Category: Life in America

Ruling Class Without a Clue – American Thinker Re-Blog

By Christopher Chantrill / June 25, 2013 – American Thinker

The truth is that governments are always like pitchers trying to pitch out of a jam with all the bases loaded. We the people want a little free stuff. The ruling class wants to seize and hold political power. Promising free stuff is how you get elected.

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Ben Bernanke

What are we to think about the market falling out of bed after Gentle Ben Bernanke’s hint last week that he might start tapering off the money printing operation at the Fed? Was it because the Fed is, in fact, following a dangerous deflationary policy, as Larry Kudlow writes? Given that gold and other metals are down 30 percent from their highs, Larry has a point.

Or was it nothing to do with the Fed, but instead renewed problems with the Euro? Or with the property implosion in China?

Probably the answer is: None of the above. The truth is probably the old one about Hollywood and how to produce a hit movie: Nobody knows nothing.

The truth is that governments are always like pitchers trying to pitch out of a jam with all the bases loaded. We the people want a little free stuff. The ruling class wants to seize and hold political power. Promising free stuff is how you get elected.

Usually, those vote-buying promises result in policies that damage the economy. President Obama has been worse than most. The result is that politicians and their officials are always involved in trying to band-aid over the distortions and the wounds they have inflicted on the economy in their crude bid for power.

That is the way to understand the global economic situation. It is governments trying to paper over their mistakes. In the U.S. the government is trying to paper over a credit system that is still badly holed from the mortgage meltdown.

There’s only one way that the ruling class knows how to deal with the inevitable consequence of gunning the housing market with mortgage subsidies. Print lots of money to float the underwater mortgages. The Fed wants to stop the presses, and it can, it will some day. But it doesn’t want to bring on another panic. The trouble is that even talk about ending its quantitative easing leads to a market swoon.

In Europe the ruling class is trying to deal with the consequence of its 50-year hubris. The people, they decided after World War II, were a bunch of crypto-Nazis. So the enlightened ruling class would federalize Europe to make sure that aggressive nationalism would never rear its ugly head again. That really worked well, so now that the national political leaders in southern Europe are getting themselves riled up into a nationalistic fervor accusing the Germans of being Nazis.

Think of the Chinese ruling class. The Chi-com rulers really want to bring China into the modern era, but they naturally feel that this is only possible under their wise leadership. So they get exactly the crony capitalism we enjoy here in the United States, as the ruling class dribbles subsidies out to its supporters out in the provinces to keep them on-side while they fundamentally transform China.

Now we have the Brazilians pouring into the streets. A couple of years ago the government started printing money to keep the cronies in the Brazilian export sector “competitive.”

What can we understand from all this news? It stands to reason. These ruling classes don’t have a clue what they are doing. That’s what we’ve been seeing here not just with the Fed but in the IRS and NSA scandals. As Angelo Codevilla writes, those NSA data mining efforts might really amount to something if the NSA had a clue what it was doing.

[T]he aftermath of 9/11, technology, inertia, and allergy to accountability gave the US government the capacity to capture and examine at will well nigh the whole electronic realm. It would very much like to do the protective job that President Obama and Karl Rove claim and may even believe it is doing. But there is no evidence that anyone has figured out how to sidestep the realities that prevent that.

In Codevilla’s view, the U.S. government is still doing what it decided to do in WWII. Collect everything and then decide what to do with it.The only thing the government knows to do is to keep doing it the same, only more so. Think Social Security, born 1935; Department of Defense, born 1947. Think Medicare, born 1965. Think Amnesty, born 1987. Think Education, born 1840.

But back to the burning question. Is the market pullback last week the beginning of the end or just a midsummer night’s dream? I’d say that the answer has to do with the basic question, is the Fed fighting recession or fighting inflation? My guess is that we are still years away from the Fed deciding that the economy is roaring away out of control and now it’s time to put on the brakes.

Christopher Chantrill (mailto:chrischantrill@gmail.com) is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism. Get his Road to the Middle Class.

The Common Good FAQ | Marriage Unique for a Reason – USCCB

Peanut Gallery: Here’s a basic primer from the USCCB on why the marriage between one man and one woman benefits civil society. You might find it helpful in discussions with your friends.

Please click on link below to go to the USCCB website.

The Common Good FAQ | Marriage Unique for a Reason.

