...and left you with Hezbollah still slinging rockets at you.

For a start, we don't live with, next to, or on top of the people who want to sling rockets at us. Also, we're not trying to annex the land of the people who want to sling rockets at us. Gives us a little more leeway on what we can pull off.

Yeah, I think I have a response to that:

Killing noncombatants in an occupied territory over which you exercise effective control over all its borders, and doing so without any resistance being mounted to that killing as you did in your recent Gaza campaign, is nowhere near in the same league as what the US is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. In those two wars the US is at least trying to fight an organized militant force.

I don't have a lot of interest in being considered an honorary Israeli.

The purpose of American foreign policy is to serve American interests. If those conflict with the interests of other governments, I'm all for persuasion if I think it will work. If not, other tools are available to American administrations with the nerve to use them.

I can't think of a good afterwit, mostly because when I juxtapose Israeli aggression and US aggression over the same time period, it's hard to see much difference. Furthermore, the US has seemingly been complicit in these cases of Israeli aggression.

US rhetoric condemning Israeli actions is quite vacuous. We shouldn't even try to take the moral high ground. Instead, we should act on our stated position and in our self interest:
Demand pre-1967 borders. Keep calling for the demolition of the settlements. While we're waiting, we could make sure to stop being the lone veto in otherwise unanimous Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, and stop giving military aid to Israel. Of course such a realignment of policies is probably nothing more than a pipe dream....
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/UN/usvetoes.html

We're only responsible for our own actions. If Israel wants to be a pariah state, let it for all I care. I fail to see what we get from our continued support for Israel, besides the hatred of the US it foments from the Maghreb to Pakistan to Indonesia. Perhaps someone could enlighten me.

You're right - we're are in no position to offer any strategic or tactical advice. In which case, I guess you won't be needing any of the billions of dollars in military and financial assistance we provide you every year. We'll just zero out all US government assistance. Have fun with all your friendly neighbors!

Readers are warmly encouraged to think up a snappy comeback to that talking point -- because I had nothing.

"We only fight a futile war once. You fought it three times in Lebanon."

Really, Drezner can't think of the Obama Administration's comeback? How about "We're not the Bush Administration." Duh.

Let's remember that the Obama Administration thinks that its Iraq policy is a success and that, to use VP Biden's words, "America gets credit here in the region" for our Iraq policy.

Then again, the Obama foreign policy is by far the weakest since Carter's, so it is doubtful that such a comeback, no matter how snappy, is going to be effective.

Here is my response,

"You're right. It would seem that we Americans should not lecture you on security or tactical stuff. But there are some important things to that we should point out. We are not a country surrounded by hostile neighbors. We don't have people within our borders who want their own country. Another thing, we want peace for you guys. We've been supporting you for the last 60 + years. We give you guys atleast 3 billion dollars a year.
But remember this. Each time you guys do something stupid, it reflects on us. When you guys do something the world hates, the world hates us back. In fact, even the Europeans are getting really pissed at you guys. Bu on the plus side, they seem to be liking us slightly better.
But you guys are right. How could we give you guys tactical advice after our decade of mishaps? Fine, we'll leave you alone. Have fun trying to deal with the Palestinian issue, and have fun with all your neighbors. (Oh wait, aren't we responsible for helping you guys get a peace treaty with Egypt? You know, the country that you went to war against a couple of times. Well, you have fun with Syria and all your other neighbors, we only have Canada and Mexico."

Obama to Israel - "Oh my, I seem to have misplaced my checkbook"

The answer to your question, Mr. Drezner, is money. The United States is still able to "advise" the Israelis because the US provides the Israelis with enormous financial and military support. Whether or not the US decisions post-9/11 have been wise or practical is not the issue; the US still has enormous leverage over the Israelis because of the resources that the former provides to the latter.

Well, you could note that those wars were not the idea of the current administration.
Btw, as an Israeli, I wish I could say we're a fair-minded bunch. But I think the immigration of a million east-Europeans has shifted the concensus right a fright.

Amosyarkoni: At 5:46AM, you refer to America(ns) as "we" and "our" and at 5:57AM, you refer to America(ns) as "you" and "your". Which is it? Are you an American, an Israeli or both? Sorry to nitpick, but I want to know which perspective you're looking at this issue from.

Apartheid state label. It also appears that you missed Ippon's "We think America is our bitch," commentary.
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Cause eveyrones crazy and deserves a few years to get the blood lust out of their system - and I mean EVERYONE , US/Israeli/Palestinian/Arab. All anyone else can do is just get out of the way. The Israeli feel things are on their side after all Muslims are the new 'Nazi's and militarily they can wipe everyone they fight in teh Mid East, the Arabs feel time is on their side cause they can slowly bleed Israel and numbers are on their side. The US is too stupid to get out of the way and the rest of the Islamic world (Yes surprising to teh rac baiters but most Muslims are not Arabs) needs to follow. Its like a really passionate violent and sad soccer game where the only break through will happen in the last few minutes when both sides are exhausted and willing to make mistakes that'll allow goals to be scored.

