America and the Cost of Abandoning Allies

 

Kurds in Iraq, Turkey and Syria have been 

staunch allies of the US and then we abandon them

Wars rarely begin where we think they do. They begin years earlier—in promises made, in warnings ignored, and in allies encouraged to stand up only to discover they are standing alone.

As the war with Iran unfolds, my hope—however thin—is that it may finally begin to correct a troubling pattern in American foreign policy. For decades the United States has urged allies and partners to take risks alongside us, only to hesitate when confronting the regimes that threaten them.

Again and again the result has been the same: unfinished confrontations and abandoned partners.

Since 1979 Iran’s revolutionary government has funded militant groups across the Middle East and beyond. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis operate with Iranian support. For more than three decades Tehran has pursued nuclear capability while destabilizing the region through proxy warfare. For much of that time the world has largely tolerated these actions.

But Iran is only part of a larger pattern.

In 1991, at the end of the First Gulf War, the United States encouraged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. Kurdish forces in the north and Shiite rebels in the south answered that call. When Saddam’s regime retaliated with overwhelming force, the United States chose not to intervene. The result was catastrophic. Tens of thousands were killed and more than a million Kurds fled toward the Turkish border in one of the largest refugee crises of the war’s aftermath.

Three years later, in 1994, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing Ukraine’s borders in exchange for Ukraine giving up the nuclear weapons it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was an extraordinary act of trust. Yet when Russia seized Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, the response from the West was limited and cautious. The guarantees proved weaker than the promises.

During the Iraq War, beginning in 2003, American forces faced devastating roadside bombs and shaped-charge explosives capable of penetrating armored vehicles. Many of these weapons were traced to Iranian supply networks. Hundreds of American soldiers were killed by devices that crossed the Iraqi border from Iran, yet the United States never directly confronted the Iranian government responsible for enabling those attacks.

When I served in Iraq in 2009 with 28th Combat Aviation Brigade, we flew troops to the Iran-Iraq border who were stopping smuggling where they could, but there was no retaliation against Iran.

The pattern repeated itself again during the war against ISIS. Beginning in 2015, Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria became some of the most effective partners the United States had on the ground. They fought and died alongside American forces to dismantle the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate. But in 2018 the United States withdrew support from Kurdish positions in northern Syria, leaving them exposed to Turkish military operations.

The pattern appeared again in Afghanistan. For two decades, beginning in 2001, Afghan soldiers, interpreters, and local allies worked alongside American forces against the Taliban. Thousands died fighting a common enemy. Yet when the United States withdrew in 2021, the Afghan government collapsed with stunning speed. Many Afghans who had worked closely with American forces were left scrambling to escape Taliban reprisals. Some were evacuated in dramatic scenes at Kabul’s airport, but many others were left behind. For those who had trusted American promises, the end of the war felt was abandonment.

Once again, allies who had taken risks alongside the United States were left vulnerable.

Meanwhile Iran has strengthened its partnership with Russia, supplying drones that have been used extensively against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Those weapons have become one of the clearest links between Tehran’s regional ambitions and Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

If the facilities producing those drones have now been destroyed, it would represent more than a tactical success. It would be one small step toward confronting a network of aggression that stretches from Tehran to Moscow.

None of this means war should ever be welcomed lightly. Those of us who have served in the Middle East know too well the cost, uncertainty, and unintended consequences that follow military conflict.

But history also teaches the cost of hesitation.

When aggressors believe the West will protest but not act, they push further.

If this conflict weakens Iran’s ability to fund terror, slows Russia’s war against Ukraine, and gives the people of Iran even a small opening against their oppressive regime, it may begin to repair a long record of half-measures and abandoned allies.

That hope may be thin.

But after decades of watching aggressors test the limits of Western resolve, it is still worth holding.

When the Invader Intends Only Evil: War is Right

Sam Harris, noted Atheist, Meditation Guru

In the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Jewish atheist meditation guru Sam Harris became one of my rabbis.  In the midst of  tragedy, he spoke calmly and sensibly about the situation in Israel and for Jews in the rest of the world.  

The sexual violence and murder of the Hamas attack was followed by worldwide support for the attackers: and complete silence by women's rights groups. The progressive left, especially on college campuses, defended and exalted Hamas.  Black Lives Matter Chicago used a hang glider like those used by Hamas as a symbol of freedom at a rally days after the attack.

In that moment, Sam Harris said the world could choose between Jihad and civilization. We cannot have both.  As long as Hamas, Boko Haram, ISIS, The Iranian regime, the Houthis and Hezbollah exist, civilization is at risk.  