Overview: The Common Good and Human Dignity: FAQs
1. What does “intrinsic dignity of the human person” mean?
2. What does marriage have to do with human dignity?
3. Does the Church believe that people who experience same-sex attraction have equal dignity?
4. What does “the common good” mean?
5. Isn’t marriage a private relationship? What does it have to do with the common good?
6. Isn’t marriage just a religious issue that the government should stay out of?
7. What are basic human rights?
8. Is marriage a basic human right?
9. What’s the harm of same-sex “marriage”?
10. But isn’t it unjust discrimination to not allow two men (or two women) to marry?
11. What about civil rights?
12. Isn’t allowing two men or two women to marry just an extension of allowing interracial couples to marry?
13. What about equality and fairness?
14. What about “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” between two persons of the same sex?

1. What does “intrinsic dignity of the human person” mean?

The Church firmly teaches that each and every human being is a unique and irreplaceable person, created in the image of God (see Gen 1:27). Because of this, every man, woman, and child has great dignity and worth, a dignity that can never be taken away (i.e., it is intrinsic and inviolable). Respecting a person’s dignity means treating them justly. It also means helping them to flourish as a human being. The intrinsic dignity of the human person should be the starting point for all moral principles.

2. What does marriage have to do with human dignity?

Marriage protects and promotes the dignity of men and women, the dignity of children, and the dignity of all persons in society. First, the lifelong partnership of marriage is the only place where men and women can truly “speak” the language of sexual love – total, faithful, forever, and open to children. Only within marriage can sexual relations mean what they are supposed to mean as an expression of self-giving love between a man and a woman (not selfish use). The promises of a husband and a wife speak a high level of mutual trust and invite the confidence that sex will not be exploitative but will manifest true union and life-giving love. Second, marriage provides a context within which the rights of children to a mother and a father are legally protected.  Marriage also helps assure that children will be welcomed as gifts; apart from the life-long commitment of marriage, children are likely to be viewed as threats or acquired as products. Finally, the family, founded on marriage, is a place where a person can exist for his or her own sake (see LF, no. 11). Marriages teach society not to value persons only for their usefulness.

3. Does the Church believe that people who experience same-sex attraction have equal dignity?

Of course! Every single human person has great inviolable dignity and worth, including those who experience same-sex attraction. All persons should be treated with respect, sensitivity, and love. The Church calls everyone to a life of holiness and chastity, and to live in accord with God’s will for their lives. For more information on the Church’s ministry to persons with same-sex attraction, see USCCB, Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination (2006).

4. What does “the common good” mean?

Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, the common good is “the good of ‘all of us,’” the good of every member of society (CV, no. 7). A society focused on the common good upholds the fundamental dignity of each person, and progresses “from less than human conditions to truly human ones” (PP, no. 20; cf. CV, no. 8). In short, the common good is “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily” (GS, no. 26).

5. Isn’t marriage a private relationship? What does it have to do with the common good?

Marriage is a personal relationship, but not a private one. In fact, marriages play a crucial role in society. By publicly joining hands in marriage, husband and wife enter into a unique communion and sharing of their whole lives that not only joins their distinct families into one, fostering greater connections between people, but also provides the essential context for welcoming new human life. By being open to children, each marriage is the foundation of a new family, rightly called the “key cell” of society (CCC, nos. 2207). In fact, because of its procreative aspect, marriage can be said to be the very source of society (see CSDC, no. 214), the “cradle of life and love” (CL, no. 40). Furthermore, both the irrevocable bond that unites husband and wife in marriage, as well as the sacrificial love that fathers and mothers show their children, create a “dynamic of love” that makes the family the “first and irreplaceable school of social life” (CSDC, no. 221; FC, no. 43). By practicing loving interdependence, husband and wife teach society to reject individualism and seek the common good for all. In modeling love and communion by welcoming and raising new human life and by taking care of the weak, sick and old, marriages and families provide social stability and thus foster the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.

6. Isn’t marriage just a religious issue that the government should stay out of?

No. The social value of marriage is great and is apparent even to those who do not share the Catholic understanding of its religious meaning.  Marriage as a lifelong, faithful, and fruitful union between husband and wife serves the good of all – it serves the good of the spouses, the good of the children who may issue from their marital union, and the good of society in assuring that reproduction happens in a socially responsible way.  To be sure, these goods are affirmed and reinforced by most religions. But they do not rely on any religious premises; they are based instead on the nature of the human person and are accessible to right reason. The government has the responsibility of promoting the common good and the best interests of all people, especially the most vulnerable, and upholding authentic marriage does precisely that.  The fact that the responsibility of government to promote and protect marriage coincides with widely held religious convictions is not a reason for government to abdicate that responsibility.

