What Will Congress Do About Annexation?

Historically, AIPAC has been aligned with the Democratic establishment-- and when progressive elements have rebelled and demanded even-handed policies towards Palestine, AIPAC has been able to successfully full smear campaigns-- unrelated to Israel-- against them and replace them with more malleable members of Congress. AIPAC, for example, destroyed the political careers of both Earl Hilliard (D-AL) and Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). Fear of AIPAC has kept Democrats in line. On Friday, The Forward wondered aloud if that is now over: AIPAC's Biggest Democratic Allies Break Ranks To Publicly Oppose Israeli Annexation.

It's worth mentioning that not all of AIPAC's biggest allies have broken ranks. Netanyahu's #1 ally in the House, Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee-- in the midst of a red-hot primary into which AIPAC is funneling over a million dollars for Engel-- has been silent. "Top congressional Democrats," wrote Aiden Pink, "have issued multiple public statements Thursday and Friday expressing their opposition to Israel’s plan to annex part of the West Bank. The pro-Israel organization AIPAC has publicly expressed its opposition to such statements, but some of the signatories include the lobby’s most prominent and longstanding Democratic allies."

Lockstep AIPAC shills Chuck Schumer, Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin released a joint statement opposing annexation:

As strong and dedicated supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship, we are compelled to express opposition to the proposed unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank.

A sustainable peace deal that ensures the long-term security of Israel and self-determination for Palestinians must be negotiated directly between the two parties. Real diplomacy via direct negotiations, while an arduous road, is the only path for a durable peace. For that reason it has consistently been the long-standing, bipartisan policy in Congress to oppose unilateral action by either side. Unilateral annexation runs counter to those longstanding policies and could undermine regional stability and broader US national security interests in the region.

We are committed to sustaining a US-Israel relationship based on shared democratic values and our important security assistance partnership. We are also committed to continuing to engage Israelis and Palestinians to find ways to live together with peace, freedom, security and dignity and achieve a two-state solution.

Netanyahu has been threatening to unilaterally begin the process of proclaiming sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in two weeks. Trump and Pompeo are encouraging him. 115 House Democrats sent their own letter, authored by Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Ted Deutch (D-FL) and David Price (R-NC)-- all mayor Israel supporters-- to Netanyahu, Gantz and Ashkenazi last week.

We write as American lawmakers who are long-time supporters, based on our shared democratic values and strategic interests, of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship. We firmly believe in, and advocate for, a strong and secure Jewish and democratic State of Israel, a state able to build upon current peace treaties and expand cooperation with regional players and the international community. We have consistently endorsed the pursuit of a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians resulting in two states for two peoples and a brighter future for the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. In that vein, we write today to express our deep concern that the push for unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank after July 1st will make these goals harder to achieve.

Longstanding, bipartisan U.S. foreign policy supports direct negotiations to achieve a viable two-state solution that addresses the aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians, and their desire for long-term security and a just, sustainable peace. This position was twice reconfirmed by the U.S. House of Representatives last year. Our fear is that unilateral actions, taken by either side, will push the parties further from negotiations and the possibility of a final, negotiated agreement.

We remain steadfast in our belief that pursuing two states for two peoples is essential to ensuring a secure, Jewish, democratic Israel able to live side-by-side, in peace and mutual recognition, with an independent, viable, de-militarized Palestinian state.

Unilateral annexation would likely jeopardize Israel’s significant progress on normalization with Arab states at a time when closer cooperation can contribute to countering shared threats.  Unilateral annexation risks insecurity in Jordan, with serious ancillary risks to Israel. Finally, unilateral annexation could create serious problems for Israel with its European friends and other partners around the world. We do not see how any of these acute risks serve the long-term interest of a strong, secure Israel.

As committed partners in supporting and protecting the special U.S.-Israel relationship, we express our deep concern with the stated intention to move ahead with any unilateral annexation of West Bank territory, and we urge your government to reconsider plans to do so.