The proper response to Jihadi terror is war.  

In the past few weeks I have spoken to many people who believe war is always wrong. 

I believe they are wrong.  War is the right response implacable evil.  

War against the Nazis and the Death Cult of Imperial Japan was right. War against Jihad until they have no ability to rape and slaughter is right. 

Right now, Israel is the only nation to make the affirmative choice to fight against armies that have vowed in their founding documents to destroy Israel and kill Jews.  If the Jihadis win, the rest of the civilized world is their eventual target.   

Hamas has lost most of its fighters, but refuses to negotiate, preferring death, especially the death of Gazans other than themselves.  The Houthis attack ships to  close the Red Sea to world trade. Iran threatens to build and use a nuclear weapon.  Hezbollah planned another rape and slaughter attack on Israel but was thwarted recently when Israel killed and maimed thousands of Hezbollah leaders in a series of sabotage attacks.   

For those who do not know what real evil sounds like, Sam Harris posted a transcript of a Hamas murderer bragging about the ten Israelis he killed.

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Another war of necessity against an evil foe who intends destruction of their nation is The War in Ukraine.  Russia invaded Ukraine to carry out a program of Imperial expansion by Vladimir Putin.  

The majority of Americans support Ukraine seeing it as the front line of  a fight against Russian expansion in Europe.  I have supported the Ukrainians in every way I can since the beginning of the invasion.  

In the strategic sense, Ukraine is defending America as it defends itself.  Russia has lost a million soldiers killed and wounded since the war began.  We have sent only weapons to Ukraine. No American soldiers are fighting and dying in Ukraine, only Ukrainians defend their homeland.

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In both wars, if the invaders stop fighting, the wars will end.  If either Israel or Ukraine stops fighting, their nations will cease to exist and their people will be enslaved or killed. 

Every person I spoke to who is against these wars and against all wars said, "Why don't they negotiate?'

Which only makes clear they know nothing of negotiation.  To make a deal, both sides have to have something they will compromise on.

Jihadi terrorists want the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews.  

The ground for compromise is?????

Putin believes Ukraine is not a nation and that he, as ruler of Russia, is the rightful ruler of Ukraine.

The ground for compromise is?????

War, in those circumstances, is right. 

Ukraine is My Country--Zelenskyy Showed Me Why

 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the 

Bad Ass Ukrainian Army 

In 1787, Benjamin Franklin urged his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to rally behind the new plan of government they had written. 

“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them,” he said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”

It is time for me to admit my ambivalence toward Ukraine. Hostility would be more accurate.  My grandparents escaped what is now Ukraine in 1900. Then it was part of Tsarist Russia. They were born in Odessa. The pogroms that killed a million Jews before and after their escape were carried out by the Tsar's army with willing help from local people.  

Neither my father, nor my grandmother (who lived to be 100) nor any of the my father's extended family of five brothers and their wives and families ever mentioned Ukraine or Russia. That was the "Old Country" if mentioned at all.  The one time my grandfather returned to Odessa led to the worst year of his life. The story is here.

In my barely Jewish childhood, I knew the Holocaust happened, but knew almost nothing about it.  I lived in Germany for three years in the 1970s and never visited a death camp or memorial or museum. In fact, it was 2017 before I visited my first Holocaust site: Auschwitz.  

After Trump was elected and made a Nazi-website host his chief of staff, I suddenly became interested in the Holocaust and where my grandparents escaped from.  The following year, 2017, I rode from Belgrade to Lviv, Ukraine. I had read a lot about the Holocaust in the previous year.  The ride began in Belgrade, where a century of Jew hating by Nazis, Soviets and the disintegration of Yugoslavia had wiped out a Jewish community that had been vibrant in the 19th Century.  

Then I rode to Auschwitz, the worst single site of the Holocaust. I continued to Lviv where the Jews were dispossessed, raped, and murdered by their neighbors.  Auschwitz and Lviv were the worst sites of the Holocaust in their own tragic ways.  

But in March of 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected President of Ukraine in a landslide repudiation of Victor Poroshenko.  The country I had looked at only through the lens of its bad history, looked very different.  Zelenskyy, a Jew, won with 73% of the vote.  He was asking for weapons to fight the Russian invasion of 2014 that continued in the eastern regions of Ukraine.  

Then the Jewish President of Ukraine stood up to Putin's Puppet in the White House!  Our mobster President tried to trade missiles for help with his own re-election and Zelenskyy wouldn't play.  Trump was impeached, but not convicted--that would have required Republican senators with spines.  