7. What are basic human rights?

Basic human rights flow from the nature and dignity of the human person. To know what counts as a “right”, we must know what it means to flourish as a human person, as a man or a woman. According to the Second Vatican Council, basic human rights include “everything necessary for leading a life truly human, such as food, clothing, and shelter,” as well as education, a fair wage, and so on (GS, no. 26). Rights are inseparable from duties and responsibilities (see CV, no. 43). Since genuine rights promote the good of the whole human person, and all people, they should never be in competition with each other.

8. Is marriage a basic human right?

The Church does speak of a “right of marriage”: “No human law can abolish the natural and primitive right of marriage, or in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage…‘Increase and multiply’” (RN, no. 9). But having the right to marry does not mean having the right to enter into a relationship that is not marriage, and then to force others by civil law to treat it as marriage.  All persons have the right to marry, but not the right to redefine marriage.  Relationships between two persons of the same sex are not, and can never be, marriages, because two people of the same sex fail to meet a basic defining element for a married couple (sexual difference); they are not denied the right to marry any more than different-sex couples that fail to meet the other basic defining elements of marriage (e.g., age, consanguinity).  Thus, the right to marry does not include the right to a so-called same-sex “union.”

9. What’s the harm of same-sex “marriage”?

Marriage has great public significance (see question #5, above). And laws always promote a vision of “the good life.” Because of this, redefining civil “marriage” to include two persons of the same sex would have far-reaching consequences in society. Law is a teacher, and such a law would teach many bad lessons, backed by the moral authority, financial resources, and coercive power of the state, such as the following: that marriage is only about the romantic fulfillment of adults and has nothing to do with legally attaching parents to the children they procreate, so that each child may have his or her right to a mother and father safeguarded, and his or her development and well-being served to the greatest extent possible; that mothers and fathers are wholly interchangeable and, in turn, that gender is inconsequential, both to the development of children and more broadly; that same-sex sexual conduct is not merely morally permissible, but a positive good equal in moral value to marital sex, and so worthy of the same protection and support of society by law; that people who adhere to the perennial and universal definition of marriage are bigots, whose beliefs can only be explained by hatred for persons with a homosexual inclination, and whom, in turn, the state has a duty to punish and marginalize for persisting in those beliefs. 

10. But isn’t it unjust discrimination to not allow two men (or two women) to marry?

Treating different things differently is not unjust discrimination. Marriage can only be between a man and a woman. There’s nothing else like it. Only a man and a woman are capable of giving themselves to each other so that “the two become one flesh.” And only a man and a woman are capable of sexual activity that may yield children.  The government has a very strong interest in protecting the right of those children to a mother and a father, and in reducing the likelihood that those children will become wards of the state.  The civil law of marriage serves both these interests by legally bonding adult couples to any children they may create, and to each other.  The sexual activity of two persons of the same-sex never yields children, so the government’s interest in bonding same-sex “couples” is different and weaker.  Government is thus eminently reasonable, and in no way unjust, in distinguishing between two persons of the same sex and a different-sex couple in conferring the rights and duties of legal marriage.

11. What about civil rights?

Respecting everyone’s civil rights is unmistakably important, and the right to marry is unmistakably a civil right. But the “right to marry” is the right to enter into a very particular kind of relationship having distinct characteristics that serve important social purposes; the “right to marry” is not the right to enter a relationship that is not a marriage, and then force others by law to treat that relationship as if it were a marriage. Advocates for same-sex “marriage” ignore this distinction.  Far from serving the cause of civil rights, redefining marriage would threaten the civil right of religious freedom:  it would compel everyone—even those opposed in conscience to same-sex sexual conduct—to treat same-sex relationships as if they represented the same moral good as marital relationships.

12. Isn’t allowing two men or two women to marry just an extension of allowing interracial couples to marry?

There is no valid analogy between the goal of “redefining” marriage to include persons of the same sex, and the historical movement to allow interracial couples to marry. The sexual relations between a man and a woman are simply not the same as the sexual relations between two men or between two women, regardless of their ethnicity. The intimate acts of husband and wife are able to unite them fully and to enable them to welcome children. Sexual difference is an essential characteristic of marriage; ethnic sameness or difference is not.  Marriage is rooted in nature: two people of the same sex are no more being denied the “right” to marry than a man is “denied” the “right” to gestate and nurse a child. (As was said above in number 7, authentic human rights flow from the nature and the dignity of the human person, a nature that includes sexual difference.)

