. American soldiers have been killed in Syria, have been put in harm’s way, all for a mission that is both unclear and undeclared. So stark is the contrast between the vague purpose of our wars and their real human losses that it’s become a paramount political issue. Don’t forget what J.D. Vance said to our own Rod Dreher back in 2016 about why working-class voters were swooning for Trump: “Unsurprisingly, southern, rural whites enlist in the military at a disproportionate rate. Can you imagine the humiliation these people feel at the successive failures of Bush/Obama foreign policy?” We can’t be sure how great a role our failed wars played in Trump’s election but they were certainly a factor. I’ll never call it “war weariness,” which has always seemed to me to contain a grain of condescension: just take a nap, dear, and you’ll be ready to nation-build again. But certainly we are fed up with a foreign policy elite that never accomplishes its missions yet whose appetite for military action seems only to grow.

That’s why the silliest thing anyone has written about Syria this week came on Wednesday in a Commentary column by Noah Rothman. Condemning Trump’s troop pullout, Rothman pronounced, “Political commentators and anti-interventionist ideologues will note that withdrawing America’s modest footprint from Syria is popular with the public. But what would you expect? Precisely no one in the political class is making a case for sustained and substantial American intervention in this conflict zone.” Ummm. Maybe I’m just high on the sweet, sweet appeasement, but I don’t think that’s the problem. Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush argued for intervention in Syria during the Republican presidential primaries; they were crushed. Hillary Clinton went hawkish on Assad; she lost. Their vanquisher, Donald Trump, promised instead to smash ISIS and then get out. You don’t have to like Trump (I don’t) to understand the frantic signal flare that his voters were trying to send up.

Yet on and on the elite freak-out goes, deaf to any message that contradicts its line. “Why didn’t Trump listen to the generals?!” they wail. Because we have a civilian executive, for one, not a military junta. But let’s re-ask that same question, only slightly expanded: “Why doesn’t Trump listen to the military men and women who have fought the wars of the past 17 years?” Were he to, he would find disdain for overseas nation building—55 percent of active duty troops oppose more of it, according to a Military Times poll from 2016. He would hear stories of disillusionment and confusion. He would read laments like that of Dan Grazier, who served in both Fallujah and Afghanistan: “Looking back after more than a decade, it is hard to convince even myself that my platoon helped achieve any lasting contribution in a strategic sense.”

Shouldn’t our poor track record in Afghanistan and Iraq inform our thinking in Syria and lead us to limit the mission? Absolutely not, according to the war pamphleteers, who insist we must blunt a Russia/Iran/Assad axis, which isn’t much of an axis, to begin with, and which amounts to taking sides in a Muslim sectarian struggle that isn’t any of our business. Also, we need to maintain that “credibility” with our allies—funny how that was never an issue when Trump was pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. And looming above it all, like Andross, is Vladimir Putin. Such a menace is his Italy-sized economy and osteoporotic aircraft carrier that we can’t ever withdraw from Syria, as we did from Vietnam and Iraq the first time around. We must stay put, as Winston Churchill would have intended, forever and ever, amen. I am glad Trump rejected this nonsense and hope he will continue to.

Matt Purple is the managing editor of The American Conservative.

Putin says West trying to ‘hold back’ powerful Russia

Source: AFP Published: 2018/12/20

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1132981.shtml

Sanctions connected to the perceived threat of growth

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President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said the West was threatened by an increasingly powerful Russia, as he promised further economic growth during an end-of-year press conference.

The annual event comes after months of increasing tensions abroad, from a stand-off with Ukraine to deteriorating ties with Washington.

Asked about Western sanctions against Russia, Putin said these were "connected with the growth of Russia's power."

"A powerful player appears who needs to be reckoned with. Until recently it was thought there was no longer such a country," he said from behind a large wooden desk to an audience of hundreds of journalists.

The president dismissed spy scandals - such as the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England - as invented to damage Russia's standing.

"If there hadn't been the Skripals, they would have thought up something else," he said.

He began the press conference, as usual, by reeling off economic growth figures.

"The main thing is that we need to get into a new economic league. We could very well take the fifth place in terms of the size of the economy. And I think we'll do that," he said.

Russia is currently ranked 12th in the world pecking order by the International Monetary Fund, which lists the US first, followed by China, Japan, Germany, and Britain.

Putin said the economy grew 1.7 percent over the first 10 months of the year, roughly in line with predictions, while unemployment was down. Full-year growth is estimated at 1.8 percent.

"After a long break, small growth in real incomes has nonetheless been recorded," he added.

During the wide-ranging question and answer session, Putin praised US President Donald Trump's decision to pull troops out of Syria but condemned his withdrawal from a Cold War arms agreement.

He warned of a "collapse of the international arms [control] system" following Washington's announcement it would drop the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement.