Pink wrote that "The list of 115 signatories 'runs the gamut from J Street Democrats to AIPAC Democrats,' a Democratic congressional source told Jewish Insider. Other members of Congress are reportedly expected to sign on before the letter is released to the public next week. The large number of AIPAC allies is surprising considering the lobby’s opposition to the letter. 'We have not taken a position on annexation,' an AIPAC spokesperson told Haaretz. 'However, we do not support this letter. It publicly criticizes Israel for potentially deciding upon a policy that would only be adopted with the approval of the U.S. government, it fails to reaffirm America’s full commitment to Israel’s security assistance, and it focuses only on what it sees as inappropriate Israeli behavior, while failing to note that Palestinian leaders have been unwilling to return to the negotiating table for nearly a decade.'"

A similar letter signed by 19 Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, was released two weeks ago. Individual Democratic senators, like Kamala Harris, have also written personal letters of their own to Netanyahu expressing their views.

“As the United States has repeatedly made clear, unilateral moves by either party, such as annexation, put a negotiated peace further out of reach,” wrote Harris, who is considered a leading contender for the Democratic vice presidential nomination. “Both Israel and the Palestinians must avoid unilateral moves in order to preserve prospects for an eventual peace.”

And how does Biden feel about annexation? He seems opposed, at least tepidly. One of his foreign policy advisors, Nicholas Burns-- an under secretary of state under George W. Bush-- told an Israeli foreign policy magazine that annexation "would greatly harm Israel, internationally and among its strongest supporters" and that annexation "is the one issue which could most harm the U.S.-Israel relationship."

Trump's foreign policy has been disjointed and chaotic... often influenced by bad actors with skin in the game happy to offer the notoriously corrupt Trump what amounted to bribes. Sunday night former national security advisor (#3), John Bolton, shared his thoughts about the disaster that is Trump with Martha Raddatz, just hours after announcing that he plans to vote for Joe Biden in November.

Remember When Señor Trumpanzee Loved "His" Generals?

I think Trump finally figured out that none of the generals love him and that none would fit into his schemes. It appears that Michael Flynn testified against him and his crooked offspring. And he wound up firing James Mattis, John Kelly and H.R. McMaster after dragging each one of them through the mud and tarnishing their careers with their proximity to his stench. They're all gone now-- replaced by an ambitious Nazi with bad hair who wormed and flattered his way into Trump's good graces and now pretty much sets all U.S. policy emanating from the White House.

No more "moderate" adult generals with steady hands on the till. "I see my generals-- generals are going to keep us so safe. These are central casting-- if I'm doing a movie, I pick you, general." Now the clown has faced the reality that there are some generals who don't get sucked into treason by the jingling of a little cash and that "Mad Dog" Mattis isn't a mad dog the way Trump expected him to be.

Yesterday, the L.A. Times published an interview with John Kelly defending his time at the White House by "arguing that [his tenure at the White House] is best measured by what the president did not do when Kelly was at his side." Kelly was referring to Trump's desire to please Putin by pulling out of NATO and by with withdrawing from Afghanistan. Commenting on the two kidnapped Guatemalan children who died in Trump's custody, Kelly seemed to separate himself from Trump, while blaming the whole family separation policy. I can imagine Trump didn't like this: "Illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly, are not bad people. I have nothing but compassion for them, the young kids." Trump's official response to the same question had Miller's paw prints all over them:

Kelly, who doesn't leave Trump's employ until later in the week, seemed to castigate him by reminding him that "If you want to stop illegal immigration, stop US demand for drugs, and expand economic opportunity [in Central America]." Remember, last week Trump had a different idea that he tweeted, threatening to cut off all aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador if they don't stop the refugees from leaving their countries.

Meanwhile we have Marco Rubio tisk-tisking that "It makes abundantly clear that we are headed toward a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances and empower our adversaries." Has he retired from the Senate to become an observer and casual commenter on current events? As far as I know, he's still a united States Senator. Unfortunately, his Trump adhesion score is 94%. Maybe if it were 74 or 64% Trump would notice when he says something.