13. What about equality and fairness?

All persons deserve fair and equal treatment, in recognition of their great dignity. But protecting and promoting marriage as the union of one man and one woman is not denying equality or being unfair. Every person has the right to marry, but those who seek to enter same-sex unions seek something other than to marry; instead, they seek to have the civil law force others to treat their non-marital relationships as if they were marriage. But the relationships are not the same, either functionally or morally. Defending marriage is not unfair, it’s just respecting reality — the reality of marriage as the total, fruitful union of man and woman. Real fairness, real equality, depends on truth.

14. What about “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” between two persons of the same sex?

Marriage is a unique good in itself. Nothing compares to the unique partnership of husband and wife, who through their sexual difference form a life-giving communion. No relationship between persons of the same sex can be the same as that between a man and a woman, nor should they ever be treated as analogous to marriage in any way. Thus, legal categories such as “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” that claim equivalent or analogous status to marriage are wrong and unjust, harmful both to the person and to society. Legal categories such as “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” should never be treated as analogous to marriage. Such legal approval of “civil unions” contributes to the erosion of the authentic meaning of marriage. As such, they are never acceptable. Basic human rights are not protected but violated by the erosion and redefinition of marriage.

The Case Against Unauthorized Syria Intervention – Andrew C. McCarthy Re-Blog

Peanut Gallery: Should we intervene in Syria? I don’t think so… and neither does Andrew C. McCarthy. In the following article, McCarthy presents his case for staying out of Syria, along with extensive background links that are well worth the read.

Going to war is serious business that requires public debate and congressional authorization. Our current administration has neither and Senator Rand Paul wants to hold them accountable. Good for him and his bipartisan coalition.

To understand why should we stay out of Syria, you need to look no further than the debacle in Libya. Please take the time to read McCarthy ‘s article posted below. We are way beyond 30 second sound bites on this issue.
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Paul and Lee Lead Bipartisan Effort Against Obama’s Unauthorized Syria Intervention

by Andrew C. McCarthy
pjmedia.com / June 22nd 2013

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Thanks to Republican Senators Rand Paul (of Kentucky) and Mike Lee (of Utah), we might finally get on Syria what we were denied on Libya: a real debate among the American people’s representatives over congressional authorization of President Obama’s unilateral war-making in the Middle East.

The Washington Examiner reports that Senators Paul and Lee have joined with two counterparts, Democrats Chris Murphy (of Connecticut) and Tom Udall (of New Mexico), in offering legislation that would block direct or indirect aid for military or paramilitary operations in Syria. The bill, which is posted on Paul’s website, is called the “Protecting Americans from the Proliferation of Weapons to Terrorists Act of 2013.”

The proposal would not affect or prohibit humanitarian aid, but it forthrightly addresses the issue Syria intervention supporters willfully ignore: the factions President Obama is abetting – egged on by the GOP’s McCain wing and their fellow transnational progressives on the Democratic side of the aisle – are Islamic supremacists dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and closely connected to violent jihadists, including al Qaeda-affiliated groups.

Not to be a broken record (see, e.g., here, here and here), but the Syrian civil war pits implacable enemies of the United States against each other. And as night follows day, they are using their barbaric jihadist tactics against each other. The situation is reminiscent of the central flaw in our  Libyan misadventure – which led directly to the massacre of Americans in the “rebel” stronghold of Benghazi on September 11, 2012.

As John Rosenthal acutely observes in his short but essential book The Jihadist Plot: The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion, while there are many problems with using the label “war on terror” to describe our ongoing hostilities, “at least the term had the advantage of making clear that the US and its allies abhorred the tactic in question.” Yet, in Libya, and now in Syria, we have turned a blind eye to the fact that terrorism is used by the jihadists our government has chosen to side with.

We try to obscure this fact by referring to the opposition forces as “rebels,” the better to avoid noticing that they consider themselvesmujahideen (jihad warriors), and by pretending we favor only the “secular” “moderates,” though it is laughable to suggest there are enough of them to topple the regimes in question without allying with the more numerous and formidable Islamic-supremacists factions.

This is a disgraceful state of affairs. For many years after their enactment in 1996, the material-support-to-terrorism laws, which prohibit and severely punish any abetting of terrorist organizations and their savage methods, were foundational to American counterterrorism. They have been a staple of anti-terrorism prosecutions and of the policy shift designed to prevent terrorist attacks from happening (by starving jihadist cells of resources) rather than content ourselves to prosecute only after suffering attacks.