Then on February 24 Putin invaded Ukraine.  The experts gave Ukraine a week.  They offered Zelenskyy a way out.  Zelenskyy said, "I don't need a ride, I need ammo." Ukrainian Marines were told to surrender or die by the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.  They answered, "Russian Warship! Go Fuck Yourself!" 

In March I started volunteering with Ukrainians making medical kits for Ukrainian soldiers. Ukraine is now the center of the fight to maintain democracy in the world.  Russia and China are ruled dictators. Turkey and Hungary, both members of NATO are ruled by authoritarians who will be full on dictators soon. 

In the case of Hungary, Republicans cheer President Viktor Orban to the rafters when he talks about the Great Replacement Theory to justify his racism, and their racism.  The most vile Christian-labelled tyrant worshippers like Tucker Carlson, Eric Metaxas and Rod Dreher see Hungary and Russia as the real Christian west.  Which is true if the Crusades, the Inquisition and the wars of religion are your idea of true Christianity.

Ukraine suffered nearly a century of Soviet oppression. In the middle of Soviet horror, Ukraine was conquered by the Nazis.  After the Soviet Union collapsed,  Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom guaranteed the borders of Ukraine.  

With all of that, Ukraine is now the front line of democracy. Ukraine is fighting for all of the free world right now.  In every government and every organization Personnel is Policy.  Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a brave man leading a free nation in a fight against tyranny.  

My previous view of Ukraine was of a nation oppressed and conquered. As a free nation, Ukraine is a light to the world.  

And of all nations in the world, Israel should be offering whole-hearted support to Ukraine, and yet they are not. A Jewish state could and should do a lot more to help a Jewish head of state under attack by one of the worst tyrants in the world.

Today is Ukraine Independence Day, and Six Months Since the Start of the Russian Invasion

 

Today is the 31st anniversary of Ukraine's Independence, the day it broke free of the Soviet Union and became an independent nation.  

Sadly, it is also the 6-month anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine--a vile and illegal and unprovoked attack.  Russia was one of the countries, along with the U.S. and the U.K. who guaranteed Ukraine's national borders and security in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal. The agreement was the Budapest Memorandum, singed in 1994.

Since 2014, Russia has broken its word, broken the agreement, and should not just be sanctioned but be defeated by the U.S., the U.K. and the United Nations.  The U.N. charter provides for taking action against member countries who invade other countries.  

I know the dangers of escalation, but I also know the dangers of allowing a ruthless bully like Vladimir Putin to act with impunity.  

The countries who guaranteed Ukraine's borders should join the fight and smash Russian forces in Ukraine and sink Russia's Black Sea fleet: all of it.  

I will continue to do what I can as a volunteer, but my hope for Ukraine is full restoration of its territory along with utter and ignominious defeat for Russia.  

Making Jokes While Packing Medical Supplies for Ukraine

 

Four days last week, I was working in a warehouse in New Jersey, part of a team of #RazomforUkraine volunteers assembling Individual First Aid Kits (IFAKs). In total we packed more than 8,000 IFAKs last week for shipment to Ukraine during the week. We work hard filling the small packs with medical supplies, but we also have fun while we work.

On Wednesday last week, I was refilling boxes with a dozen different kinds of medical supplies while ten people assembled IFAKs.  A new volunteer noticed me grabbing boxes of supplies from different places and said, "Do you have x-ray vision or something?  How do you know what is in all these boxes?"  

I laughed and said I was there enough to know where everything is.  Which led to a the question, "What superpower would you want?  Pick one."

We then got into a discussion of the social downside of having super powers: other people get envious; you lose friends; your family starts to wonder why you are so special....

On Friday at the end of the day we were setting up three lines for assembling IFAKs.  As we lined up the supplies and boxes on the pallets, we started talking about the lines competing about who is fastest.  I was telling one of the guys that if this were the Army, the lines would definitely compete with each other and start insulting each other--saying their line was the best.  We started making up things the lines would say to each other.

On Saturday, one of the volunteers who I have worked with for weeks saw me opening boxes of cloth tape and asked if I was qualified for that job.  I told him that in the 1970s when the Army first got Photocopiers, I had to attend a three-hour class to be a qualified photocopier operator.  Once I had done that, I was definitely qualified to open rolls of tape.

Each day I volunteer, I leave the warehouse tired and happy to be part of doing to help Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invaders.  And most days, I am smiling about how much fun it is to be part of a team with a mission doing good.