Earlier the president said Moscow would develop new missiles in response to the move.

Putin also addressed the recent escalation of tensions with Ukraine following a naval confrontation in the Kerch Strait off Crimea and Russia's arrest of several Ukrainian sailors.

He repeated Kremlin claims that Ukrainian actions in the strait were a "provocation" and aimed at boosting President Petro Poroshenko's chances in an unpredictable election next year.

The president began the tradition of such end-of-year press events in 2001, but with time they have evolved into marathon events. Since 2004, all December press conferences have surpassed three hours.

EL GOBIERNO DE MÉXICO DOBLÓ LAS MANOS ANTE TRUMP

Hoy Donald Trump mediante un tweet y la secretaria de Seguridad Nacional, Kirstjen Nilsen en una comparecencia en el Congreso de Estados Unidos, aseguraron que el gobierno de México se hará cargo de los centroamericanos que buscan asilo en Estados Unidos, en tanto se define su situación (que podría demorar hasta tres años); tanto de los que sean detenidos por ingresar de manera ilegal, como de aquellos que esperan en la frontera a que se les atienda para hacer su solicitud de asilo.

Sabiendo que este anuncio, estaban por hacerlo las autoridades estadounidenses, un día antes los secretarios de Gobernación, Olga Sánchez y de Relaciones Exteriores, Marcelo Ebrard anunciaron la “nueva política migratoria” del gobierno de México, que se basará en los lineamientos de lo aprobado en el Pacto Mundial sobre Migración, en Marrakech, Marruecos.

Así también, se había anunciado que Estados Unidos se comprometería a aportar recursos (se supone que créditos e inversión), hasta por 10 mil seiscientos millones de dólares para el desarrollo del Sur-sureste de México y el Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica (Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador).

Así, el gobierno de López Obrador finalmente aceptó hacerse cargo de los migrantes centroamericanos (los de las caravanas y los que ingresan al país de manera individual), sin que por el momento al menos, Washington aporte nada; ni un dólar, para las necesidades de esos miles de migrantes.

Recordemos que México deportó por tierra durante 2017 un total de 72,128 guatemaltecos, hondureños, salvadoreños y nicaragüenses[1]; 128,235 en 2016 y 158,789 en 2015.

Con la nueva política migratoria, en principio al menos, se les otorgará documentación a estos migrantes para que puedan ingresar al país, permanecer en él, residir y trabajar.

Para lograr esto, se tendrán que destinar recursos públicos para mantener a familias enteras, con niños que deben ir a la escuela y personas mayores que deberán tener atención en materia de salud; y no se sabe por cuánto tiempo, mientras se establecen y generan sus propios ingresos, mantenerlos en albergues, a través de donaciones de la sociedad civil y recursos económicos de los tres órdenes de gobierno.

Estamos hablando de un flujo de entre 150 mil y 200 mil migrantes por año. Eso si el flujo no aumenta, pues los centroamericanos pueden considerar que es mejor arriesgarse a pasar a vivir a México, mientras ven la forma de ingresar a Estados Unidos (como quiera que sea, estarán más cerca de su objetivo), lo que podría elevar la cifra a 500 mil, o hasta un millón de solicitantes de asilo en un año.

Como lo señalamos aquí en este blog, México iba a terminar aplicando una política de “fronteras abiertas”, pues por principios humanitarios, a los que se ha adherido México y por imposibilidad de controlar los flujos migratorios, nuestro país iba a acabar permitiendo la entrada de prácticamente cualquier persona que lo desee.

Los costos los tendrá que pagar la sociedad mexicana, ya que es un hecho que Estados Unidos no aceptará a más de uno o dos por ciento de los solicitantes de asilo, que entonces optarán por quedarse en México hasta encontrar la forma de pasar de manera ilegal; regresar a su país o permanecer en México indefinidamente.

En todo caso, todos los costos económicos, políticos y sociales de esta situación los asume el gobierno y la sociedad mexicanas; sin que Estados Unidos, principal destino de estos migrantes, asuma en los hechos ningún costo. Pero todo sea por “llevarnos bien con Trump”.

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[1] http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/mundo/aumenta-deportacion-de-migrantes-en-2018

White House Announces Full Withdrawal From Syria

Trump declares victory over ISIS, says that was the only reason to stay

Jason Ditz Posted on December 19, 2018

 https://news.antiwar.com/2018/12/19/white-house-announces-full-withdrawal-from-syria/

In a surprise move, President Trump has declared victory over ISIS in Syria, and the White House has confirmed that a complete withdrawal of US military forces from Syria has been ordered. Officials also say the State Department will be withdrawn in the next 24 hours.

This would see an estimated 2,000 US troops pulled from Syria, which comes after many months of Pentagon officials positioning the military presence as a very long-term one. No one seems to have anticipated this announcement.