Another big name retired General, Stanley McChrystal (4 stars) went after Trump on This Week yesterday in no uncertain terms, characterizing him as an immoral liar, a sentiment that is shared by most Americans but is which is pretty heavy to say about a commander-in-chief. When Martha Raddatz asked him if he thinks Trump is a liar he said, "I don’t think he tells the truth."

“Is Trump immoral, in your view?” Raddatz asked.

“I think he is,” he said.

McChrystal said he couldn't tell any of Trump's supporters "that they are wrong," but added, "What I would ask every American to do is... stand in front of that mirror and say, 'What are we about? Am I really willing to throw away or ignore some of the things that people do that are-- are pretty unacceptable normally just because they accomplish certain other things that we might like?'



"If we want to be governed by someone we wouldn't do a business deal with because their-- their background is so shady, if we're willing to do that, then that's in conflict with who I think we are. And so I think it's necessary at those times to take a stand."

...McChrystal, who recently published a book on leadership styles throughout history called, Leaders: Myth and Reality, criticized Trump for not embodying effective leadership.

“The military talks about would they come for you. And what that means is if you're put into a difficult military situation, would that leader sacrifice himself, put himself and others at risk to come for you? I have to believe that the people I'm working for would do that, whether we disagree on a lot of other things. I'm not convinced from the behavior that I've seen that that's the case here,” said McChrystal.



He also cautioned anyone who might fill the vacancy left by Defense Secretary James Mattis’ departure, to consider if their values sufficiently align with those of the president.

"I think maybe it causes the American people to take pause and say, wait a minute, if we have someone who is as selfless and as committed as Jim Mattis resign his position, walking away from all the responsibility he feels for every service member in our forces and he does so in a public way like that, we ought to stop and say, 'OK, why did he do it?,'" McChrystal said on This Week.

“I would ask [potential candidates] to look in the mirror and ask them if they can get comfortable enough with President Trump's approach to governance, how he conducts himself with his values and with his worldview to be truly loyal to him as a commander in chief and going forward,” McChrystal said. “If there's too much of a disconnect then I would tell him I think it’s-- it would be a bad foundation upon which to try to build a successful partnership at that job.”

McChrystal said he would not take a job in the Trump administration if he were asked.

"I think it's important for me to work for people who I think are basically honest, who tell the truth as best they know it," he said. "I'm very tolerant of people who make mistakes because I make so many of them-- and I've been around leaders who've made mistakes ... but through all of them, I almost never saw people trying to get it wrong. And I almost never saw people who were openly disingenuous on things."

He also disagreed with Trump’s approach to his visit to Iraq last week to address troops, saying the president was wrong to politicize a usually non-political occasion. In addition to talking extensively about domestic political issues in his speech to troops, Trump autographed troops' “Make America Great Again” hats. The president said in a tweet that the hats were not provided by the White House.

McChrystal said he understood why many young troops would want signed memorabilia from the president, comparing it to meeting a celebrity, but also warned that it “violated the spirit” of the military code and that the military’s apolitical status should be preserved.

“If we encourage young military members to be Republicans or Democrats or anything particular, you start to create schisms in an infantry platoon,” McChrystal told Raddatz on This Week.

“I never knew who was a Democrat or Republican and even when we were generals, when you got in a room, you never talked about politics because it was just considered bad form," he said. "I think if we allow it or encourage it, I think we are going to create something that could be a slippery slope.”

McChrystal also disagreed with Trump's announcement to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, warning it would lead to "greater instability" in the Middle East.

"What difference does it make-- does it really make, if those 2,000 U.S. forces leave?" Raddatz asked.

“If you pull American influence out, you're likely to have greater instability and of course it'll be much more difficult for the United States to try to push events in any direction. There is an argument that says we just pull up our stuff, go home, let the region run itself. That has not done well for the last 50 or 60 years,” McChrystal said.