At least as importantly, material support statutes also proclaimed our moral position: any organization that resorted to terrorism is the enemy of humanity, regardless of its cause and regardless of what humanitarian activities the organization purports to carry out.

Now, no matter how much government officials deny it, our government is endorsing what we went to war to defeat. Our government is materially supporting terrorists – the very conduct it prosecutes and imprisons American citizens for committing.

The intervention is also making a mockery of the international order that Obama purports to care so much about. There are international law restrictions against arming the jihadist-ridden Syrian opposition.
The Obama administration looked the other way while encouraging Islamic-supremacist governments in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to supply weapons. Now, entirely predictably, those weapons are in the hands of terrorists – exactly what the international law restrictions were designed to prevent. So we are both materially supporting jihadists and undermining the laws on which, according to progressives, global stability depends.

And don’t tell me about “red lines” and the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons. The sharia-supremacists our government is supporting include factions that have been seeking chemical weapons for decades – and unlike Assad, they want them in order to use them against the United States.

This is not to carry Assad’s water; he is incontestably a monster – unlike the Obama administration, which hailed him as a “reformer” and strengthened him by re-establishing diplomatic ties with Syria at a time when Assad was reeling, I have never been under any illusions to the contrary.

But our interventionist rah-rah squad is gradually giving us a Middle East in which weapons of mass destruction will be in the hands of Islamic-supremacist regimes heavily influenced by jihadists (did you see that Morsi’s Egypt just appointed a governor (since resigned) from the blind sheikh’s terrorist organization?).

Already, the US/NATO intervention in Libya has opened Qaddafi’s arsenal to the jihadists who are terrorizing North Africa. Would Assad give his WMD to Hezbollah? He might, but as both he and Hezbollah are supplied by Iran, it would be silly to imagine that Hezbollah does not already have access to WMD.

The point is that our intervention stands to land such weapons in the hands of Sunni jihadists. How is that better? How is it in America’s vital interests?

The fact is, we have no vital interests in the outcome of Syria’s civil war. Both sides are our enemies. Assad has neither attacked nor threatened to attack the United States. Consequently, waging war against the Syrian regime is wholly a matter of choice. That is a choice that, in our constitutional system, cries out for congressional authorization.

Without congressional authorization – without a demonstration that the American people’s representatives are satisfied that American interests call for waging an unprovoked war against the Assad regime – there should be no American intervention.

For what it’s worth, during the Libya intervention debate, I dilated on what I believe our law requires for the use of military force in the absence of an attack or threatened attack against our country:

Transnational progressives and national-security conservatives may hotly debate whether any endorsement from some international body (in particular, the U.N. Security Council) is necessary before the United States may legitimately take military action. But there should be no debating that absent a hostile invasion of our country, a forcible attack against our interests, or a clear threat against us so imminent that Americans may be harmed unless prompt action is taken, the United States should not launch combat operations without congressional approval.That is especially true in Libya. There is no realistic prospect of harm to the United States from Qaddafi’s regime.

Concededly, I do not believe there is sufficient justification to use U.S. military force — I don’t even think it’s a close case, and I think proponents are seriously discounting the net harm using force could cause. But I am talking now about propriety, not policy.

In his remarks Friday, committing to what he promised would be a limited military engagement (with no ground forces, basically just air power), [President Obama] never even hinted that he might seek Congress’s imprimatur. To the contrary, he asserted that the “use of force” was “authorized” by the “strong resolution” of the “U.N. Security Council,” which was acting “in response to a call for action by the Libyan people and the Arab League.”

Many of the Libyan people, to say nothing of the Arab League, do not mean the United States well. But even if they were strong allies, that would make no difference. Only the American people and their representatives in the United States Congress get to make the “call for action” that involves enmeshing our armed forces and our country in a war.

Continue reading “The Case Against Unauthorized Syria Intervention – Andrew C. McCarthy Re-Blog” →

Time to Get Some Perspective on Israel – American Thinker Re-Blog

Even putting aside Israel’s own legitimate legal, cultural, and historical claims to disputed territories, Israeli withdrawal to those lines won’t happen now due to Israeli aversion to existential vulnerability.

by Abraham Katsman
americanthinker.com / June 17th 2013

Syria spirals out of control. Iran marches toward nuclear Islamageddon. So, naturally, Secretary of State John Kerry schedules yet another trip to “solve” the region’s relatively stable, if not ideal, Israel-Palestinian dispute.