In the immediate lead-up to the announcement, however, the Trump Administration has been telegraphing a post-war mindset a bit, with special envoy James Jeffrey confirming earlier this week that the US accepts Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is staying in office.

That’s a big shift after years of demanding regime change at the end of the war. Now, US officials are just insisting that no reconstruction aid will be provided unless the Assad government changes substantially.

The announcement is expected to start a lot of arguments, with a number of Congressional hawks already positioning themselves as vehemently opposed to the pullout. Hawks within the administration will likely oppose the plan as well, and the Pentagon seems to have planned to just stay in Syria permanently.

British Defense Minister Tobias Ellwood issued his own statement rejecting Trump’s announcement, saying he “strongly disagrees” with the assessment that ISIS is defeated. It is unclear if Britain intends to keep attacking Syria on their own.

The biggest impact of a US pullout is likely to be in Syrian Kurdistan, where Turkey is threatening an invasion, and the Pentagon has been warning that would be “unacceptable.” President Trump spoke to the Turkish president just a few days ago, and if a pullout was imminent then, they presumably would’ve discussed the matter and the implications. This may explain President Erdogan having the impression that Trump endorsed his invasion.

It’s not clear how long it will take for the US to get 2,000 troops out of Syria, and some military officials may drag their heels on the matter, hoping that they can talk the president out of ending the war. For now, however, there is a reason to hope that the American involvement in the war is about to be over.

Back to Realism: The Conservative Case for Palestine

Lost in all the hagiographic coverage of George H. W. Bush was one of his major accomplishments – a willingness to play hardball with Israel. It’s long past time to get back to that sort of conservatism.

by Maj. Danny Sjursen Posted on December 18, 2018

https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2018/12/17/back-to-realism-the-conservative-case-for-palestine/

This article is about the Israel/Palestine crisis – a veritable "third-rail" in American political discourse – it’s necessary to start with a few disclaimers. This author is not anti-Semitic and believes the Israeli state has a right to exist. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s address the controversial caveat: Palestinians, for moral and strategic reasons, also deserve state sovereignty and equivalent civil rights. And, believe it or not, that should be the stated position of all real (small c) conservatives.

The reasons are simple – the United States’ one-sided, pro-Israel stance, along with its massive funding of the Israeli military, continue to sully America’s reputation in the Muslim and Arab world. This (accurate) perception of inequity and hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. breeds more "terrorists" than America’s military can kill and directly endangers the homeland. Furthermore, the inextricable linkage between this administration as well as a variety of US military and intelligence agencies with the far right-wing leaders of the current Israeli government risks allowing Prime Minister Netanyahu to drag Washington into more regional wars America neither needs nor can win. It is, to be frank, the ultimate "wag-the-dog" scenario – and the two culprits are Israel and their cynical friend Saudi Arabia.

To be clear, there are many ethical, legal, and moral arguments in favor of reigning in the Israelis and protecting the rights of Palestinians. After all, since the spring, 175 (almost all unarmed) Palestinians have been shot to death along the Gaza Strip fence line, 5,884 others have been wounded by live ammunition, and 94 of these have had a limb amputated. A staggering 948 of those wounded were minors. The NGO Doctors without Borders recently announced that Gaza’s health care system is now overwhelmed with the infusion of wounded. Meanwhile, in an obvious case of the typically lopsided casualty rates in this conflict, only one Israeli soldier has been killed and six wounded. That should come as no surprise when the majority of protesters are armed only with rocks. As always, Israeli military actions stretch the limits of the international legal requirement for proportionality in warfare. Still, for the sake of this article, let us leave these humanitarian concerns aside and focus on what’s strategic and smart for US foreign policy.

Here are the inconvenient facts: so long as Israel maintains two sets of political and civil rights for Jews and Muslims in the occupied Palestinian territories (those seized after the 1967 Six Day War), denies Palestinian national sovereignty, continues to build illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, and maintains a crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, well, then, there will continue to be regular protests, an ongoing insurgency, and countless Palestinian deaths. Such asymmetrical killings – especially of civilians – will only feed the beast of conflict in a vicious cycle that is now entering its eighth decade. Furthermore, so long as the US continues to cover for Israel at the United Nations and regularly doles out $3 billion annually in no-strings-attached military aid to the IDF, the vast majority of global Muslims will continue to detest America and Americans. Some, rather smaller, a proportion of these disgruntled masses will then inevitably pick up a rifle or don a suicide vest en route to kill US troops abroad or American civilians in the homeland. These are the facts, and they are indisputable.