Back in February, Foreign Affairs published an article titled " The HAMAS Conundrum".
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http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ ... -conundrum
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The article essentially points out that despite all cajoling, all the carrots and sticks placed in front of HAMAS for the past four years, the group remains wedded to its violent extremism and remains steadfast in its rejection of Israel. The article raises the question, if HAMAS continues to refuse to step away from Jihad, to end its pursuit of violence, and actually accept Israel as an independent Jewish state, then how does the peace process go forward.
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This is not an academic question because despite Arvay's claims that all Israel needs to do is just open up Gaza and give the Palestinians an economic solution, that all will be well. As can be seen, that despite the ongoing PA efforts, it is the IDF that is preventing HAMAS from controlling the West Bank.
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The scorecard on Israel handing over territory has been lackluster, to say the least. It has been over 10 years since it pulled out of Lebanon, with the UN confirming Israel's adherence to UNSC425 with Hizballah continuing to declare its hatred of Jews and plans for Israel's destruction. It has been five years since Israel withdrew from Gaza, taking every last Jew . . . living and dead from its soil. And still, HAMAS holds to its rejections and plans for Israel's destruction.
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In both cases, wars were fought because of the continuing violence and cross border attacks. With these threats, there is little liklihood that Israel is going to repeat the process a third time only to see another rejectionist front come into existance only meters away from its population centers.
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Of course rather than address this point, Drezner opts with some Imaginary Israeli commentary. Of course this has as much to do with reality as the credit rating agencies had to do with actually rating the high-risk mortgage backed security notes that wound up sending the US and the rest of the world into a financial tailspin. But no matter, All Drezner asks is for people to come up with "snappy comebacks" to his "make believe put downs".
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And for some reason, I thought that the Mid-east channel was supposed to deal with real analysis and discussion.

Yeh, but Iraq has oil and Afghanistan prime opium fields; Palestine has... what?

That response is what your IR academics may be telling you, but the real response is more like:

We have a better combatant to non-combatant kill ratio (despite Hamas and Hezbollah being better than Taliban at using human shields);

We actually deter further aggression when we go after our enemies;

Someone may have tried to put a bomb in Times Square, but SDerot was under constant attack for years;

You may be hated, but no one's really targeted you with the lawfare/propaganda campaign being waged against our legitimacy as a state; and

Nixon's coming through for us in '73 is more the exception historically than the rule, so the trust thing isn't working in your favor; so

Work on getting the Arabs to give up on genocide, and we'll be happy to make peace.

HGB

Israel policy hasn't changed. It has been begging for DIRECT NEGOTIATIONS with the Palestinian leadership for the last 2 years. It has provided "confidence-building measures" as demanded by Obama, as well as a settlement freeze nearing its expiration date, and even released 600+ Fatah operatives, dozens of whom who participated in suicide bombings.

It has done all these things just to provide an incentive for Fatah to "talk." But Abbas will only talk if everything he demands is promised in advance, including territorial borders and refugee status.

Yes - that's right, you given to ALL our demands, then we'll negotiate.

And you seriously think putting more pressuring on Israel will suddenly will Palestinians to join in the fun?

If you are truly a libertarian, you would support USA disengaging from the peace process and letting the Israelis and Palestinians solve it themselves.

Until Obama is willing to get tough on the Arab nations and their take-over of the Palestinian leadership, and stop gutting Iranian sanctions bill in Congress, I don't think the Israeli leadership can be persuaded to lift a finger for Obama.

Why it even takes our calls is beyond me. I'm ashamed to be an American. We've been the sockpuppet of Muslim outrage for awhile. Time to let Israel humiliate the Arabs in another war - then maybe they'll join a real process like Egypt and Jordan did in post-Yom Kippur.

All the Palestinians understand is force. 16 years of peace-process, 9,000KIA...I think it's time to call it quits.

What exactly is the US saying that Israel won’t listen to? I can’t hear anything.

Unlike the US, Israel does not spend a lot of time or energy trying to mollify those they go to battle with. We , on the other hand, somehow think that if we are attacking an enemy we need to try and make then feel good about it when all is said and done.That has not worked any where yet and only winds up in our expanding huge sums of money and inordinate amounts of time to accomplish what could be done for much less in a much shorter period of time.There is much to be said for getting in, beating down the agressors and getting out. If the Israeli's approched Lebanon the way we approach Afghanistan they would be stuck there for centuries.
They also harbor no reluctance to go where they have to go to gert the job done. We fiddle around in places like Afghanistan when , by all accounts, the enemy we are pursuing has long since fled to Pakistan and other places.Yet we tip toe around Pakistan and spend billions of dollars while doing so hoping that some day it will all bear fruit. Whereas the Israelis have no difficulty chasing down and dealing directly with their attackers no matter where they scurry off to.
When Roosevelt said "walk softly and carry a big stick" he didn't mean that when it came time to having to use the stick that we should simply poke our enemy with it.To complete the pharse "walk softly and carry a big stick, and if you are forced to use it club them with it so hard that the next time you walk by them with it they won't think twice about whether or not you'll use it and how bad it will hurt if you do".

expend