Like so many in foreign policy circles, Kerry and the Obama administration know — absolutely know — the key to peace in Israel’s neighborhood: Israel’s withdrawal, with perhaps minor adjustments, from all West Bank territory conquered in 1967.

Yet history indicates that withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, absent major changes, is arguably the single most counterproductive act imaginable for long-lasting peace. There is no greater obstacle to peace than the perpetual temptation to launch another war against Israel from such lopsided lines.

What is so sacred about the pre-1967 lines, anyway? In 1967, there was neither peace nor an independent Palestinian entity. Similar lines were part of the 1947 Partition Plan and were overrun by invading Arab armies. The pre-1967 lines were never an internationally recognized border — thanks to Arab insistence that they not be. They were merely the armistice lines of 1949, an armistice honored mostly in the breach. In 1967, Arab armies finally shredded the armistice by attacking across those lines, in spite of Israeli pleas to Jordan’s King Hussein not to do so. With new ceasefire lines in 1967 and 1973, the pre-1967 lines were rendered meaningless, having lasted all of 18 years: 1949-1967. RIP.

Even putting aside Israel’s own legitimate legal, cultural, and historical claims to disputed territories, Israeli withdrawal to those lines won’t happen now due to Israeli aversion to existential vulnerability.

We all know Israel is small, but we rarely appreciate just how tiny and exposed it is. Pre-1967 Israel is about one tenth the size of Kansas, roughly the size of New Hampshire. But even that exaggerates the practical reality of Israel’s size, as about 57% of pre-1967 Israel is made up of the sparsely inhabited Negev Desert.

Most of Israel’s population, business, industry, and technology reside in the narrow central Coastal Plain. That is a strip of land between the West Bank and the Mediterranean Sea which varies between 9 and 11 miles wide. “Start-Up Nation” Israel squeezes into that Rhode Island-sized area.

Think about that. An entire country, nine miles wide. A bicycle could easily cross it in 30 minutes — and a rocket in a matter of seconds. Nine miles is less than the distance from Barack Obama’s Chicago home to Wrigley Field. It’s the distance between Manhattan’s George Washington Bridge and Holland Tunnel. It is one and a half times around the Central Park loop.

Still hard to grasp? This photo might help:

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This is the view from the West Bank hilltop settlement of Peduel, about three miles over the Green Line. In the foreground is the West Bank Arab village of Dayr Balut. In the middle ground are Tel Aviv and its surrounding neighborhoods. Behind Tel Aviv is the Mediterranean. That’s it.

The next time some radical speaks of “driving the Jews into the sea,” keep in mind how short a drive that is.

When controlled by Israel’s enemies, vulnerable, lowland Israel consistently proved too tempting to resist attacking, whether in exterminationist wars of 1948 and 1967 or in numerous cross-border terror acts in between. Yet, in 1973, when Israel was teetering in the early days of the Yom Kippur War, Jordan — no longer in control of the West Bank and its commanding heights — refrained from attacking. The “Occupation” — Israel’s administration of the West Bank — saved Israel (and countless Jordanian soldiers), whereas the past absence of occupation had invited attack. Rather than simply an “obstacle to peace,” the Occupation also serves as an obstacle to war.

To withdraw to pre-1967 borders is to risk suicide. All the diplomatic condemnations in the world won’t make Israel act so recklessly, especially when based on murky claims of “international law” invoked only in the Israel context — never, of course, involving occupations and human rights abominations by Turkey (Cyprus), Russia (Georgia, Chechnya), China (Tibet), India (Kashmir), or Syria (Lebanon).

Tellingly, even “moderate” Palestinian leaders have rejected any material adjustments to those lines, unless demanding that those lines be adjusted in the other direction — i.e., into pre-1967 Israel.

Just this week, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat demanded the strategic high ground of Latrun, which overlooks Israel’s all-important Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway. Dare we ask why?

From Israel’s perspective, having frequently faced eradication at the hands of Arab neighbors, the peace process is like a sheep trying to make peace with a wolf: it can be done, as long as the sheep stays alert and armed and takes ample precautions. But when the wolf insists that the sheep leave its pre-1967 neck exposed, it is fair to question the wolf’s motives and decline the wolf’s terms for “peace.”

John Kerry can afford to be wrong about what he “knows” will bring Israeli-Palestinian peace. Israel can’t.

Abraham Katsman is an American attorney and political commentator living in Israel. He serves as Counsel to Republicans Abroad Israel. More of his work is available at AbeKatsman.com.