In announcing the withdrawal from Syria earlier this month, Trump touted victory over the Islamic State, or ISIS, there, declaring, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria.”

McChrystal disagreed, citing the continued threat of ISIS’ ideology.

“I don't believe ISIS is defeated,” McChrystal said. “I think ISIS is as much an idea as it is a number of ISIS fighters. There's a lot of intelligence that says there are actually more ISIS fighters around the world now than there were a couple of years ago.”

ABC News has also reported that Trump plans to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan by half, about 7,000 troops. In a statement to Bloomberg Friday, Garrett Marquis, a spokesperson for the National Security Council said Trump "has not made a determination to" to withdraw troops from Afghanistan or "directed the Department of Defense to begin the process of withdrawing" troops. Marquis did not respond when ABC News requested further comment.

"Do you see that as a problem?" Raddatz asked McChrystal.

“I think the great mistake in the president's leaked guidance is that just when we were starting to sit down with the Taliban, just we were starting to begin negotiations, he basically traded away the biggest leverage point we have. If you tell the Taliban that we are absolutely leaving on a date... their incentives to try to cut a deal dropped dramatically,” McChrystal said.

McChrystal added that the decision could have a lasting impact on the trust in the alliance between the United States and the democratically-elected Afghan government it supports.

“Of course I was worried about the confidence of the Afghan people because at the end of the day, that's what determines who wins in Afghanistan,” McChrystal said. “And I think we probably rocked them-- we rocked them in their belief that we are allies that can be counted on.”

At last we have the design for an appropriate memorial to the aspirations of the Bush regime, courtesy of the Washington Post's Tom Toles

Tom Toles, in Sunday's Washington Post (click to enlarge)

In case you missed it, or didn't catch the exact exchange, here is Vice President "Big Dick" Cheney, in an interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz last Wednesday in Oman, showing that he knows even less about Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War than he seems to know about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq:

MARTHA RADDATZ: Two-thirds of Americans say [the war in Iraq] is not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.

BIG DICK: So?

MARTHA RADDATZ: So -- you don't care what the American people think?

BIG DICK: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succeeded if he hadn't had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there. And this President has been very courageous, very consistent, very determined to continue down the course we were on and to achieve our objective. And that's victory in Iraq, that's the establishment of a democracy where there's never been a democracy, it's the establishment of a regime that respects the rights and liberties of their people, as an ally for the United States in the war against terror, and as a positive force for change in the Middle East. That's a huge accomplishment.

[from the transcript released by the Office of the Vice President]

Washingtonpost.com's Dan Froomkin has some fall-out from that interview in his column today, "Cheney's Unforgivable Egotism," which leads off with a suitably stinging response to Big Dick's even more astonishing declaration in another interview with Martha Raddatz--yesterday in Ankara, Turkey--responding to her request for "your thoughts" on "the milestone today of 4,000 dead in Iraq":

"The President carries the biggest burden, obviously; he's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans."

Here's Dan's take:

That President Bush and Vice President Cheney live in a bubble of flattery and delusion, largely sheltered from the people who are actually suffering from the consequences of their actions, is not exactly news.

But perhaps nothing has crystallized their detachment and self-involvement so vividly as Cheney's assertion yesterday that when it comes to the war in Iraq, it is Bush -- not the soldiers and Marines who fight and die, or their families -- who is bearing the biggest burden.

And in an era where failing to support the troops is the ultimate political sin, Cheney's breezy dismissal of their sacrifice -- heck, they're volunteers, and dying goes with the territory -- was jaw-dropping even by the vice president's own tone-deaf standards.

Does Cheney really believe that Bush's burden is so great? The president tells people he's sleeping just fine, thank you, and in public appearances appears upbeat beyond all reason.

Or does Cheney simply have no idea what it means to go to war? He and Bush, after all, famously avoided putting themselves in the line of fire when it was their time.

Or are they just so wrapped up in themselves they can't see how ridiculous it is to even suggest such a thing?