I’ve lived this reality – patrolling the streets of Baghdad and the mud paths of Kandahar. Like a loyal, idealistic young officer should, I drank loads of tea and chatted up hundreds if not thousands of locals. Why do they [the "terrorists" or insurgents] hate us, I’d ask? The most common answer: because you’re here, occupying this country. Still, a close second was this: because you Americans side with Israel and deny Palestinian rights! See, it may seem illogical to the distant and apathetic American brain, but to the average Arab or Muslim I met, Israel and the US were inextricably linked and complicit in one another’s crimes.

Now, such an admission is unpopular and risks savage attacks from the domestic Israel Lobby, but this author is far from the only analyst to recognize its truth. Retired General, and former CIA chief, David Petraeus – in so many ways my polar political opposite – saw it too. And, when he spoke up, he too was heavily criticized. Still, Petraeus, as a commander of American soldiers, couldn’t help but recognize the threat that U.S.-Israel policy posed for his troops, testifying to Congress that:

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the [Middle East]. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region]. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.

Though undoubtedly correct, even this modest hint that Israeli actions endangered US soldiers and regional interest earned "King David" a rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League and other Israel lobbyists.

While this all seems to have unstoppable inertia to it – what with President Trump praising Netanyahu’s every action and controversially relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem – it’s important to remember that there was a time, not so long ago when many conservatives saw Israeli aggression as a serious problem. We just buried one such figure: George H. W. Bush, the last president from the "Greatest Generation," and a Republican from a bygone age. Bush wasn’t perfect, despite the recent bipartisan hagiographic media portrayals. He was likely complicit in the Iran-Contra cover-up, guilty of race-baiting in the 1988 election campaign (see the Willie Horton ad), and was responsible for many unnecessary deaths in both Panama and Iraq (see the “Highway of Death”). That aside, he should be applauded on other issues. He ushered in a peaceful end to the Cold War, and – lest we forget – he was right, and tough, on Israel!

Bush the elder, despite being a lifelong Republican, truly was the last president to be firm with Israel. He was a believer in the (albeit flawed) two-state solution and felt Palestinians deserved at least a modicum of rights – a rare trait in an American president. He pushed for the Madrid Peace Conference, which ultimately led to the Oslo Process – the last serious movement towards peace in the region. And, when then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wouldn’t halt the illegal settlement of Jews in the occupied West Bank, Bush withheld $10 billion in loan guarantees. Bush took his case to the public, portraying himself as "one lonely little guy" fighting the mighty Israel Lobby. And he was. Eventually, Shamir and a pro-Israel Congress backed down.

The Israeli right never forgave Mr. Bush or his advisors. Indeed, Bush’s trusted Secretary of State – and best friend – Jim Baker became a lightning rod for Israeli angst during and after Bush 41’s term, a result of his hardline negotiations with Shamir. As recently as 2015, a conservative talk-show host, Mark Levin concluded, after Baker criticized Netanyahu, that "Jim Baker, much like Barack Obama, has always had a hate for Israel." These days, such exaggeration often follows any critique of Israeli policy. Baker should wear this as a badge of honor, just as his former boss did.

Matters today are even direr in the region. Lopsided support for Israel not only sullies America’s reputation in the Mideast and creates more jihadis – but it also risks pulling US foreign policy in dangerous directions. Israel – working hand-in-hand through a cynical alliance with Saudi Arabia – would like nothing more than to drive the US towards war with Iran. Netanyahu rails on and on about Iran’s (now dormant) nuclear weapons program, but never mentions that his country developed nukes in contravention of international law some five decades ago. To this day, a sardonic Israeli government refuses to either confirm or deny the existence of such a program – even though everyone knows they have these weapons – something Washington would accept from no other party. Israel also wants a substantial, long-term US military presence in Syria to check Iranian aspirations, counting on American troops to fight and die for Israeli interests. Few in Washington stop to ask whether Israeli concerns should be America’s or if the partnership between Trump and Netanyahu actually benefits the United States. It often doesn’t.

None of this means the US should coddle terrorists or abandon the right of Israeli to exist in a secure environment; nor does it mean accepting an Iranian nuclear weapons program. It is about returning to Jim Baker-style realism, a balance-of-power approach, and hewing more closely to vital national interests in the region. It is about recognizing the limits of US military power and securing the homeland at a sustainable cost whilst not unnecessarily inflaming Islamist anger.

American politicians and policymakers need to return not just to George H.W. Bush’s celebrated civility, but also to his core, consistent, conservative and (more) balanced approach to Israel/Palestine. That the neocon/neolib consensus running the two major parties, or the administration of Donald Trump, will do so remains highly unlikely. But, should they work up the courage and reframe U.S.-Israeli relations – now that would be a proper tribute to the deceased president.

Major Danny Sjursen, an Antiwar.com regular, is a US Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. He lives with his wife and four sons in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his new podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vet Chris ‘Henri’ Henrikson.